Three, two, one… go! Time to celebrate the noise of my new home. Everywhere there is conversation. While I still don’t understand much, I do understand some and that is thrilling. There are roosters and cow bells and bleeting sheep. There are screams and giggles of playing children and music blaring out car windows as they drive by. There is noise everywhere.
And then there was the storm. I’ve never before tried to sleep through thunder and the tumultuous noise of hail on a tin roof. But I’ve done it now. And pretty successfully. After taking quite a good number of pictures of the storm, I settled in to a candle lit dinner and some reading. I missed getting shots of the lightning itself, though getting the rainbow in the sunset was a special treat. Of course, there was the leak in the roof, but that was easily fixed with an appropriately placed bucket.
Another fun event of the week was Independence Day, celebrating October 4th, 1966 when King Moshoeshoe I succeeded in gaining independence from the British. After language classes in the morning where we practiced personal introductions, all the trainees went to a village celebration. We gathered with folks from the village, mostly our host mothers and siblings, and enjoyed the show. The mmes (mothers) sang and danced for us, an enthusiastic and very well acoustically pleasing presentation. A few groups of kids gave us traditional dances. They looked both very proud and very self conscious. Speaking of self conscious- we volunteers were also asked to present a song. After individually introducing ourselves in Sesotho, we sang to the assembled village. A fellow male volunteer and I volunteered the previous day to lead the endeavor, so we stood in front and gave it our best shot. Following our intro, the whole group of us sang Ain’t No Mountain High with some weak but well meaning choreography added in the background. Despite our awkwardness, we apparently did so well that the mmes demanded another song. Unprepared for an encore, we hastily pulled together Lean on Me, complete with arm linking and swaying. Fortunately, cheesy musical numbers seem to go over very well here. Our impromptu choir hold nothing against the locals, who all have incredible vocal talents. Singing the national anthem with them every morning makes us all very aware of the deep love of singing these people have.
The sounds of Lesotho are varied and almost never stilled. They are grating and loud but also beautiful. They represent life in all its aspects, loud and refusing to be silent.
Independence Day group shot
Sunset under storm clouds
Mountain Tales 