Blog 33: Final week reflections

Manyanye picks me up Thursday lunchtime and drops me in Maseru at the hotel where we are having the board meeting for Saint Angela’s. Facts and figures are not available, so we adjourn until Monday. The Irish help me out with hotel fees for the night and I have the glorious experience of going for a swim and fully immersing myself in water after three weeks of making do with a bucket. Later they also take me out for a meal and I feel thoroughly spoiled. God bless the Irish!

On Friday I meet up with Justice for our weekend hiking trip to the village where his mother was born. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in the middle of the chaos of Black Friday and we give up trying to get near any shops. It takes the whole afternoon to secure transport and food and we don’t leave Maseru till after 6.30 pm, and even then we must backtrack for petrol. There are seven of us in two cars winding our way up the high pass towards Semonkong. By the time we stop to meet the herdsmen with horses and donkeys who are taking us to the village, the moon is high in the night sky.   

The village where we are heading is called Ha Sekantsi. It’s about a two-and-a-half-hour hike along a rough path and from its position you can see Thabana Li Mele (the mountains with tits). The name is obvious when you see view! Our path is well lit by the moonlight and we arrive after midnight to be greeted by the ferocious barking of the village dogs. Some of our group have a couple of tents and the rest seek shelter in a hut with a mother and her children. I find the hut too hot and claustrophobic and decide to spend the night outside, settling alongside a dry-stone wall. Its cold and uncomfortable but the beauty of the night sky and dark silhouettes of the mountains make up for the discomfort.   

Morning comes early in the village. As soon as the first tinge of dawn comes, everyone is stirring. The clonk of goat bells ring, donkeys bray, dogs bark and soon the herd boys are taking the flocks out to find grazing. Some of the herdsmen wear the traditional grass hat shown on the Lesotho flag, each having their own unique take on the basic design. With the ground parched the herders spend most of the day tending their flocks, foraging for grazing, before returning their animals to the safety of the corrals at night.

They are a tough people and the herd boys as tough as they come, looking after the flocks when most boys are in primary school. Those boys fortunate enough to have a family with a horse ride them bareback with a swagger. Horsemanship and horses are highly prized here, both as a surefooted means of transport and for the thrill of racing and betting on them at the big meets held during the year, especially at the nearby town of Semonkong.   

Smoke starts to lazily rise from the village as the cooking fires are lit and the first pap of the day is prepared in the fat black cooking pots resting on the flames. The ladies poke small pieces of brush wood under the pots to feed the fires, while the children sit around hunched in their blankets wrapped tightly around their shoulders.

We spend some time absorbing the morning atmosphere, taking photos and making breakfast in the open walled kitchen alongside the hut. Justice films me while I play my saxophone, much to the amusement and bewilderment of the villagers. They are kind and peaceful people and seem pleased to meet us and find out more about Justice and his family. Justice’s nephew is with us and it turns out is the rightful chief of the village. His fathers second wife presently reigns but the people aren’t happy with her and feel that the heir should claim his throne.

As the only person who can’t speak the language, plays a saxophone, and sleeps outside, the villagers seem to find me a curious and hilarious phenomenon. One of the village elders keeps coming up to me, laughing and shaking my hand. I don’t know what he is saying, I like to think it is along the lines of “You go girl!”       

Later in the morning we decide to seek out a waterfall we are told is nearby, where the locals say a snake lives in the gorge. When we set out the day is still cold, but its soon sweltering and I regret bringing a woolly hat, rather than a sun hat. We are accompanied by a local guide, protecting us from the dogs who guard the flocks and homesteads and naturally see us as a security threat. We get to the steep drop off into the gorge and I decide not to go down as the lure of some cold water is not enough to compensate for the hot climb back up again.

I wait by a few huts watching the ladies make pap, admiring the Basotho ponies they keep and trying to find some shade to hide from the sun. The ladies fuss around me, bringing me a log to sit on, a blanket to make me comfortable and pap and peas to eat. The stiff skins of two wild cats hang from the trees and twirl around in the slight breeze as a warning to other predators.

When the others return we watch a bird of prey hover on the up drafts rising from the hot ground below, a slight flick of its wing tips holding it effortlessly in the sky. Two village girls walk by with piles of brushwood balanced on their heads, their skills as effortless as the bird of prey we have just watched .

