Cows and Horses

Just got back from another weekend in the interior of Lesotho. If I thought last weekend was spectacular, this one was even better.

Our group set out for Maliba (mah-DEE-bah), a luxury lodge in the North of Lesotho described as the country’s “most exclusive hotel” by Lonely Planet (admittedly, one of the least exclusive guidebooks around). The lodge is located in the middle of nowhere, overlooking a picturesque valley so isolated that it gets no visitors other than the hotel guests.



The fancy folks at Maliba allow commoners like us to stay on their grounds, as long as we rent the less fancy river houses down by the water. Even those houses were pretty incredible, two-story thatched cottages with both a porch and a balcony overlooking flood-widened rivers, green mountains and herds of wild elands. We did self-catering instead of restaurant food, so I stuffed my face with good food (and semi-authentic marshmallows) for the weekend.



On Saturday, I went horseback riding again. (Aside: I decided some time ago that I will learn a number of manly, useful things that will make me cooler and more James Bond-like. These include: knowing how to shoot a gun, operating a manual transmission, surfing, etc. James Bond knows how to ride a horse, so it’s on the list too. Can’t pass up a chance to learn when it comes by.) My horse last weekend was pretty nice, but this time I got the luxury version – a large, glossy, espresso-colored horse called Josephine who followed my commands perfectly.



It was a good thing, too, since our trek involving some very steep switchbacks along cliffs and some trotting and cantering along said cliffs. A bit hair-raising at times but fantastic views of the famous “Three Waterfalls” at the end of the trek:



Whenever I visit new countries, I always think about their tourism sector and the way that tourism affects the development of the local economy. From my time spent in Africa, Lesotho strikes me as a country with great untapped potential for tourism. The scenery is spectacular, it’s safe, fairly cheap, and the local culture is interesting and accessible (think blankets, a language with clicks, horse-back riding). I think it would be a great candidate for backpacker-style “community-based tourism” (where tourists essentially pay to live with locals and take part in the more interesting aspects of traditional culture). Yet tourism doesn’t seem to be flourishing here as much as I would have thought. There are tourists here, but they aren’t common, and those that come are generally from South Africa or Holland (countries more likely to know about Lesotho in the first place because of historical ties). Someone needs to put this place back on the (touristic) map.

On the way home from Maliba, our driver, Topollo, took us to a district capital, Teyateyaneng, or “TY” for short. The idea was that we could pay his uncle a visit. His uncle runs a local bar that was as lively as it was cheap. Highlights included a wide range of cheap “quarts” (giant beers with 660 mL), well-sauced locals, and a jukebox with traditional Basotho music. I picked a song at random from the machine and it seemed to be a hit; a somewhat tipsy woman gave me a rand coin and told me to play it again.

Before we left, the owner’s brother invited us out back for a game of “cattle.” We went around the back and saw a small group of six or seven cows being herded by three young men with sticks while a carload of young guys were watching in the background. I was nervous that the game was going to involve at least one of the cows getting killed (à la bullfighting) but it ended being something else altogether. The “game,” from what I gathered, involved the cowboys rubbing the cows’ backs so that they sit down quickly in an orderly line. The more cows you can get to lie down quickly, the better. I have to give it points for uniqueness and lack of harm to the bovine participants. Although probably not a major draw for the tourism sector.

Establishing Field Cred

I have to credit my friend David for an incredible link he forwarded me earlier this week. It’s a site called “Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like,” modeled on the runaway success “Stuff White People Like.”

I like “Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like” more than the original. It’s a funny take on the frequent ridiculousness of expat aid workers – and manages to point out some amusing commonalities among a group of people that consider themselves to be really unique and amazing. Examples of things that aid workers like: “pets,” “explaining local culture to locals,” “establishing field cred,” “dismissing the efforts of celebrity aid workers,” “drivers.” http://stuffexpataidworkerslike.com/ – a must read for expat aid workers and those who love them!

Courting

Haven’t written much about work so far... thought I'd fix that.

As I mentioned in my first Lesotho post, I’m here with seven other Harvard students who are here on a project supported by the US government. Four of us (including me) are working to support the Millennium Challenge Account (a Lesotho-led development agency supported by the US-based Millennium Challenge Corporation) on its efforts to regularize land titles in urban areas. Sound confusing? Yeah, it is – a lot of different people in the mix (not to mention the numerous contractors and “collaborating partners” who are also involved with the project).

