... and again in Clarens

Hello there,

I am again in Clarens, RSA easily to see, because I can enter the internet and even the blogger site :-)

The last three days were great, finally we went "local". We stayed in the "first and only Basotho owned backpackers" in the village of Ha Machefo (Ha always means "place of" and then follows the name of some Chief or headman) in Lesotho. The backpackers is not a real backpackers witg dorms, but the three brothers rent out a real Basotho hut. No running water, no electricity... living like the rural Basotho, that is what we did. Owned by three brothers, Mamohase (name of their mum and of the hostel) is a community based concept - development out of own initiative without any government help. This made the place the more interesting for me.

Staying three days there we gathered around 12 small interviews by which we were guided by one of the three brothers. They helped us with the translation, because the people all speak Sesotho and only when they went to Highschool,they know some English. These interviews helped me a lot in trying to find out how the people lived, because we visited them in their houses/huts and asked about the composition of household, their knowledge on the MDTP and their relation to RSA.

What one can extracts, without extensively studying my notes again is the ambivalence between being proud of the "Basotho way", meaning being able to live from the land (that is what they claim but which is doubtable because there was at least one of the family members living in RSA so far) and their thinking that "everything" is better in RSA because there are jobs (thus the dependence on wage labour). I am looking forward to going back to Ha Machefo again to speak more to the people. Due to the focus on the MDTP and the focus of our translator (yes, he is influencing the data, of course) we talked to lots of people that I think were fairly "rich" (in rural Basotho terms) and had some post in one of the endless committees. When going back at the beginning of February I want to do sort of a household survey and then do more extensive interviews with a representative portion of these households. Slowly slowly I am dropping the idea of research both sides of the border, from the RSA side there will only be case studies involved I guess. And what I want to do more is just hanging out and observing a bit more. Getting the grip on it.

The planning for the next days here in Clarens is to go local for some short interviews in the Phutabidshaba area (I hope this is spelt right, town in the QwaQwa homelands area). Thus I will be for a bit online at least until Sunday.

What is very clearly observable, having crossed the border now several times already is the difference in population density. In Lesotho, you see villages everywhere, while in South Africa you can drive and drive and only see farmland....