by Will McGrath
I know all the staff now, heading toward the end of my first season in Mokhotlong: ‘M’e Makatleho is a jovial chit-chatter; Ntate Motlatsi will gladly discuss the merits and demerits of a footballer like Cristiano Ronaldo. But I am especially drawn to Limpho. There is something jarring about seeing her behind the counter, against a gory backdrop of hocks and shanks, steaming coils of intestine, a metal tray of purple-pink chicken hearts arrayed like a row of penis tips, when Limpho looks so much more like a librarian.
Limpho the hog-butchering librarian skips behind the counter as she works, sometimes singing, always smiling. The rest of the staff loves her too, perpetually floating jokey chastisements or lighthearted flirtations her way. I talk with Limpho when I can, at least as much as my weak Sesotho and her weak English allow, but Limpho’s fan club is legion and everyone must wait their turn.
Ellen is telling me about her research as we stroll through town. She had been out at one of the clinics the previous day, where she works closely with the nursing staff. Often she observes clinical practices and talks with the nurses about how HIV is treated in these far rural zones, but occasionally Ellen herself is pressed into duty if the clinic is especially understaffed—all hands on deck.
Yesterday a man came in toward closing time, Ellen says, brought his wife and small child with him. He was nervous and pacing, clearly uncomfortable. The wife was unsure what they were doing there. She didn’t understand that the man had come for an ART appointment—antiretroviral therapy—and had brought them along as a way of disclosing his HIV-positive status to them. He had been doing this for months now, coming to the clinic in secret, sneaking around to take his meds, some strange form of infidelity.
Ellen and I duck into Thia-La-La for a moment, dodging the sun, and wave to Limpho as we enter. She heads for the deep fryer, then places a bottle of vinegar on the counter before I can ask. While we wait for the chips to fry, Ellen continues her story.
Out at the clinic, the woman was beginning to comprehend her husband’s revelation. She and the child entered an exam room to be tested by the HIV counselor, a government-paid specialist who was trying to head home for the day. The test showed they were both positive.
Later, a nurse went to check on the mother and child and discovered that the HIV counselor had administered the test and then left them in the exam room, had not in fact counseled them on anything—what this diagnosis meant, what their treatment would look like, how their daily routines would alter—ache! it was closing time, after all. The mother and child didn’t even realize they had been abandoned, didn’t know they were owed an explanation, had sat there waiting patiently for someone who had clocked out and left.
The nurse talked them through their situation, tried to explain how things were about to change. Then, as the mother and child exited the exam room, they found that the husband too had slipped out, unable to bear the scene. The clinic was empty.
Sometimes I visit the butchery in the late afternoon, once the lunch rush is finished. Seating at Thia-La-La consists of four small communal tables with wooden benches, where you sit shoulder to shoulder with wind-blasted shepherds or crumpled grandmothers or the men who work on power lines. Sometimes you sit beside the town’s lone madman: eyes wild, beard matted, clothed in plastic bags. These tables are intended to seat two on each side, but—as with many things in Lesotho—maximum capacity is treated as a loose guideline or perhaps a dare.
I am reading as I eat my meal, a practice that initially raised eyebrows—this public reading—but which has come to be accepted as the slightly cracked behavior of a harmless knucklehead. I pull from the cold glass of a Fanta bottle. I crunch chips well crisped and doused in paprika and vinegar. I leave greasy fingerprints on the pages of my book. Limpho is behind the counter, humming to herself as she gaily shears off hunks of gristled mutton.
Many afternoons pass like this, surrendered to deep comfort.
It happens quickly.
Ellen and I have been in South Africa for several weeks, rambling through Bloemfontein and Cape Town. Then, shortly after returning to Mokhotlong, I head into the butchery to say hello and find Limpho in disturbing health.