My team has joined up with three of the finest students from the National University of Lesotho’s Faculty of Law – great future lawyers who have been helping us navigate the legal system here. Last Friday, we went out to visit them at the University, about an hour outside of Maseru. The library there was quite badly under-stocked (especially in the legal department), but it did have some unexpected treasures. I found a copy of an official government gazette (1857) from the Cape of Good Hope, a British colony that existed before South Africa became a nation. Incredible that it was just sitting there next to the outdated encyclopedias. Me with the goods:



One purpose of my project is to categorize all the types of land-related lawsuits that have ended up in the courts over the past few years in and around the national capital. There are two reasons for doing this. First, understanding the most common land-related problems means that we can better advise the government on the most problematic land cases that come up – nobody knows right now what people are fighting over exactly. Until they do, it will be hard to develop systems that prevent those disagreements in the first place. Second, the government here is developing a (mandatory) mediation system for certain types of disagreements. So before people will be allowed to go to court, they will need to try out mediation first and see if that works, at least some of the time. Part of our job is to figure out what types of property arguments should go to the mediation first and which should fast-track to the courts. For instance, maybe divorce-related disputes should go to mediation, but maybe commercial land claims shouldn’t. It’s our job to try and figure out what makes the most sense in terms of the dispute system design.

But finding the land-related cases isn’t easy. We are starting to realize that there are hundreds of such disputes, and the files are scattered across multiple courthouses, and they’re not electronic (i.e., just paper), and they aren’t sorted in any way. All of this makes the process very labor intensive. I’ve spent the past two full days looking through vast numbers of old court cases in order to find those that relate to land disputes. With between 5-10% of total court cases relating to land, it takes a long time. Here is our team amidst the files at the High Court:



The upside of hours spent digging through documents is that some amusing stories come up: the man whose 2 goats were repo’d by a lender and wanted them back; the woman whose ex-husband sneaks into her houses and takes a poo in a bucket in the hallway; a food saleswoman defamed by her fellow street vendors as having lower-quality sausages for sale; and a student accused of cheating at the University who “discovered to his great shock” that there was a piece of paper under his desk that related to answer 7-D of his final exam. All very colorful stuff.

Pony Up

Just got back from my first weekend in the interior of Lesotho. It was definitely one of the best tourist weekends I’ve had in a long time.

Early on Saturday, our team of eight joined up with three Basotho friends and traveled to Malealea, a trekking and camping area South of the capital.

On Saturday afternoon, I spent the better part of the day learning to ride a horse. I’d ridden horses before with limited success (on separate occasions: losing control of a galloping horse; renting a broken down nag that refused to trot; having to ride a camel instead). This time was better, though. The lodge rented me a very fast and responsive horse, Excise (like the tax), who I took on a four-hour trek through the highlands.

The scenery was stunning – blue skies, rolling pastures and deep river valleys. Our path wound its way up and down hills and through fields where sheep and cows were grazing. The only sounds other than ours were the chorus of cowbells from the herds we passed. Halfway through, we stopped at a beautiful waterfall hidden in a valley for photos and cool-down. Perhaps predictably, there were two boys playing “traditional” instruments for the enjoyment (and tipping) of passers-by. Of course, I wasn’t able to resist trying my hand at the old bucket-drum-thingy. I never got any tips... odd.



Some of my traveling companions knew much more than me about horsey matters and taught me how to control my animal. By the end of the trek, I felt like I could keep my horse in line – whether that meant going fast or slow. I’m not like John Wayne yet, but I made some progress. Towards the end of the trek, one of my Basotho companions and I had a race on a long, flat stretch. Going at full gallop is great, and it made me want to take lessons and learn to ride properly.



The best part of the day, though, was the night. To save fuel costs, the lodge shuts its power off after 10 pm, and the compound is plunged into darkness except for the occasional guard with a flashlight. Without a new moon, and without any village lights to pollute the night sky, the stars were clearer than I’ve ever seen them before. I saw the band of the Milky Way arc across the whole sky – impossible to capture with a camera but incredible to see.

