Basotho Blankets

It's been a quiet few days here in mountain kingdom. Clinic is getting routine, though it's still amazing to be a legit "ngaka" (doctor), unless an American MD is precepting and then you're just a med student again. Today I went on an outreach day, which was interesting for the 1 patient I saw with a pleural effusion 2/2 TB but other than that I was mostly listening to people speak Sesotho while sweaty. And picking at my sunburn, which continues to be a major issue in my life.

So, today I wanted to share my passion for the Basotho blanket. First some background, from "The Blanket Wrap"
"Nowadays the Basotho tribal blanket (Seanamarena) is such a common sight in Lesotho, that tourists tend to assume that it was a local invention. However, its origins can be traced back to the European traders and missionaries as far back as the 1800s. The popularity and assimilation of the blankets by the Basotho people can be traced back to one single incident.

Sketch of King Moshoeshoe I by Eugène Casalis (1833)

A blanket was presented to the then King, King Moshoeshoe I in 1860 by a man by the name of Mr. Howel. The King was by all accounts quite taken with the blanket (“a handsome railway wrapper made of light blue pilot cloth, heavy and hairy”) and wore the blanket in preference to his then neglected traditional leopard skin karosses.

The blanket has become part of not only their everyday life but as a status symbol. To outsiders it became a mark of ethnicity and therefore a token of cultural identification. In fact Lesotho is the only nation south of the Sahara that illustrates the culture of an entire nation through such an individualistic item such as the tribal blanket." (http://maliba-lodge.com/blanketwrap/2010/lesotho-stories/the-history-of-the-basotho-traditional-blanket/)

MY favorite part of the blanket tradition is that babies are often carried in them. Our friend Lareto, who works at the clinic, graciously let me blanket one of her babies!