s
August is not my favourite month in Lesotho. It comes with massive amounts of wind, pollen from the invader wattle, and grass, grass, grass. With all our animals coming in and out of the house they bring with them fields of dry grass. The Basotho people use a broom made of thatching grass called a Lefielo. I discovered one in the main lodge pantry today and decided to give it a go. WOW!!!! It's is 100 times more efficient than a stand up broom. It gets to the smallest places that no other broom can get to. It makes complete sense now. Traditionally, the Basotho people live in round huts, called Rondavels. A modern broom would never be able to clean the inside edges of the huts.
I was wondering how I was going to incorporate the Lefielo into my blog, but luckily I didn't have to think too hard. Most of my thoughts come to me either when I'm doing dishes, or cleaning the house. The thoughts wouldn't stop coming today, so I hope I can put them down in writing.
This blog was meant to be full of cheer and laughter, but my apologies that it has become a little more serious. Saying that, Michael did something really funny last night - I don’t think I can share it publicly but if you want a good laugh, let me know and I can share it privately with you. It had to do with Jupiter and Saturn being directly under the moon last night. He added another planet and got us to take a photo. Anybody who knows Michael’s sense of humour will know exactly what he did.
Going back to those thoughts. It’s been an emotional week. After an extremely quick decision, and absolutely amazingly how it all came together, my nephew and niece moved to the UK to finish their schooling. It is mind boggling to know that they enrolled in a new school, organised repatriation flights etc, in 2 weeks, and they left on Friday night.
Katie and I didn’t get off on the best of footings when we first got to really know each other. She was 2 years old. I was living with my sister, Jax, in London at the time. I wanted to be that Aunty that was the most loved and wanted to do everything for her. She would always have this nasty look on her face and say “No! I DO IT!” Well, that’s Katie in a Nutshell, and she was instrumental in the planning and organising of all of this. Matt must have some of my genes in him - I think, as he goes with the flow.
It took a few years, but Kate did end up loving me.
I have always said I have 7 children. My nephews and nieces each have a part of my heart. I love them as my own, and it’s been hard to accept that 2 of them are so far away. On the other hand I am extremely happy for them and the new adventure that awaits. I know they are going to thrive beyond expectations.
Sweeping the floor this morning, got me thinking about Kate and Matt and what Malealea means to me. I was 4 when my family moved here. My parents took over a General Store. This is how I remember it. The shop would open every morning with the same song playing on the Radio “Good Morning, Good Morning, How are You? Good Morning, Good Morning, How do you do?” I’m not sure what station it was, or if it was an advert, but I can hear that song as clear as day.
The shop sold everything from Baked Beans to Coffins. At that time, I don’t think anybody in the village owned a car. There was a delivery book at one of the tills. If anybody bought anything that they could not carry - mielie meal, timber, etc, they would fill in their name, the name of their drop off point and at the end of the day, my Dad would load the goods into our old decrepit LandCruiser, and I would never miss an opportunity to go on “A Delivery” with him. The goods would be delivered, in good faith, on the side of the road, as near as possible to the persons house for them to collect.
My absolute favourite part of any given day, besides the Deliveries, was to do a stock take, especially counting the Mielie Meal bags. I don’t know how helpful I was, I remember my best friend (Ntofela), and I would climb up and down those bags and jump from one pile to another. We would be covered in white dust from head to toe afterwards.
Ntofela was my best friend. Her granny, Mme Maphea, was my nanny. She moved with us from Mount Moroosi, a town in the South of Lesotho (where I spent my first 4 years). We spent every moment together. I would eat lunch with her - mostly Pappa, Moroho and Walky Talkies. These are Chicken heads and feet, I only ate the Walkies, I don’t think I ever tried a Talkie. We would spend hours making pretend houses. The walls (only about 3 layers high) were rocks lying around, and we would raid rubbish bins for old tins, and make those our crockery and groceries. I have been seeing many of these similar houses on our walks recently, and seeing them melts my heart. With schools having not yet reopened in Lesotho, it is wonderful to see the children getting back to playing like we used to.
The other thing I remember is that we had these big dog kennels, I think they were made of a kind of prefab. We would sweep them out and use them as houses as well. I remember her teaching me to write……..with a permanent marker………on a chest of drawers. OOOPS, I don’t think that went down very well. There was a plantation at the bottom of our property that we spent hours playing in amongst the trees. I’m going to talk about this in more detail in a later blog.