On Sunday, I went horse-trekking again, this time to visit Khoi-San rock art. The Khoi-San are a large family of ethnic groups, including modern-day Kalahari bushmen and the original inhabitants of Lesotho. The original Khoi-San inhabitants were eliminated by the ancestors of modern Basotho during the Bantu expansion a long time ago. Nonetheless, some of the rock art they created is still preserved in a series of protected caves near Malealea. The drawings were small but very sophisticated-looking (in fact, I wondered at first if the locals hadn’t made them to attract tourists). Here is me with a little vintage artwork.



So that was it in a nutshell – great first weekend in Lesotho. I needed the rest; this week has been quite hectic with work… but more on that later.

Double Click

One of my favorite things about traveling is learning local languages. Sometimes I make a real effort to learn and take classes abroad (e.g., Wolof, Spanish), and other times I just try to pick things up informally (e.g., Russian and Brazilian – neither of which I can actually speak).

The mother tongue of Basotho people is Sesotho (Sotho), a Bantu language distantly related to Swahili. All Bantu languages share close similarities – a simple tense structure, lack of grammatical cases, phonetic pronunciation, common vocabulary and unusual treatment of gender. Of the major Western languages, English has one gender, French and Spanish have two genders, and others – Latin, Greek, Russian, German – have three. In Bantu languages like Swahili and Sotho, there are not “male” and “female” classes of words like in Spanish, but rather many (often more than 12) categories that refer to different sorts of things (e.g., people, abstract concepts, natural things, foreign words). Although it’s different from what most Westerners are used to, it’s very logical once you start using it. But it does take time to learn, on top of the small number of “clicking” sounds in Sesotho.

In preparation for coming here, I bought myself an audio CD for Christmas: “Talk Now! Learn Sesotho” by euroTalk. At a whopping $25, I was expecting to at least sort of learn the language. But I didn’t; the euroTalk CD is probably the single most disappointing language guide I’ve ever used. Do not buy from that series unless you absolutely have to! Thanks to euroTalk, my vocabulary now consists of colors, Sesotho names for Western food, numbers, and highly formal greetings… and my grammar is non-existent.

Nonetheless, I had a (fleeting) moment of success last night when I was able to order a glass of red wine in Sotho! The waiter actually understood what I was saying, since “one glass of red wine, please” combines the otherwise useless euroTalk vocabulary of colors (red), food (wine), numbers (one) and formal phrases (please). To be honest, it was a hollow victory – I actually wanted a glass of white wine but forgot the word for white, “tsweu.” Still, it was progress.

Not that speaking Sotho is necessary for the work we’re doing in Maseru. The partners I am working with here are either expats or highly educated Basotho who speak English perfectly. From what I gather, though, things get trickier once you get into the villages. Better have those clicks ready after all.

Lesotho Time

Happy New Year!

Tanzlines is back from its winter hibernation. This time, I’ll be blogging about my adventures in Lesotho, a little country surrounded entirely by South Africa.

I’m here as part of an exciting development project. Along with some other students from Harvard Law School, I’m working on a land-related development project supported by the governments of the US and Lesotho. The student participation in the project is the first-ever international collaboration between the Millennium Challenge Corporation (an agency of the US gov’t that focuses on poverty reduction – http://www.mcc.gov), Harvard Law School and the Harvard Law & International Development Society (a student group I'm involved in at Harvard that works on development issues – http://hlsorgs.com/lids).

The work itself is looking promising. Our team is helping to support a large ‘land regularization’ effort jointly led by the governments of the US and Lesotho. Land regularization is the name of a particular development strategy that seeks to give the occupants of land (often poor farmers or city-dwellers) certificates or titles to the land they live on. In many sub-Saharan countries, weak or inefficient administrations, plus traditional land customs, mean that the people who live on a plot of land don’t have any written proof that it’s theirs. Often, the occupiers purchased it fairly, were given it by a chief, or inherited it from their ancestors. But in a modern economy, lacking a piece of paper to prove ownership means that it can be difficult to get a bank loan, sell the property, or protect yourself from others who claim the land is theirs. The idea of regularization is that you can legitimize family occupancy and increase land security for the poor. It’s also designed to stimulate the economy, both because people with titles can more easily sell their land, and because titles allow people to borrow money from banks.

