My first weekend

On Saturday I didn’t have any plans so I decided to explore the city on foot. First stop, the infamous gym. As I took the tour, I was proudly informed that the king of Lesotho (His Royal Majesty King Letsie III) regularly exercises there. I can believe it. In terms of size and quality, imagine a two-story, fully stocked Gold’s Gym, then add in indoor and outdoor pools, interior and exterior basketball courts, squash and tennis courts, sauna and sweat bath, and a clubhouse with a range of amenities from a top flight restaurant to conference space for groups of 150+. Pretty swank, and by far the nicest facility of any kind I have yet seen in the country. I do not know how much chance I will have to use it, but with a monthly membership fee of $20 (US), I am hoping to find some opportunity. After hearing the entire pitch and narrowly avoiding the hard sell (health clubs are the same the world over), I wandered off to see Maseru’s central strip, the Kingsway.

As you walk along the Kingsway, taxis and vans pass by, honking incessantly. The taxis (4+1s, so called because they seat four plus the driver) and the vans (called conbis(sp?)) travel on preset routes, picking up and dropping people off as they go. I’m not sure how you divine where the taxis are going, but the vans all have a kid in the back whose primary responsibility apparently is to lean out the window and shout the destination of the van, holler at girls (as well as the odd white guy), and generally add to the noise pollution of the place. I preferred to walk today, but I’m looking forward to trying one in the future.

At one point I joined a large crowd in front of a music shop. A promoter had set up a tent and a duo was performing. The music was good, a nice hip-hop beat with Lesotho inflections and lyrics in Sesotho (the local Bantu-language). What caught me off guard was that the duo was a pair of albinos. The three of us were the only white faces in the crowd, and at one point I got a nod from the performers, a gesture I chose to interpret as one of solidarity but which, based upon the crowd’s response, may have been more in line with “Hey, look at the white guy!” I eventually wandered on, but when I passed by again about an hour and a half later they were still going strong, the crowd continually replenished by a steady stream of people walking the Kingsway.

On Sunday, my first attempt to attend church ended in a qualified failure. With the church address dutifully copied from the Internet, I got into the taxi feeling relatively confident. My cabbie, upon hearing that I was going to the Mormon church, smiling said that he knew it well. Success! Five minutes later I found myself in front of the Maseru cathedral. It turns out that 1) the Catholic Church is referred to locally as the Roman Church and that 2) the difference between Rs and Ms in Sesotho may not be as clearly defined as it is in English. Mormon/Roman – five minutes, some wild hand gesticulations and a few terse conversations with the dispatcher in Sesotho and we still never got it completely figured out.

It’s okay, I’ve got the address, right? Wrong. While we knew from the address that the church was in the same general neighborhood as the cathedral, that was about it. Property numbering in Maseru is only sequential on certain streets – other areas are more haphazard. After ten minutes of fruitlessly circling the cathedral district I had pity on my cabbie, bid him goodbye, and struck out to find the church on foot. After wandering for another thirty minutes and bothering a series of good-natured but ultimately unhelpful passersbys, I threw in the towel. At just that moment the cathedral bells rang out the start of Mass, and I thought to myself that some church is better none. It was only after getting safely ensconced in the middle of a pew that was at about 120% of holding capacity that I realized I was in the Sesotho Mass, not the English Mass.

What can I say about the service? The Lord’s Prayer sounds the same and has the same cadence in any language. The cathedral is a beautiful example of colonial construction (wood with a hewn stone façade). The preacher gave a lively sermon that had the congregation rolling with laughter and employed a variety of hand motions that had me snickering at points, lack of comprehension aside. The choir was amazing, and the lady sitting next to me was kind enough to share a hymnal so I was able to sing the congregation numbers. The only lyrics I explicitly understood were “Hosanna” and “Glory in Exelcius Deo,” but I think I got the gist. The place was packed. Chatting with a deacon afterwards, it turns out that what I attended was the second of three Masses they would do in the day, and all of them would be to overflowing houses. Lesotho is ~40% Roman Catholic, and it struck me as a very vibrant, friendly, faithful community. Hopefully I’ll have better luck finding the Mormon services next week, but one of our drivers has invited me to attend his Pentecostal service should I fail, and that is not an entirely unappealing Plan B.