While she has always been thin, I am shocked to see her suddenly gaunt. She must have been steadily losing weight for some time, but the change is stark after a long absence. And while Limpho frequently wears a woolen winter hat, as many Basotho do even in warm weather, she has now taken to wearing layers of heavy sweaters under her blood-spattered apron.
Soon Limpho is not gaunt but wasted, her health bending exponentially in the wrong direction. When I come in the following week, she can barely walk across the room, her face drawn, her eyes absent their color.
I say hello and she gives me a wan smile and heads to the back room.
And then Limpho is gone, taken off to the hospital in the interior district of Thaba-Tseka.
“Closer to her village,” Motlatsi tells me. “She will return when she is healthy.”
Not long after this, Motlatsi himself takes a new job forty-five minutes away, through the mountains, in the town of Mapholaneng. New employees come to Thia-La-La, unfamiliar faces. Occasionally I ask them if Limpho is getting any better, but the new staff don’t know who she is.
One day I come into the butchery to discover that a grand leap in culinary technology has occurred. Thia-La-La now features soft-serve ice cream, ex nihilo, non-dairy manna delivered from the heavens. The clientele is abuzz but hesitant. The owner of the butchery has made a wild investment in the machine; he has heard they sell this soft-serve in Maseru, in the capital city, and he intends to revolutionize the palates of the deep countryside. But other butchery-goers are wary, the crumpled grandmothers and the men who work on power lines looking cockeyed at the strange churning contraption. The owner is struggling to recoup his money, but I take the cause on as my own, a personal mission to underwrite the machine four maloti at a time.
I am in ordering soft-serve one afternoon when I notice that Motlatsi is back from Mapholaneng, a happy surprise. He has come into town for the day to cover someone’s shift. As he hands me my chocolate-vanilla swirl, he says without preface: “She is gone.”
I don’t understand him properly at first.
“She is home?” I say. “She has gone home from the hospital?” Motlatsi nods his head.
“That’s great. Is she coming back to work here?”
Motlatsi looks confused. Then he repeats it. “She is gone.”
I stare dumbly, then walk home with my ice cream melting in the sun.
This is the last thing Limpho says to me.
It is Friday and we are walking across town for dinner, Ellen and Nthabeleng and I. In Mokhotlong, there is nothing more beautiful than this: walking leisurely in the early evening, through that amber glaze, passing men and women on the road, sometimes fellow teachers, schoolchildren too—all of us with the shared knowledge that the working week is done. People laugh with their neighbors, line-drying laundry gusts in the darkening air, kids race handmade toy cars down the hill, men drink along the road. Every third person stops to talk with Nthabeleng, since she is the boss in town and people must show obeisance. Ellen chases after some children she knows and they scream with delight.
Across the gorge, we can see dark torrents of rain moving inexorably toward us. The setting sun lights up the storm clouds with gaudy, spectacular color. Rainbows span the entire breadth of town, and up ahead that familiar sign: Kena ka khotso.
A white pickup speeds past us, then stops in the road.
It reverses to where we are walking. An arm is beckoning to me.
I walk over to the window. It is two men from the butchery, with Limpho between them. She leans over and puts her hand on the window. “I am leaving,” she says. “I am going to the hospital.” The two men look straight ahead.
Limpho—her name means gifts.
“You’re sick?” I ask, as if I do not know.
“I want to say goodbye.”
; “I’m sure I’ll see you again soon,” I tell her. What else could I say?
Limpho smiles and does not reply. The truck heads off for Thaba-Tseka.
II.
SUMMER
WE EAT, WE DRINK, WE DANCE
We went with Nthabeleng out to Matsoaing, the village where she grew up, a cluster of rondavels settled at the base of a valley. A flat shallow river ran along the valley floor and women were drying blankets on the rocks. We had come to honor the fifth anniversary of her father’s death.
