Sorry it’s been a bit since our last post. School became quite busy this week, and we were swamped. I (Sarah) will be writing from Nairobi, Kenya this week where I am attending a conference. For right now I’ll post this picture of these amazing storks that were in the trees right outside our hotel window this morning! More on Nairobi will come later.
What I wanted to write about today, is last weekend, which Jay and I spent at a Sesotho Language and Culture session in Morija, Lesotho, about 45 minutes Southwest of Maseru. Morija was the site of the first mission in Lesotho. Here is a picture of Jay standing on the porch of the Morija Guest House (a delightful stay, by the way!).
Morija was created in 1833 by French Protestant missionaries, who came at the bequest of the founder of Lesotho, Moshoeshoe (Moe-shway-shway) the first. Mosheoshoe realized that since he had fended off the Zulus AND the Xhosa AND the Boers AND the British to establish a nation, he now needed to establish ties with the outside world so that his nation would be strong. He was actually a very forward thinking kinda guy in that way -- willing to admit that he didn’t have all the knowledge and neither did his people, and anxious to gather knowledge from others. So anyway, he invited these missionaries, and they came and set up a mission right there in Morija. One of them, Cassalis, even came to be considered Moshoeshoe’s “foreign minister”.
While we did spend a lot of time learning Sesotho language during our weekend at Morija, we also had time to hike. Our first hike was up Thaba Bosiu, “the mountain that grows at night”. This is the mountain on top of which Moshoeshoe and his people established a village and staved off invasions. They basically rolled boulders down the hill to prevent the enemies from making it up. In this way, Moshoeshoe was actually defensive warrior and maybe even a passive resistor. He is famous for saying, “The only weapon is love.” The mountain itself was quite steep, and it was hard to imagine climbing it in warrior’s gear. At the top are the graves of Moshoeshoe 1, Moshoeshoe 2 (who died in 2006), and many other members of the royal family. Mosheoshoe the first had 150 wives, so you can imagine that there are a lot of graves up there!! There are also some wild horses who roam, which made for beautiful photographs. Here is a picture of the grave of Moshoeshoe the first as well as a picture of the mountain that inspired the Basotho hat (the mountain is viewable from atop Thaba Bosiu).
In addition to the hike up Thaba Bosiu, we also climbed right behind the Morijah guest house to see some dinosaur footprints. They were small, three pronged prints that didn’t look very impressive, but we’re told that they have actually been certified as coming from the Jurassic age and were preserved because the rocks in that area are sandstone, which keeps prints well. Apparently there are other prints elsewhere in the country, and paleontologists have even discovered a dinosaur that is called the Lesothosaurus! Who knew we were in such an active area for paleontology?
All-in-all, we had a lovely weekend full of learning, great people, good hiking, fresh air, and good food. We headed back to Maseru feeling rested, but rushed to prepare for the coming week. Then on Monday we got an extra day off when there was no water at school. An extra day to prep! It was just like a snowday, except we had no clue that it was coming at all! What a blessing!
Okay, that’s all for now. Next time: an update from Kenya. Stay tuned!!