We make our way back to camp. The village has a tap and I get a bucket of water and try to wash some of the dust off me. A small brown calf with big soft eyes follows me and attempts to get in the bucket with me. A puppy also joins us and the two of them trail around the village after me. The rest of the group laugh, but I tell them it’s obvious the animals know I am a vegetarian I am the only one amongst us that won’t eat them!   

Later I settle down by the wall again for another night under the stars. The village children are perched on top of the wall giggling at me and daring each other to go a bit closer to the strange white woman. They finally go to bed and I drift off for a short while until there is an indignant squeal and I leap up into the air. The village pig has escaped and walked straight into me. I’m not sure who is more surprised, me or the pig. The pig runs off squealing with the shock, and blunders into a pack of excited dogs. There is a huge racket and a battle ensues which sounds like the pig is outnumbered and losing.

I am genuinely pleased when I find in the morning the pig looks to have escaped unhurt and is tied up in its usual place grunting to itself, none the worse for its night time adventures. The donkeys and horses arrive to carry our bags, and we walk back out to our transport, seeing the stark beauty of the mountains in daylight in contrast to our moonlit journey on Friday night.

I feel the weekend has felt a genuine encounter of the Basuto village people living in the remote mountains. They have no roads, shops, clinic or school here, but they do have a life uncluttered by superficial materialism and desires of modern living. It is not a utopia, but it is a life stripped back to what really matters; having the basics of food, water and shelter, and being surrounded by a close-knit community. Friendly people who have time to talk and take pleasure from the simple joys that each day brings. It’s a reality check and I silently contemplate the lessons as I walk back to so called “civilisation”. 

…

Monday lunchtime and I walk down the dusty track to Saint Angela’s. I bump into Kevin and Martin, from Action Ireland, who are trying to find out whether they can refurbish the broken water pump, but it’s been taken away. I leave them looking down the empty hole and go to find the kids. They have all gone home for the holidays except three of the new ones who I met back in March. They bound up with big smiles like long lost friends.

We get the key to the physio room and open the door. I know its going to be bad but its still hits me like a punch in the guts. It is thick with red dust and all the wheelchairs have been left in the middle of the floor with boxes and equipment piled up around and little space left to do anything. If it wasn’t for the expectant look on the faces of the three kids with me, I would have turned on my heel and walked away.

I take a deep breath and start to fold the wheelchairs and put them in the toilet block, then I shove as much of the boxes and equipment as I can out the way to sweep and mop the floor. Star tuts at my efforts and stands with her hands on her hips, “Mme Jan, let me help you”. She eleven years old and has the most bowed legs I’ve ever seen which she manages to walk on in a rolling gait defying all normal laws of biomechanics. She never seems downhearted about anything or the unfair hand life has dealt her.

After an hour or so we manage to make some improvement to the room and I tell them I will come back and see them tomorrow. I need to go to the Saint Angela board meeting part two which is in town at the hotel. Some fact and figures have now been obtained and things are looking bad in terms of balancing the books. With government funds not available anytime soon, the only source of more immediate income is 250 laying chickens that have been ordered for December.     

The board meeting descends into a chicken crisis meeting of how many eggs 250 chickens can lay and what profit can be made after all costs are accounted for. There are four people madly punching numbers into their calculators and adding up the figures. For a while it looks like the chickens might solve the more immediate financial problems until someone points out the numbers of daily trays of eggs it is assumed that the chickens will lay works out at two eggs a day. “Two eggs a day?“  “Yes that’s right, but they are small eggs!” In my books a chicken that can lay five eggs a week is a good layer. Clearly Lesotho hens are super heroes when it comes to the production of eggs.

The figures are rehashed several times until everyone loses the will to live and the calculators start to smoke. We adjourn with some sort of action plan and for the moment Saint Angel’s financial gaps are plugged by the Irish and we pray to a kindly God for salvation.

I go back to Saint Angela’s the following day and the enthusiasm of the fabulous three is undiminished. I set us all the task of going through the boxes of toys and sports equipment that have been donated to Saint Angela’s and lie unused in huge boxes. Many of the toys are broken and useless and we find bizarre things like inflatable rubber rings and unicorns floats used for assistance with swimming. What were people thinking when they donated these things? The children of Saint Angela’s are as likely to go swimming as they are to the moon, with the added irony that the water has been cut off and is unlikely to be turned back on again.

The kids have great fun blowing the inflatable toys up and sigh when I say they might as well put them in the rubbish box. I relent and say they can take them back to their bedrooms and do what they like with them. I leave them bashing each other over the head with the unicorns which seems the best use for them.         