In 1988, I went to boarding school in South Africa. A lot changed during this time. I was only 5, Thabo’s age now. I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for my parents at the time. I have found myself taking a double look at him, and his little hands, his baby teeth, and thinking how my heart would break to send him away. Boarding school was the only way at that time, and I wasn’t alone. My big sister was in the Senior Hostel. She was in Standard 7, Grade 9. I know the first night I cried that whole hostel awake, but I would not change it for anything. The independence, the friendships, the playing. The playing was something children today will never know. We were a family in the hostel. This is a chapter of my life I think my hostel friends and I could write a whole book about.
The only thing I would change if I could wave a magic wand, is Apartheid. As I said I was fluent in Sesotho. My best friend was Mosotho. This was still the Apartheid Era, and when I got to boarding school, there were no Sesotho speaking girls. The cleaning staff would speak to me in Sesotho, and would laugh when I talked to them. I was an extremely sensitive child (although Michael will tell you that not much has changed into adulthood, LOL), and although they would laugh out of endearment, I took great offence. I remember engaging less and less with my Basotho friends, and refused to speak Sesotho any more, so much so that I don’t think I was very nice to be around any more. Round about the same time, Maphea passed away - my first real loss. She was my second Mother… and this meant that Ntofela left Malealea. My life at Malealea was starting to change, and I considered my life at boarding school to be more real. The first Sesotho speaking girls came to boarding school in 1994. I was in Standard 5, Grade 7, but by then I had not spoken Sesotho for a few years, and the language was lost to me.
The lodge started developing in the early 90’s. This also contributed to a huge change in my life. I no longer had my own bedroom. Along with the development of the lodge, came added pressures and stresses within the family. There were no more weekend braai’s, no more stress free family getaways. If we did go away together, my Dad would never relax, with the lodge at the back of his mind, and often the trips would be cut short because of some issue relating to the generator or water pumps. I won’t go into more detail here, but I believe my parents sacrificed everything for the lodge to come into existence. The income from the lodge provided my siblings and I with so many opportunities, but sadly, I believe it broke our family.
The shop on it’s own provided an opportunity only for the few staff members working in with no real room for any growth. The lodge, on the other hand, as it grew, brought in hundreds of tourists from all over the world, providing the valley with hundreds of direct and indirect incomes and opportunities.
I think, deep down, as grateful as I am for the lodge and what it has offered, I resented it for a very long time. When I finished university, I told myself I would never go back to the lodge. Michael and I went to the UK when I finished Varsity, and I don’t really know what I thought, but maybe that I would find a life there. I took a trip back to Lesotho on my own, in July 2006. I will never forget that feeling of driving over the Gates of Paradise towards the lodge. I fully understood at that moment what the expression “Home is where the heart is,” meant. I felt it with every fibre of my being, and in that moment I knew I was home. Lodge, or no lodge, Malealea was home, and it was where I belonged.
Thankfully Michael followed a few months later, and the rest is history…. well… kind of.
My parents made way for us to work at the lodge full time, and this also meant that they could start easing off. We settled into our duties with ease. I think, for me, having grown up in the lodge wether I liked it or not, the role came naturally, and I started looking at the lodge in a whole different light. I was really happy. Gemma was born the following year, and as quickly as I had settled in to working, I was forced to stop. She needed my attention 24/7, and my role changed from Lodge Manager to full time nurse. I see her coming into our lives as a wonderful blessing. I know that running a lodge together as a couple, full time, can have it’s extreme challenges. With me having had to look after Gemma full time, it gave Michael and I our space, and brought about a new way of running the Family Business. He did the Business, and I did the Family.
So…. going to back to what Malealea means to me. As we continue to sit with an empty lodge, we believe the business side will pick up again when we decide it’s safe to open our doors. The beauty, the community, the adventure is what draws people to Malealea. A friend of ours said to us once, in the height of a very difficult time - Malealea is bigger than you, and I believe that to be entirely true.
Even though two of our family members have left our shores, the memories and experiences that Malealea has offered our family in it’s entirety is incomprehensible. Malealea has seen 3 family weddings, 36 Christmas and New Years parties, get togethers, birthday parties, and sadly 2 scatterings of ashes.
The cousins physical ages range from 2 to 17, but when they are all at Malealea together, there is no age difference. It brings the child out in everyone.
The closing of the lodge has given me so much time to reflect, to walk around freely without worrying about being in a guest’s space, and most importantly to heal my childhood wounds. Life is as it is meant to be. A lot didn’t make sense at the time, or still doesn’t make sense, but all roads lead to where they are meant to take us.
Thank you to the Lefielo that took me on a somewhat higgeldy piggeldy, but yet magical ride down memory lane this afternoon.
