Dreams and revelations

Note: this is a continuation of a memoir that may never be finished, begun here, continuing here, the most recent preceding episode here. 

The eight-passenger prop plane touched down in Lesotho after dark on a cold, clear night. I saw nothing but stony hillsides lit by moonlight in a sequined blue-black sky. I was taken to a luxurious South African-owned hotel that could have been in Cleveland, given the whiteness of the clientele, the blackness of the staff, and the comfort of the room. The following morning I met Ntate Sam, the US Embassy driver who would take me to the university, and we stepped out of the hotel into an early spring morning in another world. 

Yellow dust billowed from feet and wheels on streets guttered with torn plastic bags. Great hills of sandstone the color of butter rose quietly behind the mayhem, dotted with plants I knew from Mexico--yucca, prickly pear cactus, century plants, acacia trees. Small cars darted aggressively between pedestrians and goats, diesel fumes mixed with mutton-smoke from improvised grills, minibus taxis vibrated with bass notes of hip-hop and Whitney Houston. Luscious-hipped women in colorful head-scarves shouted to each other and carried loads of coal, sheaves of wood, or basins of vegetables on their heads. Wizened old men leaned on walking sticks guarding pyramids of cabbages. Skinny boys in rags and battered gum boots whistled, startling babies tightly strapped onto their mother’s backs. Every possible shade of brown and black skin with tones from red to gold gleamed in the morning sun, and everywhere a call and response arose, sounding to me like lama lulu ROO me. 

“Le-SOO-too,” Ntate Sam pronounced each syllable slowly for the newly arrived white woman as we stood still in front of the hotel, “is the country. A single person is a Mo-SOO-too, and more than one person are Ba-SOO-too. The language is Se-SOO-too.” I grabbed a notebook from my bag, and he smiled. He enjoyed introducing people to his country. “The greeting is Lumela, and you greet people by saying that you see how you are related to them. A man is Ntate, father; a woman is M’me, mother; a young man or a boy is Abuti, brother, and a young woman or a girl is Ausi, sister. What matters is that you say you are in relationship to them. If you leave out the word for your relationship, it is a very great insult. It is like stripping someone naked. Never do that.” Before I could write it all down, an apparition galloped out of a dream and thundered past us. A muscular chestnut horse bore a regal-looking man wearing a Stetson hat, Lucchese cowboy boots, and two magnificent red-and-black blankets joined at his shoulders. Ntate Sam bowed toward the man’s back and whispered, “One of the leaders of the BCP,” as the horseman left us in his dust. Then taking my hand, much as he might take a child’s, Ntate Sam led me safely across the honking sea to the white van in which he would drive me to the University.  

During the hourlong drive I gaped at a wide blue sky untroubled by clouds, cinderblock houses with corrugated tin roofs topped by old tires, dusty fields where hungry sheep searched mostly in vain for grass, and far up in the hills, an occasional river of white sheep, a round house with thatched roof. In every direction, rivers of people and animals moved forward in blankets of every conceivable color and pattern. Lama lulu ROO me. Ntate Sam turned on the radio and blasted the van with harmonies of the Soweto Gospel Choir. 

At the University, Ntate Sam delivered me to what he called the Dutch Guest House and said Ntate Buncombe would come for me at lunch time, “and he will tell you everything, he will orientate you haholo, too much,” he laughed. 

Curious, I inspected the tidy sitting room with wood stove (no wood) and small dining table (no food), a bedroom with a double bed covered neatly in ironed sheets and a pile of blankets, a sparkling bathroom smelling of soap and clorox. I turned on the tap. Brownish water sputtered out and first a sucking noise, then a roar, and the hot water heater on the wall lit up and blazed. Last I checked out the perfectly-scrubbed kitchen with electric kettle and (I opened the drawers and cabinets) a few dishes, utensils, pots and pans. My new home. 

I stood outside the house and breathed quietly, my eyes delighted by buttery hillsides, pink hummocks of blossoming peach, shores of weeping willows coming into bright chartreuse leaf. For the first time in many years, I didn’t have to do anything. I had, in that moment, no papers to grade, no lectures to deliver, no committee to meet, no promises to keep. There was no one to impress, instruct, listen to, or negotiate with. I heard a rooster crow up on a yellow hillside, and in the distance, barking dogs and the music of children’s voices, laughing, lama lulu ROO me. It was 11 a.m. on August 19, 1992, and I was perfectly happy. My luck had changed.