Day 56: Maseru – Semonkong

Lesotho inspires us. An incredibly beautiful mountain landscape, lots of green pastures, terraced farming, lots of water, villages with round huts and stone houses that are very picturesquely situated on the slopes.

Perhaps a little bit of Mongolia, a little bit of Nepal, a little bit of Iceland, but still completely different.

And a very unique breed of people. Cattle herders with long capes and long coats, (rubber) boots, traveling on donkeys or horses or on foot with a pretty tough gait. Men with thick knitted hats or pointed straw hats, women with round hats, often with a bobble on top. Women with blankets wrapped around them and long checked wool skirts.

Not modern and not rich, but the people seem to be very proud of their country and are happy when we think the landscape is great.

Our destination today is the Maletsunyane waterfall (192 m free fall) and the nearby village of Semonkong.

The waterfall is impressive, the associated visitors center is a modern, completely oversized, deserted building. A very typical development project: manageable in size, completed in a short time, geared towards tourism and well suited to showing that "things are moving forward"!

What is also noticeable, however, are children whose only reaction to a white person is to ask for sweets. And this is underlined by the imagery of hands formed into a bowl, which is influenced by development aid campaigns. Once again we think of the book "Africa is not a country" by Dipo Faloyin.

In the afternoon we take a short walk along bridle paths and footpaths up to a small hill and enjoy the view of the mountain panorama. And in doing so we find ourselves in the middle of the extensive habitat of the locals.