As my time here rapidly comes to a close, I often find myself reflecting on what makes Lesotho Lesotho, a place that I love yet am ready to leave and sometimes feel real sick of. Here's some bits I came up with.
1) BLANKETS are a super important part of Basotho culture and lifestyle. Bo-me wear a patterned blanket around their waists pretty much all the time (never knew how cold my bum really was in the winter till I started covering it) and pin a patterned Basotho blanket around their shoulders in the middle and bo-ntate (men) pin them around their shoulders sideways. This is true regardless of weather. Each of the ten districts in Lesotho also has it's own colors for blankets, and there is a significance and specific name for every pattern.
2) PAINTING fingernails is pretty common for boys to do here (with markers too if no polish is around). It's also not an out of place site to see (particularly young) boys to wear large floppy flowery or sequined hats, with none of the same gay/queer associations that we make with this in the states. Lesotho is still terribly homophobic, but there aren't quite the same stupid associations with color/outwear.
3) SiNGING is a thing, in a big way. I've written about this before, but it's one of the things that I always come back to when I think about what makes Lesotho special. People sing everywhere, all the time, freely and loudly and beautifully.People sing to themselves as they walk down the street and regularly burst out in song together. Songs organize life here: Each day at school begins with an assembly, and the end of every assembly is marked with a hymn. Nearly every meeting at my school begins and ends with a prayer and a song. I've never been around so many people who all sing so well and un-selfconsciously. Sometimes I just close my eyes and listen to it, leaning into it's warmth like a hug.
4) PASSIVENESS and passive aggression is a really common way for people to communicate/not communicate their frustrations. Most of the time, it's not a very aggressive culture, and I think this trait comes from a great want to avoid any type of conflict. Rare is the Masotho who will just say what they mean and mean what they say. People will point the way to a place they aren't entirely sure the location of just to avoid the disappointment they expect you'll feel if they told you they honestly didn't know the way. One of the schools for the GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) Camp that I just co-organized ended up dropping out at the last minute because the principal of that school lost all the papers I had given her because her sister died on the way we met, and then systematically avoided my calls for over a month because she didn't want to just tell me what happened, and "didn't want to disappoint me". Imagine our mutual dismay the day I showed up. Probably one of my least favorite things about Basotho culture.
5) AFFECTION is very welcome and common and visible between people of the same gender (obviously one of my most favorite things)
Women hug and kiss and lean on each other and men often walk down the street holding hands (again, with none of the same assumptions about sexuality as in the states). Between men and women though, PDA is majorly frowned upon, and I've never seen a man and woman do anything
beyond hold hands (and that's only in towns/cities).
