Today Alex and I left Zonkizizwe around 8am to go to Maseru, the capital city of Lesotho. Our trip was very spur of the moment and unplanned—at first I was very unsure of leaving South Africa not knowing much about the place I was going, or how I was getting there, or where I was staying when I got there! But Alex reassured me that everything would be fine, and that I should just learn to experience life rather than try to meticulously plan out every detail. I felt that we would be safe because we were together, so I finally relaxed and was able to enjoy the ride.
We left Zonkizizwe after a huge rainstorm. The entire yard was flooded and we had to dodge lake sized puddles all the way down to the Taxi Rank. Nomusa walked us down to the rank and explained to the taxi driver in isiZulu that we needed to be let off at Park Central Station in Johannesburg. The ride wasn’t too bad, only a half an hour or so to Joburg.
When we go there we walked around the city for about an hour, getting money out of ATMS and trying to exchange the rest of Alex’s American money. I bought a warm hat and some gloves from a PEP store because I heard it was snowing a lot in Lesotho.
After some asking around at Park Central Station we found out that we had to go to another rank to get international taxis to Lesotho. We eventually found it and booked our seats on a taxi at a local travel office. We paid R140 (about $20 US) and were off to Maseru. The taxi to Maseru was a regular 15 passenger taxi with everyone squeezed in along with their luggage. People were very curious to see two umulungus (white people) at riding in the same transportation as Black Africans. The trip there was about 5 hours long, and we stopped a few times to gas up and take a quick snack and bathroom break.
Finally we reached the border of Lesotho and South Africa. The taxi literally dropped us off at the customs checkpoint and drove away. We walked through customs and waited through a pretty big line, where they stamped our passports and some eyed us with a bit of curiosity. It wasn’t too bad at this point because many people are used to whites coming into Lesotho for tourist reasons. When we left we decided to walk for a bit because we had just been sitting for so long. Several small taxis called 4+1s honked at us, trying to take us into the direction of Maseru, but we continued walking. Soon we stumbled upon a huge US Embassy! It’s probably not the biggest embassy in the world, but relatively compared to the other embassies in the small country of Lesotho, this one was rather palatial. We took note of consular hours and decided to pay it a visit later in the week.
Walking through downtown Maseru we found it very clean. There were signs and wastebaskets everywhere urging people to pick up their trash. I wish Zonke would have access to “dustbins” like that, so people wouldn’t always be compelled to throw things on the street. By that time, the sun was setting and stores were closing, so we decided we should try to find a place to stay for the night. We walked for what seemed like miles until we found someone on the side of the road who said the closes place to stay was a guesthouse that was about 10km away! The taxi’s weren’t running in that direction anymore and just when we thought we may have had to walk all night (in the dark) we heard: “Hey! Hey you! What are you doing?” Normally we ignored people when they yelled at us from across the street, but we found ourselves walking toward the voice. We found a four guys crowded around a white truck with an open hood and a large chunk of the truck’s engine on the ground. The man who yelled at us introduced himself as Busio, and this was his shop where he fixed cars. He said he yelled at us because he didn’t want us standing out in the dark with all the tsotsis (gangsters) walking around. Busio urged us to trust him, but in my mind I couldn’t help but think maybe he could be a tsotsi as well! Alex got in the truck, however, so I followed suit. There wasn’t much turning back now. He promised us that when he was done fixing the truck he would take us to our guesthouse.
Under normal circumstances, I would have been scared out of my mind in a situation like this, but one thing kept me calm. Busio was wearing an East Lansing High School Lacross jacket. I thought it was impossible upon first glance, but it was truly from East Lansing, Michigan! Imagine that… someone halfway across the world in a small, almost forgotten country, wearing a high school jacket from a relatively small town in Michigan! I felt at that moment, some higher forces had to be at work, and this stranger would truly keep his promise to deliver me safely to my guesthouse. Keep his promise he did, as soon as the engine was back in and the truck was running. At first he tried to charge us R150 to drive us, but after some talking down he accepted R60. As he drove away I couldn’t help but laugh and smile to myself about what just happened. Never before in my life had I accepted a ride from a stranger—I had been so scared for nothing!
Thankfully there were rooms available at Phomolo Guest House. We paid R350 for a room that had two twin beds, a living room with satellite TV, a kitchen, and an indoor bathroom! It was really nice for what we paid for it (about $46). We hung out in the living room, drank tea, and watched the news for most of the night. We were hungry, but there was no place open for food at that time. We had literally only eaten two pieces of bread and some fruit between the two of us-- all day—but I was reminded of the fact that many of the children we work with at VVOCF often go to bed hungry most nights. Neither of us complained.
No comments:
Post a Comment