I sat with the men in a loose circle and we passed around a large cup of homebrewed joala, each taking a few sips and then sending it along. The women were beside us, stoking the cookfire, where a heavy black cauldron of sheep viscera bubbled; occasionally they would step into the circle and sip joala too. Neighbors wandered by, stopped to talk for a moment, sipped the joala, then moved along to other business or stayed and joined the circle. The cookfire smoldered and washed over us like a beekeeper’s calming smoke; we felt happy and stoned in the summer breeze.
When the viscera were done cooking, the women ladled stew into a red plastic washbasin, and this too was passed around the circle. The cooking of the sheep would come later—this was the afternoon snack. We plucked out small bites of intestine, lung, trachea, heart, tripe, and reserved the liver for the women. When the pieces were gone, we passed the basin again and sipped broth: rich and fatty and well seasoned. The afternoon drifted along like this in gorgeous fashion. Our only responsibility was to sit together and share some food and drink.
Years before, I had worked at a homeless shelter in Phoenix, Arizona. The man who ran the place was a Catholic priest, and each morning he would open up the parking lot of the building and celebrate mass outside. Some benches were arranged under a shade tent and we would gather there, staff members like me, or suburban volunteers, or people who had slept outside—junkies coming off hard nights, old women who talked to themselves, people who just wanted to get out of the sun for a while. When it was time for Communion, the priest would bless a tortilla and pass it around the group on a plate; when it reached you, you tore off a small piece if you wanted, then passed it along to the next person. It was hard not to notice the way the food bound us—addicts and priest and affluent volunteers and drifting college grad—hard not to be aware of the way we had all just shared the same substance.
In Matsoaing, the warm afternoon breeze swept over us. A dog lay comatose in the shade by the cookfire. I watched the cups pass around the circle, watched the celebration build gradually, while people told stories about Nthabeleng’s father.
It was a bridge.
PARTY CRASHING, OR THE KINGDOM OF LESOTHO
As I walk into the Math and Science staff room, there is a serious argument underway. Several teachers are present—some prepping for their next class, some sleeping, some eating, some listening in—but it is Ntate Pheko and Ntate Linkoe, from the Scrabble club, who are at philosophical loggerheads. Both men are in their mid-twenties, both are charming and funny, and both would probably rather be doing anything other than teaching at this rural high school.
I am quickly appealed to as an impartial arbiter. The conversation transitions from Sesotho into English.
Linkoe addresses me first. “Ntate Moshoeshoe, this man—hei!—he is so stubborn. He is saying that when we have a party for teachers here, it is improper to invite outside guests to that party.”
“Yes, there should be no outside guests,” Pheko breaks in.
“But this man!” Linkoe shouts in exasperation. “I am saying, when outside people are having a party, then even Ntate Pheko wants to be invited. But when the teachers are hosting a party, then he does not want the outside guests to come.”
I nod at the equitable nature of Linkoe’s point.
“It is somehow hypocritical,” he says, closing his argument.
I nod again.
Now Pheko addresses me. “But you see, Ntate Moshoeshoe, this man is not telling you all that has happened previously.”
I ask what has happened previously.
“It was too much! At the last party held by the teachers, two outside guests arrived. And one of these outside guests pointed his revolver at a teacher.”
I indicate that this does seem relevant as well.
Another teacher helps me piece together what happened at the last staff party. These two outside men, who were brought as guests, partook heavily from the teachers’ stash of alcohol. As the party continued, with bottles of beer and bowls of trail mix moving in circles through the room, the outside guests’ overconsumption came to be seen as a violation of etiquette. Eventually one teacher—running on adrenaline fumes and homebrew—confronted the outside guests, claiming they were stealing beer and stowing it in their backpacks.
A demand from the crowd was put forth to see the interior of the backpacks. One outside guest opened his backpack, removed a pistol, pressed it up against the bridge of the teacher’s nose, and informed him that he was now holding in his hand the total contents of the backpack.
None of the teachers thought it prudent to mention that there were several stolen quarts of beer in view.
