Meeting Susamatekkie
Meeting Susamatekkie
In the mountains of Lesotho, the local people live a simple life, looking after their animals, and following the pattern of the seasons. But there are also visitors, who come from the cities to walk and climb, and enjoy the beauty of the mountains.
The narrator of this story is a man from the city, and as he walks through the mountains, he meets a young Basutho man…
‘What’s your name?’
‘Susamatekkie.’
‘And your family name?’
‘Gumede.’
‘My name is Tod, family name Collins.’
The young Basutho was taller than me and his teeth were shining white, not my sort of yellowish-white. A grey blanket hung from his neck and shoulders, and he wore rubber boots. When he bent down to calm one of his growling dogs, his blanket opened a little, and I could see that he was wearing a pair of shorts, with no shirt. All my clothes were made of the latest modern materials, especially made for mountain-climbing by well-known clothing companies.
When we’d first met, I’d asked if he spoke any isiZulu. In this distant part of Lesotho, some of the boys and men who travel around with their animals can speak it.
He was in his mid-twenties, and had been living in this valley, between the square-topped mountain known as Thaba Koto and the triangle-shaped Walker’s Peak, for about fifteen years. I had walked here from the Sani Pass, a road through the mountains a couple of days away.
‘Is it OK for me to sleep here?’ I asked him. We were on a flat bit of ground on the edge of the stream.
‘Eeeeh,’ he said. Yes. It sounded like the way Australians in Darwin say ‘air’.
‘But it’ll be cold!’ he continued, with a laugh. ‘This is a sheltered place and the sun rises late.’
I told him I had a tent to sleep in and a stove for cooking food and making hot drinks. He nodded, then asked where I was from. When I told him, a smile came over his face and he asked why I was carrying a backpack and sleeping in a tent among these ntabas, the mountains high above us.
I tried to explain that some of us like to get away from things which worry and annoy us - telephones and people and their animals’ problems.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I have a problem with my cattle too. I did have sixteen but my bull died.’
I asked how his cows would get calves next year.
He didn’t seem to know, and stared into the distance. ‘I’ll ask at Thamathu village when I buy my mealie-meal there next month. Somebody may have a bull that I can use.’
We were silent for a while, and when it seemed that he was going to walk away, I asked, ‘Do you eat mealie-meal every day?’
‘Eeeeh, but sometimes the dogs kill a wild animal and that means I can eat meat. We ate the bull’s meat for a long time. And sometimes when a cow has her calf, I get the afterbirth before she eats it herself, and that is excellent.’
From my backpack I pulled out an orange and a Jungle Energy Bar. He put down his stick, and accepted them. After a moment he put them on the ground too, then took my hand with both of his and shook it very enthusiastically. His eyes were filled with delight and his perfect teeth shone.
During our conversation, his cattle had moved slowly down the valley to the place where he kept them at night, close to his small stone house. As he ran down the valley towards them, he shouted at the top of his voice.
‘…iswidi… iwolintshi…’ were two words that I understood (sweet, orange), and from much further down the valley his neighbour shouted something back.
I saw Susamatekkie the next morning while I was drinking coffee outside the tent. The ground was white and hard after an extremely cold night. He was driving his cattle up the valley - they would stay there for the day, eating what grass they could find. He didn’t even have a hat to keep his head warm.
‘Are you going home now?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I should be home by night-time.’
‘Will you come here again?’
‘Yes, certainly, I’ll come again before I get too old,’ I replied.
‘Could I visit you if I came to Underberg?’
‘Yes, indeed, Susamatekkie, you must come!’
‘Well, do you think you could arrange for me to ride in a motor car? That’s something I would like to do before I become old.’
‘Yes, I could arrange that,’ I replied in wonder, then added, ‘What will you do after you have taken your cattle up the valley now?’
From the way he looked at me, I could see he thought I was a bit stupid. ‘I will go back to my house and wait until it is time to bring them back this evening,’ he said.
That was a few months ago, in May. We are now experiencing one of the coldest winters for more than thirty years. The snows have fallen very heavily.
After two weeks the south-facing mountain sides and valleys are still thickly covered. Thaba Koto, Wilson’s Peak and the nearby mountain tops and valleys are particularly wonderful to look at. We can see them from our house in Underberg. The snow must be at least waist deep up there. Crowds of people from the cities have come in their fast, modern motor cars to touch the snow, play in it, and take photos with digital cameras.