Friday is an administrative day at the clinic, so we were able to leave for our trip at 2pm, after lectures from the National TB program and one about epidemiology of HIV in Lesotho. (Did you know Lesotho has the shortest life expectancy in the world?!)
We drove Teresa's, a doctor at the clinic who is on vacation, car, which was thankfully an automatic. It was also a 4x4, which gave us a second stick to be confused about. Our drive was pretty uneventful, though we did end up driving the whole way in 4 wheel drive... There aren't that many major roads in Lesotho, so it's a pretty straight shot. We also found an African GPS in her glovebox which was pretty helpful. About 30% of the way out of Maseru, we started climbing up into the mountains on unpaved roads. And these roads are really unpaved, and pot holed, on windy mountain roads. I was really grateful that Ashish drove while I manned the stick (we used 2nd! and L! ) and took pictures out the windows. The views in the mountains were ridiculous, every time we wound around the view changed and somehow got more gorgeous. Having just seen The Hobbit, it really looked like The Shire, green, mountainous, wild with small huts dotting the landscape.
Lesotho is a really friendly place, and every time we passed anyone- construction workers, people walking the side of the road, shepherd boys, men on horseback, we would greet them with a shout and a honk. In one of these greetings we picked up 3 people hitch hiking their way to Semongkong, they were very nice and very quiet. We got to Semongkong around 6ish, 4 hours later- it was a slow and careful drive up the mountainside.
The Semongkong lodge is run by South Africans who decided they wanted to stay there forever. IT's a beautiful lodge, very Western and a bit posh too. We opted for the 145 rand a night dormitories, which was still really nice in the end, especially since we didn't have strangers to room with. We had dinner at the lodge restaurant, chatted with other guests...looked up and saw more stars than I'd ever seen before. I could really see the Milky way in all it's milkyness, and Orion's belt. Too bad my apps are sad here, or I could have Google sky mapped it. It was breath taking ... I did spend a while laying down and staring at the sky.
Saturday I got up bright and early for abseil/rappel training. There were only 3 guests doing it, and I was the only one who had rock climbed/rappelled before. We went 5 minutes from the lodge, and rappelled a small rock face (20 meters?) three times. Supposedly some 74 yo Dutch man did the abseil, and someone who was blind, and I have no idea how they did they training because every time you go down, you have to hike back up a pretty tucked away path that was not easy to scale.
After training, breakfast at the lodge where I met Ashish. After a quick meal we hopped on our horses and rode out to the falls. I think we rode for 30 minutes or so, on horses that were less tame than the ones that are used for rides in the US. There's a road, but not really a trail, so the horses can go where they want, and occasionally break into a trot or threaten to jump... When we got to the top of the falls, I met up with the abseil group, and Ashish met a guide to hike down to the bottom (he's not so keen on heights..) I had a great chat with a 19 yo local male Victor, about religion and HIV in Lesotho, and it was just so great to see how well educated he was, and kind of inspiring about hope for Lesotho's future.
I was the first to go down the abseil once it was ready for us- there was a staff person who went first to catch us at the bottom. The rope used for the falls was much heavier than the training, so while in training it's work to keep your speed slow, I actually found that I couldn't go as fast as I wanted to. They do a great job setting up the gear and I was really comfortable in my harness, so the hard part going over the edge wasn't quite as hard. The rope provided so much resistance that I didn't worry about falling over the edge- I really had to push and pull for every step, so it was very deliberate and controlled as I went over the edge. The rest is just bopping down the cliff face, stopping to take some pictures, stop and appreciate the awesome flowers/succulents that grow in the cliff face. As you get towards the bottom, you start getting caught in the water fall's spray (Semongkong means place of smoke, a reference to the spray of the falls- smoke ~ SeMOnKong) At the bottom the guy who was already there is standing in a bright orange rain suit, un straps you and gets out over really slippery wet rocks to John, the husband part of the team that owns the lodge. You then tromp over to a dry spot to watch everyone else come down.
From the bottom, I met up with Ashish, and we all hiked up the valley with John as out guide. The hike was beautiful, but rigorous, almost so much that it was hard to appreciate the view when you're staring at the ground to get your footing. Also, at altitude everything is just that much harder. We probably hiked up for an hour straight, lots of grabbing onto things with your hands - not much of it was spent standing upright. Also there were stinging nettles!!!! Which thankfully only sting for 10 minutes.. And I had banged my elbow bopping down on the rappel, so it hurt (and still does) to extend my left arm.