So while I consider the facts before me, understanding that Linkoe has staked claim to a moralistic perspective—Invite Unto Others As You So Wish To Be Invited—I also understand Pheko’s utilitarian perspective, which argues that the least number of teachers should be shot in the face.
I tell them I can see both positions clearly and that both positions have merit. But before I can deliver my verdict, Pheko interrupts:
“Ntate Moshoeshoe, there is one last reason for not inviting the outside guests.”
Pheko is an excellent storyteller—he has a great yarn about the time he was repeatedly almost struck by lightning while heading out to sleep with a woman in another village—and he knows his way around a pregnant pause. He is snickering now as he considers how to word his next remark. A few of the other teachers are smirking now too, familiar with the story he’s about to tell. Even Linkoe, whose position seems to have been reasonably rebutted by the Let’s Not Get Shot counterargument, is suppressing a smile.
“Kannete, Ntate Moshoeshoe, kannete. You see, one of the female teachers at the party became very interested in the other outside guest, the man without the pistol.”
Muffled laughter around the staff room.
“Yes, she became too interested in that man.”
Pheko is in full raconteur mode now, pacing around the room.
“And she gave that man a gift.”
He is unsuccessfully trying to retain a dignified and lawyerly tone.
“But it was not a gift given to the teachers. She gave that gift only to the outside guest.”
Open laughter now.
“And I am asking, is it right then, is it proper, to give a gift to the outside guest alone and not to the fellow teachers? The ones for whom the party existed in the first place?”
My deskmate, ‘M’e Poho—my vallie and great partner in staff room hijinks—addresses me calmly: “Ntate Moshoeshoe, do you want to know what that gift was?”
But Pheko will not be beaten to his own punch line. “She gave him Lesotho!” he yells, and the staff room collectively loses it. One of the younger female teachers pulls her sweater over her face, blushing madly at such loose talk. Poho is hooting with joy and shaking me by the arm.
“She gave that man Lesotho!” Pheko yells again, in case he has not yet made clear this most excellent Sesotho double entendre.
“You know what Lesotho is?” Poho asks me. “Lesotho is where we all come from!”
“Lesotho,” Pheko repeats, “the place that men love so dearly!”
‘M’e Buang chimes in with feigned earnestness: “You know, Ntate Moshoeshoe, this Lesotho—it is a very small place.”
“Yes,” ‘M’e Kananelo says, “Lesotho is a place where the road goes between the bushes.”
“Ntate Moshoeshoe,” ‘M’e Mosa asks me, “did you know that
Lesotho is a land of so much water? Kannete, it is true!”
Even Linkoe joins in: “Yes, this Lesotho has a deep valley.”
To which Pheko adds: “Yes, deeeeeep, deep dongas in Lesotho.” “Such a beautiful garden, this Lesotho!” Poho calls out, still clasping me by the arm.
Throughout the day, my colleagues continue to drop pun after fantastically juvenile pun. They reel them off, then pace themselves—waiting for a moment when everyone seems to be finally hard at work again, or until just after a student has left the room—then goad each other into further improbable feats of innuendo brinksmanship. It is one of those lovely moments in which the best response is simply to lean back in your chair and bask in the oneness of humankind. I feel deeply honored that these teachers have recognized me as a fellow traveler along the lanes of the lowbrow, the alleyways of the absurd, the pathways of the perverse. And I am rather looking forward to the next teachers’ party.
A VISIT TO THE WHITEHOUSE
I am walking out toward the airport that doesn’t exist, pondering weighty topics like Cloudking. This is where I do my heaviest mental lifting, out here along the gorge, where the rock falls away into frigid river, where the blue opens up like a hymnal. The land is green and blooming, full summer coming on fast, and this brilliant cloudless day reminds me of the time I briefly lost my mind.
I lost it because there were no more clouds. They were gone—vanished, banished, nebula non grata—weeks like this. The eye groped as the perfect blue flattened into mathematical abstraction. Azure unending.
When had I last seen a cloud, anyway? I began to panic.