Mokhotlong

Mokhotlong was established in 1905 as a police post in the remote eastern highlands of Basutoland. Its Sesotho name means "place of the bald ibis", after the southern bald ibis, a bird of the Lesotho highlands that breeds on cliffs. The police post was what first brought people to settle in this part of the country, and it grew into a trading centre for the highland villages, although its separation from the rest of the country long held back any larger development.

For decades the post was supplied by pack animal. In 1922 the Basutoland government built a narrow track up the escarpment from Natal, usable only by pack animals, that later became the Sani Pass road, and supplies still came up it by pony trek long after other links improved. Radio contact with Maseru came only in 1947, and in the following years an airstrip was built and a road was laid through the town to link it to the rest of the country.

Roads changed it late. From 1949 a transport business ran jeeps over the Sani Pass, and the tarred road west over the Moteng Pass to Butha-Buthe later tied the district more firmly to the rest of the country. Since then the Letšeng diamond mine, the world's highest, the construction of the Polihali Dam for the second phase of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project and a slow trade in mountain tourism have reshaped a town that still measures much of its life in riding hours.

Few places show highland Basotho life as plainly. Men ride into town wrapped in patterned wool blankets pinned at the shoulder, wearing balaclavas and gumboots against the cold, and the horse is transport, tool and status at once; a good mount is discussed as carefully as a herd. Straw hats, saddle blankets and horse tack are made and mended in the district.

The year is organised around livestock. Sheep and goats are taken to high cattle posts in the summer months by boys and young men who live there in stone shelters, and brought down before the snow; the shearing of wool and mohair is one of the district's main sources of cash. Initiation schools are held in the mountains and treated as private, and the authority of chiefs in land, grazing and disputes remains real.

Christianity, mostly Catholic and Protestant, sits alongside older practice, and Sunday services are the week's main gathering. Music is choral singing, the herder's lesiba mouth-bow and famo accordion songs in the bars along the main street. Because the district borders KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State, South African clothing, music and slang arrive with returning migrants, but Sesotho and the blanket remain the everyday markers of belonging.

Mokhotlong is the only town in a district of about 98,000 people (2006 census), most of them scattered through valleys that in places are still several hours from a road. The town is where they come for the hospital, the high school, the magistrate, the bank, the agricultural office and the shops, and where the minibuses and trucks leave for Butha-Buthe and Maseru.

Livestock is the foundation of the economy: wool and mohair sold through shearing sheds, cattle as savings and status, and small plots of maize, sorghum, wheat and peas where the short growing season allows. Government service is the main formal employment in the town itself, alongside the Letšeng diamond mine and the Polihali Dam works in the district, and many households rely on money sent home from South Africa or from the lowlands.

Life is governed by cold and distance. Wood is scarce at this altitude, so dung, paraffin and gas are burned for heat; water is often fetched; power and mobile signal reach the town and thin out beyond it. Winter can close the passes and cut supplies, and the summer storms wash out tracks. Erosion of the grazing land, unemployment among young people and the health services stretched across a wide district are the persistent concerns.

Food here is what the mountains produce and what the trucks bring up. Papa, stiff maize porridge, is the foundation of nearly every meal, eaten with moroho — cooked greens — and with beans, or with a stew of mutton or beef when there is meat. Motoho, thin soured sorghum porridge, is drunk at breakfast, and likhobe, samp and beans cooked slowly together, is the winter standby.

Sheep country means mutton: a slaughter marks a feast, a funeral or the return of a relative, and the meat is shared, grilled over coals or boiled with little more than salt, with the offal eaten the same day. Bread is baked in a three-legged pot under coals, and pumpkin, wild spinach, peas and dried maize are stored against the cold months. The stores on the main street sell maize meal, samp, sugar, tea, tinned fish and bread flour, and vegetables and fruit arrive by truck rather than growing locally.

Drinking is tea, strong and sweet, at almost any hour, and joala, the home-brewed sorghum beer served at gatherings and rituals. Bottled lager comes up the mountain road to the bars along the main street, which fill on shearing days and at month end when wages and pensions are paid.