Some Forgotten Basics

So I got a call from Mr. and Mrs. Hinkle the other day, and realized that I hadn't gotten around to a couple of the basics that people might be curious about.

Food.

The staple food here is papa. You can probably guess from the term 'staple' that everybody eats it. Papa is a finely ground maize meal, combined with hot water and stirred to a consistency of stiff mashed potatoes. It is the only food not salted as if iodine deficiency were being combated. When asked what the top three reasons are that the Basotho love papa, the typical response is, "It's cheap."

Moroho is greens. Indiscriminate leafy greens. Often it is cabbage, some onion and some carrot thrown in, cooked in equally liberal amounts of sunflower oil and sodium.

Pumpkin is squash, mashed.

Nama is meat. Basotho love meat. Chicken, beef, mutton, goat. The species is unimportant.

Lesheleshele is a gelatinous Cream of Wheat that is churched up with copious amounts of butter and sugar.

These are the five major food groups of the Basotho.

Clothes.

Generally people are dressed in clean, if sometimes tattered, western style clothes. Some older women wear seshweshwes, which are the traditional dresses. Heardboys wear gumboots, a blanket and a beanie (worn like my Uncle Flick, which is to say pulled lightly over the crown of the head with a large dollop of hat left swinging about at will).

Marriage Proposal: The most common of occurrences.

So a couple days ago I was in an establishment that vended adult beverages. Whilst browsing the inventory a proprietress approached me and inquired into my national origin and time in Lesotho. I courteously informed her that I was from America, in the Peace Corps and would be teaching in Lesotho for two years.

"You have wife in America?"
"No."
"You have girlfriend."
"No."

This was my fatal mistake. Without pause, "I will be your girlfriend."
"No."
"I mean friend. I be friend. We talk. You take me America."
"Nope."

The conversation turned back to her immanent enrollment in nursing school and soon the encounter cordially ended. Eventually I chose a beverage and went to purchase it. A different proprietress handed me a phone and said, "Put your number in for her." Uh oh. I had just purchased a phone and don't lie well to strangers. "Um... I just bought a phone and don't know the number yet..." I crossed my fingers, said a prayer and looked up from the phone. "Oh okay, yo don't know your number yet." She finished processing the transaction and I briskly made my way across the plaza without looking back. Crisis averted...

All this to say that I've gotten much more handsome, charming and rich since I've been in Africa. Also, many Basotho are desperate to get to America, and Americans are clearly the easiest way to achieve that goal. Nearly everybody in the group has had a marriage proposal of one form or another, and everybody has experienced multiple iterations of the "How do I get to America?" question. For now it's flattering.