Looking back, my relationship with older men, like most of us, began at a considerably tender age. However, I am inclined to highlight that it was completely under different circumstances from those that anyone would have the tendency to assume, considering that ‘this is Lesotho, not some free world of bitches”, and I do not mean that metaphorically nor in any endearing way… infact, it's far from it: Look at all this purple.

My first ever relationship with said older man is what I would call part a foundation of who I am today, considering that it still effectively dictates my daily interactions and worldview. It's only in hindsight that I realise just how far back this man was buried in the dark corners of my mind, a type of solitary confinement his memory was unjustly sentenced to.

See, I was born and nurtured in Botha-Bothe, a village if you’ve seen better. It was no more a town than Maseru is a city, but it was a town nonetheless. It was quite a peaceful place, especially Ha-Kamoho, where I lived. I can’t comment much about the tranquility of the place now, but it was brimming with a sense of community so inviting and safe back then, that parents didn’t fret themselves too much when children didn’t eat lunch at home on a random Tuesday… that’s because the child did eat, somewhere, with someone else’s child; the same way someone else’s child would sometimes eat with their child at their home. For a 7 year old, I obviously couldn’t tell how good we had it back then, but I flauntingly lived that life: Re ne re kopa liperekisi, re kopa christmas… and of course, re kopa lisello for when we wanted to play mantloane. From anyone.

The elders were always happy to help, mostly because its in their nature to, but some of their motivations were questionable: they yearned for something a little bit more selfish and intimate from us, a little more than we had the capacity to give, but with very little effort, we could take.

Although quite akin to it, I would be misleading you to call it predatory, at least, in my case. The elders knew we liked fruits, mangangajane, and whatever resources they could give us to satisfy our growing curiosity. So, they offered these things for the company. We weren’t aware of it at the time, but our mere presence was quite the antidote for their eerily encroaching loneliness, albeit a very temporary one. And Ntate Phiri was no different, and he was no slouch either. Although, I’m quite positive that I paid very little attention to anything he told us, there are echoes of his escapades still reverberating at the back of my mind like deja vu. I would be lying if I said I remembered anything he told me in the early stages of our relationship, but the fruits of his labour were evident. He flexed a large piece of land, stretching to lengths far bigger than entire football stadiums. Till this day, I stutter in awe to how he kept the land fertile and plentiful throughout the seasons. If it wasn’t myriads of fruits colouring it, it was a sea of vegetables. On the other hand, he also ran the village shop and kept even more busy with cattle, with little assistance from his family.

I never wondered why he did all that, and frankly, I didn’t care. And perhaps, that was our first shared quality. He still told me the fables of his life despite my passive disinterest. Sometimes, in parables I could barely decipher, and sometimes, in much kinder proverbs. I was no different from a kid who went to church every Sunday, indoctrinated into a practice I would eventually defend with my life the moment I developed a conviction for it. It was inevitable that his monologues would eventually engulf me until a genuine interest was aroused: I started asking questions, and even went as far as going to herd his cattle with him on days my peers displayed a particular type of dullness.

I started finding them dreary and monotonous, like I was outgrowing a nursery rhyme and, with it, an innocence that wasn’t due for another 5 years, or 4, or 3. When my peers talked, I wasn’t inclined to listen, I challenged them, and I’d leave with a sense of superiority. With Ntate Phiri, it was the opposite. His soliloquy held me prisoner, chipping away at my naivete like a patient minor digging for gold in illegal mines, in litotomeng. He bombarded me with truths I was too immature to understand and gave me little room to breathe in the process. He engraved in me axioms so heavy that my little, brittle bones broke under their weight. And I grew to like it, this peculiar echo-chamber of his unchecked tenets, he proudly called them the absolute truths of the world, thinking his life would be a waste if he didn’t pass on that accumulated wisdom. He looked content with each talk, like I would quote him in Harvard style, or chicago, whenever I was to write an essay comparing the great minds of the 21st century.

Although quite akin to it, I would be misleading you to call it grooming, at least in my case; I don’t remember any appropriacy in both word or action. Let me tell you about them, the things he talked about… But before that, grab a copy of “Where The Mountains Meet The Sky.”