When Lefike told his friend he was going to walk to Maseru his friend said, "No you won't. You'll turn around before the mountain pass. You'll never make it." But we did, and it only took 8 hours.
They woke up at 2:30 am -- Lefike, Moraba, and Lemeko -- three students of mine I had recruited for the walk. I just wanted to see how long it would take and what the scenery was like. They had bathed, eaten, and put on their city attire: Maseru was our destination after all, and Maseru is the big city in Lesotho and everybody gets dressed up for it. I awoke at 3:45 am and we were on the trail at 4.
The Eastern horizon was deep purple, the West black, and we stumbled northward as quickly as possible. Soon we were out of Ts'oeneng and into fields. Then we walked by Leralleng and its fields, and on by 'Mahuu -- that is when we first saw the sun. People of all ages, well-covered to ward off the imminent scorch, harvested wheat and hoed their newly sown fields of corn, but they spoke not a word to us as we passed.
The boys sang, showed off their muscles to one another, discussed South Africa's two big soccer teams, the Chiefs and Pirates. I chimed in now and then with what Sesotho I could muster.
Off came our shoes as we waded across a river and then up the saddle splitting Qeme plateau, where Lefike was told he would turn around. We were starting to feel thirsty, but having fun and still facing north. As we looked down on Ha Hlalele, the first village on the Maseru side of the mountain, we saw almost all tin roofs. It was the outskirts of the city. We sat and stared and ate bread and avocado for five minutes.
As soon as we descended it started.
"Whitey!" a child yelled.
"Yellow!" a man shouted.
"Where are you taking the white person?" another man asked.
Finally, a drunk boy, surely bolstered by his drunk friends, showed us his modern English, "Hey you, motherfuthkin beetches!"
Lefike, Moraba, and Lemeko were all surprised and disappointed by what we heard. They had never walked through villages with me other than our own, where I'm treated almost like any other guy. Lefike noticed that I never responded to any of it. He recalled a proverb he had learned and said, "Don't argue with a fool, a wise man won't be able to tell the difference."
We arrived in Maseru at noon. By taxi it would have taken us an hour and a half.
We went directly to an ambassador's house where Lemeko's mother works as a housekeeper. We were thirsty again. She hadn't known we were coming. Lemeko told her we had come on foot. Her eyes tweaked. "Why did you walk here?" she asked me specifically.
"We didn't have money for a taxi," I said.