After spending so much time in cities in South Africa, obsessed with soaking up as much World Cup action as possible, it was a relief to drive back into the mountains of Lesotho. The jagged ridges of Qacha's Nek surrounded me like a buffer, as did the yellow fields of corn and sorghum which were half-harvested. But for the hum of my car, it was a quiet scene as I cruised around another bend, and then down in the fields I saw a circle of men: In unison, they raised knobkerries and smashed them down, they raised the knobkerries again, stamped their feet, and together they smashed them down. I stopped the car. What were they smashing?
I walked across the road, through part of a harvested sorghum field, and saw that they were standing on a tarp and threshing a pile of sorghum heads -- separating the small round grains from the stalk. Still in unison, they drew the wooden knobkerries high and brought them down. Smash.
They also sang. A couple women and a handful of girls stood nearby also watching the men, so I asked one of the girls what the men were singing about. “It's not clear,” she said. Men in Lesotho working in the fields or herding animals always sang, and they always sang like that: deeply and in mumbles so you couldn't understand the words.
They were in such a rhythm that they paid no attention to the foreigner now watching them. I stared at the pile of sorghum heads convulse under their knobkerrie blows, I looked at the faces of the men covered in masks and scarves, and I floated off into a zone where I recalled the pleasures of the simple rural life I had experienced in Tsoeneng, where you worked to create food, then you ate it, you worked to create more, and then you ate it. The cycle seemed like it would get monotonous, but it never had for me. I missed it, and I was happy to be surrounded by fields again.
I continued to strain to hear the words of their song. Finally, I asked the girl next to me again, “I think I hear them say: 'Ua e bona khosi ea Majeremane.'” She said that now she heard the same thing.
The men put down their knobkerries for a rest and one of them said to me, “You see how we thresh sorghum with the knobkerries?”
“Yes, and I like your song. Are the words: 'You see the king of the Germans'?”
He laughed. “That's right. Today we are supporting Germany, as they have a game against Spain.”
The nearest village was a mile or two away, and I doubted it even had electricity. “Where do you watch the soccer?”
“In the village down there, there is a TV.”
While I had watched their labor and fallen into nostalgia about the simple rural life of the Lesotho countryside, they had been singing in support of the Germans in the FIFA World Cup. This event knew no limits.