I cannot decide is there is any point in me being at Saint Angela’s. The ongoing management problems mean there is very little use of the physio room unless I am there driving it on. Most of the children have complex problems that require a lifetime of interventions and expensive treatment that cannot be provided for them. All I can do is to try and get them to stretch and exercise to try and keep them strong and slow down contractures from forming. This would be worthy enough but staff I train need the guidance and direction of management to keep things going and this has not happened in the last three years.  

I return on Wednesday to find only Majubili is left along with her friend that pushes her wheelchair. She is 14 years old and has the most horrendous scoliosis that winds her spine into an S bend. When I pick her up I need to lift her so her legs are folded tightly into her chest. If her legs were left dangling it would put too much strain on her spine and cause her a lot of pain. There is little I can do for her. She needs a complex operation to insert rods into her spine to stop it crushing her lungs.

Back in the UK she would have a motorised moulded wheelchair costing thousands of pounds. Here she has some pieces of foam shoved down the sides of the seat, to support the spine, and friend to push her chair around. It all seems to work well with the additional benefit of having a special friend she clearly loves and is far more interactive than a chargeable battery.

The girls decide they want to do some colouring and spend the next half and hour absorbed in their task and comparing their efforts. I take a picture of them proudly holding their pictures and then read them a story. The only book to hand is about a flying squirrel’s first day at school. A somewhat unlikely tale, I grant you, but ending with an uplifting moral to the tale when Sammy saves the day and the sinking school bus, and the other furry creatures recognise that we all have special and unique qualities that we can bring to the table.

The girls are enraptured by the story and I feel myself holding back the tears. Majubil has such a beautiful spirit and appears completely happy that she has been lucky enough to spend the last hour with her best friend colouring and having a story read to her. Such simple pleasures. She never mentions her scoliosis and the pain she must be in and completely accepts that’s just the way things are for her.   

Humbled I walk down the track. The months trip has been the usual emotional roller coaster ride. It’s been as crazy as the trip I make later in day with one of my favourite taxi drivers, Sabbath, who took a picture of me back on my first trip in 2016 standing on the roundabout playing with the statute of the man playing the saxophone. A lot has happened since then, but the statue of black man with the golden boots still plays his saxophone and gives me a friendly wave when I go by.    

Today when we pass the statue Sabbath is running late, through circumstances not of his making. We’ve come to stand still in rush hour traffic and he cuts across the dual carriage way and oncoming cars and rides up on to a bank on the opposite side of the road. We bump along the bank until he descends at the front of the que, cuts back across traffic and swerves around another couple of cars stranded in the middle of the cross roads so he can turn right.

I laugh at his outrageous driving. God, I love this country, the people, and the madness of it all, despite the frustrations I sometimes feel. Back in the UK being mindful and living in the moment is all part of a trend of mental health courses run by the NHS. Here you don’t need to go on a course about it, its an everyday reality. Whether it is the villagers of Ha Sekantsi or the children of Phelisanong or Saint Angela’s, they are all living in the moment and as usual have taught me far more than I have taught them. 

I fly home early tomorrow morning and will back in the UK for December, the cold wet weather and crazy commercialism of Christmas. Seems hard to believe sat here in a pair of shorts writing this. Yes, I will return  next year, the Irish are bringing in another stack of physiotherapy equipment in their container, which I need to distribute. The physio house at Phelisanong needs more work, Malineo needs more support and training and I still haven’t given up on Saint Angela’s and finding some way of sustaining the physiotherapy there.

It’s difficult to quantify the impact my visits have had over the last few years. Some of the changes are not tangible, relating to a change in mindset and outlook. Richard, the builder, who visited Phelisanong just before I arrived in 2016, said he couldn't believe the difference when he returned there in 2018, not only the in the infrastructure, but the way children with disabilities were treated. Staff taking a more proactive approach in supporting positive and independent futures for the children and the children themselves having greater self-belief in their ability and potential. 

I like to think that I have contributed to those changes, Richard said the way I work has rubbed off on the children and the staff around me, I hope he's right. In a country where people with disabilities are not supported by legislation and face daily poverty and discrimination,they need all the help they can get. Progress is slow and fragile, and I'll be back in 2019 to continue to work with the children and staff. For now, I would like to thank everyone that has supported Physiotherapy in Lesotho and helped me in many and varied ways. I could not have done it without you.