At the top, we got back on our horses, rode past the lodge and into town where we finally had some authentic Basotho food. Papa, sort of a plain, dryer polenta is the main stay of their cuisine and is accompanied by various cooked meats, vegs which are well seasoned to make up for the plain papa. We then hopped back on our horses, got back to the lodge and were told that our donkey pub crawl was right away!
The donkeys were much milder than the horses and much easier to ride (and easier on the backside) We rode into town with our guide Musa, and another Mahoa Josh, who was american, and lived in Italy working for the UN. It started out pretty embarrassing, riding donkeys while everyone who passed you was on horses, but a few beers into the crawl and everyone was really excited about the donkey riding. Our first pub was a pretty plain spot, not too happing yet, and all men. We didn't stay there too long. Second pub was better, friendlier, had a pool table which we watched but didn't play since there was a queue. Third pub was really a small tin shack where someone made sorghum beer in a plastic bucket, served in tobacco tins. Like, a liter at a time. It's pretty sour and unappealing, a little too thick and milky...but brews in 2 days to make 5 percent alcohol for 5 rand a giant cup, so it's cheap and easy alcohol in the community. We ended up buying a round for the room and tried pretty hard to avoid drinking very much of it. Our final pub was really fun, we had a few drinks and stayed and talked to our guide, our guide's high school teacher..random people. Finally we got back on our donkeys, who were wandering around a soccer field enclosed in really dangerous looking barbed wire and sauntered back to the lodge.
Naps and showers were a necessity, and I discovered I was super sun burned. It is terrible!!!! I under estimated my sun exposure and am paying for it dearly. We had plans to go into town for dinner with Musa to save a little money and increase our local experience, but a thunderstorm changed those plans. Instead we had another delicious meal at the lodge with Musa, Josh and our new South African friends. The highlight of the meal was definitely some really fantastic ostrich carpaccio, whom apparently live in South Africa.
The next morning we mostly took care of our room, sunburns, breakfasted again with our new friends and most importantly changed the flat tire people pointed out to us. Vans, our S. African friend, led that venture. And we were taught how to use the various gears in our 4x4 drive. The ride back was equally beautiful, some of the way in the rain, and we picked up another hitch hiker who was going to Maseru. When we got back to town we dropped him off, went to the mall where I got speakers (yay, this laptop's speakers don't work so this means I won't live in silence my last week here when Ashish is gone) and a Basotho blanket (I'll post about blankets later) We also stocked back up on groceries for the week.
We'd been getting some random texts from Basotho people we had met around all weekend, and we were home for just a few hours when the girl we met on the hike near home came to our cottage with her friend, and a woman who works at the clinic, Lerato, came over with her twin girls. This was a lot of visitors for what we thought would be a quiet afternoon in. We played some soccer, played with her twins, and ultimately ended up going out, back to the mall (which is kind of the only thing to do in town) to watch the Africa's Cup Soccer final at Spurs, a south african chain restaurant. The best part of this whole interaction was when we went to pick up Tahbiso, her baby daddy and sig other...she does not get along with his family, and sent me to his house to get him. When I came out with his sister who was going to help us find them, she apparently took her twin toddlers and ran out of the car to hide .. the sister got in the car and directed us to the bar where Tahbiso was. When he got in the car and saw her purse sitting there he knew something was up, and was pretty amused, but not surprised, that we had to circle around to find where she and the kids were hiding. One more stop to drop off the toddlers and then we were finally able to get to the soccer game. Nigeria won, over Burkina Faso, we dropped everyone off at their houses and then finally called it a day.
Today I saw patients by myself in clinic. I had my own room, with my own interpreter and just signed out my patients if I had any questions with a precepting doctor. But really, I was their doctor and that was awesome. I admitted one boy who was 12, but only weighed 16kg. I have never ever seen a skinnier person, eyes totally sunken, all bones on palpation. His temperature was below the capacity of the thermometer to detect and his last CD4 was 21 (2% of normal) 3 months ago. But for every sad patient, I had little girls in pink dresses, twins who were roly poly and lovely and a few babies who were just a few months away from their final HIV test that would declare them negative and discharged from the clinic. I discovered murmurs, and wrote prescriptions, ordered labs with an independence I have never had before. It was awesome, and the best part was my interpreter telling me it was a pleasure to work with me and that I did a great job with the patients! woooo! It's good tidings for the next 3 weeks.
This evening Ashish and I did P90x Yoga on our patio while the sun set around us. It was pretty much perfect. It's still pretty hard to believe we're in Africa!
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