Central Heat

The past week Mokhotlong has been…freezing!  The highs during the day have been in the upper 40s, while the nights have been just about 30 degrees.  I wear at least two layers at all times, and I sleep under 4 blankets.  A lot of times I can't believe I'm in Africa.  Since first arriving here I have come to appreciate a lot of things that I take for granted at home…things like washing machines, paved roads, and water from a tap that doesn’t need to be boiled.  Most of all, lately, I’ve come to appreciate central heat.

They say the Basotho are always cold, and now I know why.  Here at TTL we have small heaters that we can plug in to warm up each room.  Not exactly central heat, but it does the trick for the most part.  Out in the villages, though, they rely on warm blankets and a small pot in the middle of the hut for cooking and burning cow dung to provide warmth.  The village Basotho have “central heat” literally and figuratively.

I thought it would be cool to give you a little taste of the Basotho home today.  As I mentioned in my first outreach post, there are a variety of homes here.  It’s amazing how quickly I’ve adjusted my sense of a “nice home” in being here only a few weeks.  In town, almost all of the homes are cinderblock with tin roofs and many have small gardens outside.  Most of the gardens have kale, spinach, and carrots.  Interestingly, some homes have a peach tree outside; peaches are the only fruit that will grow well in Mokhotlong’s mountains.  Almost all of the houses are just one small room with a bed, kitchen, and living space in one.  These homes have enough electricity to light the room; some even have electric stovetops.  (One odd side-note: You pre-pay for power here.  If you forget when your payment is running low, you are living in the dark!) The cinderblock homes also have a running tap for water within the home.  These are what I consider a “nice” home.  Still, there is no central heat.

The home of a seamstress who made a skirt for Colleen.  She is heating an iron (actually made of iron) on her electric stove stop to smooth out the skirts pleats.

This is a cinderblock home, so there's room for cabinets, a bed, a table, and this pot that was warming the house as the owner cooked stew.  There was also a mattress tucked away in the corner for her 3 children to sleep on.

In the mountain villages, where people are generally poorer than those in town, you see groups of rondavels (also called a mokhoro) scattered throughout the mountains, surrounded by fields of maize, wheat, and sorghum. (I’m still trying to figure out exactly what sorghum is…)  Each rondavel is one circular room, usually pretty bare except against the walls where bags of ground maize, stacks of blankets, and a small shelf with cooking untensils stand.  There is no running water within the home, one must walk to the village tap and carry water back in large jugs.  And most often, there is a spot for cooking and providing heat at the circular home’s center.  Some rondavels are more equipped than others.  The ones closer to town have electricity to supply one bulb of light in the middle of the room.  The rest live by sunlight through an open door during the day and by candle light at night.  I’ve even been in two or three rondavels with an actual bed or dressers or chairs.  Most families, however, must sleep on floor mats each night.  Can you imagine sleeping on a dirt or dried cow-dung floor every night when it’s only 30 degrees with no heat?!

A 360 view of one rondavel.  Notice the "central heat"!

A "more equipped" rondavel with tables, benches, a twin bed, and a dresser.  This caregiver is holding up the child below's ART medication and Bukana after our interview.

On outreach last week I became very curious about how people choose the land to build rondavels on, since to me it seemed so random.  My translator and two of the female outreach workers gave me the full scoop, and it sort of blew my mind... Lesotho’s constitution says that no one individual owns the land, instead it belongs to the King (woah!). Under the king are chiefs who oversee the villages and do all of the administrative work there (you actually need a letter from the chief confirming you are a real person in order to get a birth certificate).  In the rural villages getting a lease for land is free, but the chief tells you exactly where you can build your home and plant your fields.  In urban areas, like the town of Mokhotlong, there are no chiefs, so the local government controls all land leases.  Leasing land in town requires payment because it is in high demand.  Even though you lease it, the land never truly becomes your own because you actually need permission from the chief or local government to resell it.

Men installing the windows and doors of the brand new ronadvel.

I was informed that to build a house in town it costs about $6000 Rand for a two-room home, and another $4500 for the metal roof.  I naively thought that people just build their own rondavels at basically no cost, but I was wrong.  To build the stone structure of the rondavel you don’t necessarily pay for the materials, but you do pay for someone to put all of the stones together with a mixture of cow dung and mud.  That costs around $600 Rand.  You also have to pay someone to come and make your thatched roof, which costs between $200-300 Rand.  For people who do not have a lot of money, these homes are quite expensive.  In American dollars, though, it’s almost hard to believe.  Right now 1 US Dollar is equal to 10 Rand, so that $6000 Rand home would only be $600 in America.  I’d be interested to know the infinitely small percentage of a home you could build in the US for $600…

The thatched roofs are pretty unreal.  Most are made out of wheat and some type of special grass.  I am still amazed that they stay together so well without being constantly repaired!  The outside of the roofs are a light grey, but the inside of most are charred black from the “central heat.”  The constant cooking that takes place in the center of each rondavel burns the roof and creates a smokey atmosphere that’s pretty hard to breathe in.  Here at TTL we are convinced that the prevalence of asthma must be super high in the villages if people are inhaling that smoke every day.  I am told that the rondavels keep in heat fairly well, but after doing a bunch of interviews in them and shivering the whole time, I'm not buying it.

One thatched roof in the making......A new roof and an old roof.

Series of thatched roofs from the inside...(1) Inside TTL's rondavel, with electricity. (2) An only slightly charred roof in the villages. (3) This roof was completely black char on the inside.

Going into the rondavels is a very humbling experience, and reminds me how lucky I am to have all the amenities of an American home.  Thank you, mom and dad, for providing me with a bed and couches and central heat!

More to come soon on my adventures in Lesotho!  Enjoy these pictures below!

The heater in my room...The gas heater in our common room...the tools used for heat in the rondavels.

A group of women doing the laundry and washing dishes.

A community water spicket.  People fill buckets like this to carry home every day.

An up-close view.

My translator and I conducting an interview near the central heat source of this rondavel.

Smoke billowing from rondavels where cooking is taking place inside. Cough central!

Some walls are painted blue!

One of the outreach workers who showed me her new cinderblock home being built.  It has two rooms.  She is VERY excited to have her own home being built!!