Moshoeshoe's Day

Two of my teachers, ready for the big day.

March 11th in Lesotho is Moshoeshoe's Day.  Schools celebrate the day with their students and teachers and students usually get the day off (assuming it falls on a weekday; this year it was on a Sunday so no day off).  My school celebrates Moshoeshoe's Day as a sports day where there are running competitions, traditional dances and a debate.  Saturday, March 10th, our school headed to Bethesda, a more rural community than ours, to celebrate the day with two other schools.

My students

But first bit about Moshoeshoe.  King Moshoeshoe I is the founder of the Basotho nation.  Originally Lesotho was a collection of various tribes.  King Moshoeshoe I united the tribes together to create the one Basotho nation of Lesotho (which literally means land of the Basotho).  I do want to mention that people still strongly identify with these tribes and their different traditions.  I believe he also brought missionaries to the country who brought Christianity and education to the people of Lesotho.  Therefore a day is put aside to honor him.

Some of the runners

Truth be told the events of Moshoeshoe's Day has little to do with Moshoeshoe himself.  Nevertheless the day was pretty fun.  We headed out of the village around 9 am in the morning.  Since we had to pay for taxis only students who could pay were allowed to come (teachers went for free).  The taxi drivers played music at a ridiculous volume as we drove to Bethesda and the students danced in the back of the taxi.  One thing I love about the Basotho; if they hear music they dance.  I swear Basotho are born dancing to some techno beat.  So as we drove out of our village every single person/child/old woman we passed just started dancing.  It's so much fun to see.

Cheering for the runners

The first event was running.  Now instead of just watching and cheering for the runners my students sang and danced to show their school spirit.  Some of the teachers "supervised" the singing but this just translated in to carrying a stick and hitting anyone who wasn't singing.

After lunch we had dancing.  Each school performed two songs for each of the three traditional dances.  Now I had seen two of these dances before at my swearing in ceremony (videos that I am still trying to upload) but one the dances I had never seen before.

The first dance is called Mokhibo.  The kh sound in Sesotho is pronounced as a harsh h sound.  This dance revolves mostly around the movements of the shoulders.  The two pictures of the girls in brown skirts are my students.  The picture in the middle is another school that had a very impressive routine and a slightly different style of dress.  My girls wore long dresses past their ankles while the other school wore short dresses.  But schools wore a petticoat that poofed out the skirts.

The second dance is called Ndlamo. I had never seen this dance before so it was nice to see it.  There seems to be two different styles of doing this dance.  In the first style the dancers wear drums around their legs.  The other style seems to center around a pole that is manipulated for different effects.  My students are the ones in the red.  I assume that they are wearing a more traditional dress than the other school.

The last dance is called Litolobonya.  The li sound in Sesotho is pronounced di.  I also call this dance the butt dance since the dance centers around moving the butt up and down.  The outfit consists of a small top and a poofy skirt that has bottle caps to create a sound every time the dancers move.

Now I haven't talked about this in my blog but Basotho are not really known for being on time, a topic I will address on this blog another time.  I bring this up for the other events took too much time so there was no time for the debate.  I was personally disappointed for I had worked with the debaters to prepare for this day but it did not happen.  My students had quite the opposite reaction.

Now one of the nice things about being in a rural area is the view.  Bethesda was gorgeous with rolling green mountains and rocky terrain.  The truth is that I never get tired of how beautiful Lesotho is.

We headed back home around 6pm with the loud taxi music and the sound of student dancing to the music.  Overall it was a good day.

Aparna