August is not my favourite month in Lesotho. It comes with massive amounts of wind, pollen from the invader wattle, and grass, grass, grass. With all our animals coming in and out of the house they bring with them fields of dry grass. The Basotho people use a broom made of thatching grass called a Lefielo. I discovered one in the main lodge pantry today and decided to give it a go. WOW!!!! It's is 100 times more efficient than a stand up broom. It gets to the smallest places that no other broom can get to. It makes complete sense now. Traditionally, the Basotho people live in round huts, called Rondavels. A modern broom would never be able to clean the inside edges of the huts.
I was wondering how I was going to incorporate the Lefielo into my blog, but luckily I didn't have to think too hard. Most of my thoughts come to me either when I'm doing dishes, or cleaning the house. The thoughts wouldn't stop coming today, so I hope I can put them down in writing.
This blog was meant to be full of cheer and laughter, but my apologies that it has become a little more serious. Saying that, Michael did something really funny last night - I don’t think I can share it publicly but if you want a good laugh, let me know and I can share it privately with you. It had to do with Jupiter and Saturn being directly under the moon last night. He added another planet and got us to take a photo. Anybody who knows Michael’s sense of humour will know exactly what he did.
Going back to those thoughts. It’s been an emotional week. After an extremely quick decision, and absolutely amazingly how it all came together, my nephew and niece moved to the UK to finish their schooling. It is mind boggling to know that they enrolled in a new school, organised repatriation flights etc, in 2 weeks, and they left on Friday night.
Katie and I didn’t get off on the best of footings when we first got to really know each other. She was 2 years old. I was living with my sister, Jax, in London at the time. I wanted to be that Aunty that was the most loved and wanted to do everything for her. She would always have this nasty look on her face and say “No! I DO IT!” Well, that’s Katie in a Nutshell, and she was instrumental in the planning and organising of all of this. Matt must have some of my genes in him - I think, as he goes with the flow.
It took a few years, but Kate did end up loving me.
I have always said I have 7 children. My nephews and nieces each have a part of my heart. I love them as my own, and it’s been hard to accept that 2 of them are so far away. On the other hand I am extremely happy for them and the new adventure that awaits. I know they are going to thrive beyond expectations.
Sweeping the floor this morning, got me thinking about Kate and Matt and what Malealea means to me. I was 4 when my family moved here. My parents took over a General Store. This is how I remember it. The shop would open every morning with the same song playing on the Radio “Good Morning, Good Morning, How are You? Good Morning, Good Morning, How do you do?” I’m not sure what station it was, or if it was an advert, but I can hear that song as clear as day.
The shop sold everything from Baked Beans to Coffins. At that time, I don’t think anybody in the village owned a car. There was a delivery book at one of the tills. If anybody bought anything that they could not carry - mielie meal, timber, etc, they would fill in their name, the name of their drop off point and at the end of the day, my Dad would load the goods into our old decrepit LandCruiser, and I would never miss an opportunity to go on “A Delivery” with him. The goods would be delivered, in good faith, on the side of the road, as near as possible to the persons house for them to collect.
My absolute favourite part of any given day, besides the Deliveries, was to do a stock take, especially counting the Mielie Meal bags. I don’t know how helpful I was, I remember my best friend (Ntofela), and I would climb up and down those bags and jump from one pile to another. We would be covered in white dust from head to toe afterwards.
Ntofela was my best friend. Her granny, Mme Maphea, was my nanny. She moved with us from Mount Moroosi, a town in the South of Lesotho (where I spent my first 4 years). We spent every moment together. I would eat lunch with her - mostly Pappa, Moroho and Walky Talkies. These are Chicken heads and feet, I only ate the Walkies, I don’t think I ever tried a Talkie. We would spend hours making pretend houses. The walls (only about 3 layers high) were rocks lying around, and we would raid rubbish bins for old tins, and make those our crockery and groceries. I have been seeing many of these similar houses on our walks recently, and seeing them melts my heart. With schools having not yet reopened in Lesotho, it is wonderful to see the children getting back to playing like we used to.
The other thing I remember is that we had these big dog kennels, I think they were made of a kind of prefab. We would sweep them out and use them as houses as well. I remember her teaching me to write……..with a permanent marker………on a chest of drawers. OOOPS, I don’t think that went down very well. There was a plantation at the bottom of our property that we spent hours playing in amongst the trees. I’m going to talk about this in more detail in a later blog.