Regularization programs have had some real success around the globe (especially in Peru, where the architect of regularization and titling programs, Hernando de Soto, lives and works). But reg. efforts also lead to a lot of problems (more on that later) and a large number of academics and development workers object to the way such programs are carried out. Although I’ve done some work in land-related issues before, I still haven’t fully formed my views on titling-and-regularization programs. Hopefully the next few weeks will teach me a lot!

Although I’m only here for a little while, I should have enough time to slip in a few adventures before I go. Lesotho is famous for its rocky highlands, pony trekking, giant waterfalls, mountain camping, and interesting cultural traditions. And it looks like some pony trekking might be in the works for this weekend.

Will write more soon!

On top of it

I interrupt the hiatus in Tanzlines posts with some exciting news: after many years, my Wolof textbook has finally been published!

As many of you know, I studied abroad in Senegal for five months in 2003. It was a very challenging experience for me, perhaps because it was my first time living in a developing country. I got sick a few times. I lost lots of weight (including my beloved sophomore-year muscles). I got tired of the merguez sandwiches at the University Gaston-Berger cafeteria. And for large stretches of time, I was frustrated by life in the North of Senegal.

Although it was hard in many ways, it was also one of the most enriching experiences I've ever had - culturally, intellectually and socially.

For the most part, the intellectual stimulation did not come from the classroom. Because our beloved UGB was frequently on strike, I spent a lot of time conducting independent research on the Muriddiyah, a large and prosperous Muslim organization unique to Senegal. The Murids belong to a strain of Sufi Islam created by a charismatic Senegalese mystic over a century ago. They are extremely powerful in Senegalese society; Murids control many top government positions and most of the country's largest companies. To better understand why, I spent many weekends and festivals in Touba, the Murids' holy city.

Murids are predominantly Wolof and their faith is often closely intertwined with Wolof culture and language. To successfully work my way in to the community's most important men, I dedicated a large chunk of time to learning the Wolof language. Fortunately, I had the benefit of studying at UGB under Professor Pape Laye Dial, one of Senegal's leading Wolof scholars and a talented instructor. Within a few months, my Wolof was in fighting shape - good enough to meet with many senior businessmen and clerics, including Serigne Saliou Mbacke, the spiritual leader of the Murid brotherhood.

Before I left, Pape Laye asked for my support in translating "Gan Gi," an instructional pamphlet that he had written to teach Wolof to French speakers. "Gan Gi" was a useful guide, but I felt that English-speaking Western readers would need something more comprehensive to learn Wolof well. I checked extensively for Wolof guides online written in English, not only online, but in specialty bookstores. The answer was always the same: there weren't any Wolof textbooks in English.

I decided to fill that gap. Using Pape Laye's instructional method (specially tailored to teaching Wolof's unusual tense and pronoun structures), I started drafting a Wolof guide for English speakers. I focused on including helpful examples, correct linguistic terminology and dialogs designed specifically for Western readers. The end result, after several months of writing in 2005, was a comprehensive 196-page language guide. But 2005 was a busy year, and I left for England before I ever got the book published.

After many years, the project is finally complete: "Maa ngiy ci kawam!" has now been published and is available for purchase online. (The title, by the way, means "I'm on top of it!") I'm pleased to say that I've already received several requests from leading US universities requesting copies for their bookstore - so it looks like it will be a success!

There were many people who have helped make this project a success. Big thanks go to Pape Laye Dial (who is responsible for both my learning the language and the impetus behind the book), to the many people who edited early versions of the manuscript (you know who you are!), to Lee Cassanelli and the folks at the African Studies Center at Penn who encouraged my work as an undergraduate, to Tanya Pai who helped work out the publishing options, and to my talented brother, Calum Green who designed the cover, typeface and inside layout. Here it is:



I realize that most of you are probably not in the market for a Wolof textbook, but please share this link with others who might be interested. Although there are free online guides and Wolof books for francophones, "Maa ngiy ci kawam!" is the only commercial-quality English language guide of its kind. I hope it will fill the gap in instructional materials that our group of study-abroad students faced seven years ago.

You can buy the book at Lulu, my publisher: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/maa-ngiy-ci-kawam/13030168

If you are an educational institution looking to purchase larger quantities, please send me a message directly.

Also please note that I am not making any profit from this initiative; all proceeds will be paid to Pape Laye Dial to support his Wolof teaching, and to 501(c)(3) organizations supporting educational work in Senegal.

Thanks for your support... ba beneen yoon!