In 1988, I went to boarding school in South Africa. A lot changed during this time. I was only 5, Thabo’s age now. I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for my parents at the time. I have found myself taking a double look at him, and his little hands, his baby teeth, and thinking how my heart would break to send him away. Boarding school was the only way at that time, and I wasn’t alone. My big sister was in the Senior Hostel. She was in Standard 7, Grade 9. I know the first night I cried that whole hostel awake, but I would not change it for anything. The independence, the friendships, the playing. The playing was something children today will never know. We were a family in the hostel. This is a chapter of my life I think my hostel friends and I could write a whole book about.
The only thing I would change if I could wave a magic wand, is Apartheid. As I said I was fluent in Sesotho. My best friend was Mosotho. This was still the Apartheid Era, and when I got to boarding school, there were no Sesotho speaking girls. The cleaning staff would speak to me in Sesotho, and would laugh when I talked to them. I was an extremely sensitive child (although Michael will tell you that not much has changed into adulthood, LOL), and although they would laugh out of endearment, I took great offence. I remember engaging less and less with my Basotho friends, and refused to speak Sesotho any more, so much so that I don’t think I was very nice to be around any more. Round about the same time, Maphea passed away - my first real loss. She was my second Mother… and this meant that Ntofela left Malealea. My life at Malealea was starting to change, and I considered my life at boarding school to be more real. The first Sesotho speaking girls came to boarding school in 1994. I was in Standard 5, Grade 7, but by then I had not spoken Sesotho for a few years, and the language was lost to me.
The lodge started developing in the early 90’s. This also contributed to a huge change in my life. I no longer had my own bedroom. Along with the development of the lodge, came added pressures and stresses within the family. There were no more weekend braai’s, no more stress free family getaways. If we did go away together, my Dad would never relax, with the lodge at the back of his mind, and often the trips would be cut short because of some issue relating to the generator or water pumps. I won’t go into more detail here, but I believe my parents sacrificed everything for the lodge to come into existence. The income from the lodge provided my siblings and I with so many opportunities, but sadly, I believe it broke our family.
The shop on it’s own provided an opportunity only for the few staff members working in with no real room for any growth. The lodge, on the other hand, as it grew, brought in hundreds of tourists from all over the world, providing the valley with hundreds of direct and indirect incomes and opportunities.
I think, deep down, as grateful as I am for the lodge and what it has offered, I resented it for a very long time. When I finished university, I told myself I would never go back to the lodge. Michael and I went to the UK when I finished Varsity, and I don’t really know what I thought, but maybe that I would find a life there. I took a trip back to Lesotho on my own, in July 2006. I will never forget that feeling of driving over the Gates of Paradise towards the lodge. I fully understood at that moment what the expression “Home is where the heart is,” meant. I felt it with every fibre of my being, and in that moment I knew I was home. Lodge, or no lodge, Malealea was home, and it was where I belonged.
Thankfully Michael followed a few months later, and the rest is history…. well… kind of.
My parents made way for us to work at the lodge full time, and this also meant that they could start easing off. We settled into our duties with ease. I think, for me, having grown up in the lodge wether I liked it or not, the role came naturally, and I started looking at the lodge in a whole different light. I was really happy. Gemma was born the following year, and as quickly as I had settled in to working, I was forced to stop. She needed my attention 24/7, and my role changed from Lodge Manager to full time nurse. I see her coming into our lives as a wonderful blessing. I know that running a lodge together as a couple, full time, can have it’s extreme challenges. With me having had to look after Gemma full time, it gave Michael and I our space, and brought about a new way of running the Family Business. He did the Business, and I did the Family.
So…. going to back to what Malealea means to me. As we continue to sit with an empty lodge, we believe the business side will pick up again when we decide it’s safe to open our doors. The beauty, the community, the adventure is what draws people to Malealea. A friend of ours said to us once, in the height of a very difficult time - Malealea is bigger than you, and I believe that to be entirely true.
Even though two of our family members have left our shores, the memories and experiences that Malealea has offered our family in it’s entirety is incomprehensible. Malealea has seen 3 family weddings, 36 Christmas and New Years parties, get togethers, birthday parties, and sadly 2 scatterings of ashes.
The cousins physical ages range from 2 to 17, but when they are all at Malealea together, there is no age difference. It brings the child out in everyone.
The closing of the lodge has given me so much time to reflect, to walk around freely without worrying about being in a guest’s space, and most importantly to heal my childhood wounds. Life is as it is meant to be. A lot didn’t make sense at the time, or still doesn’t make sense, but all roads lead to where they are meant to take us.
Thank you to the Lefielo that took me on a somewhat higgeldy piggeldy, but yet magical ride down memory lane this afternoon.