The Wisdom of the Village Clown

How I came to know Sebete is well besides the point. What matters is that he is a dearly loved neighbour and relative. Sometimes he’s a nuisance. Sebete is an everyday man who does odd jobs to get by. I've now reached the point where I can finally tell the difference between when he's sober and when he's wasted, which is very little. The man runs on hopose, our traditional beer, which is not an anomaly where we come from. Since the first decades of Lesotho’s formation, our collective ancestor King Moshoeshoe I, prohibited the sale of alcohol in an attempt to curb its abuse. But if one thing has endured it is our reliance on the (anti)depressant.

It's easy to look past Sebete at first glance; his childlike cadence, slow and sometimes slurred speech. He hangs on his shoulders when he walks such that you could easily mistake him for an old man. He's around fifty. Nonetheless, like many others in Morija he is sharp of mind. He has an impeccable sense of humour, the timing of his jokes hits like a bank notification at month-end. Ngeke u mo confirma—you could never confirm him. To understand him, one needs to understand his environment, Morija. Dubbed the wellspring of knowledge, it is the only forested village in Lesotho and was the seat of knowledge production and publishing throughout the late 19th century going into the 1900s. It is among the first missionary stations in the region and still houses some of the most important history about the country and the Southern African region.

That’s the press release version however. Morija is a strangely wonderful place. Similar to a retired movie star, she loves to speak about her prime and does not like to confront the dark stuff. She created some of the smartest minds. She has carried herself as a dignified community, being so close to the church, and helped shape contemporary life. With this came a particular aura of autonomy, confidence and audacity. These are all qualities you can find in Sebete. He lives by his own rules, he is kind and loves children, and he is very helpful; if he has something to gain in money or shine. Every so often we are reminded of the brilliance of this retired movie star: on special occasions when we excavate our Sunday best, during moments of national importance, and in stories shared by elders whenever we get the honour. The elders, I feel, are my favourite part about being here; owing to their remarkable storytelling and historical archives. They are generous, reserved, and very knowledgeable, if not intellectually, then definitely in their hands. They bring in an energy that for the retired movie star is like a teleportation device to their glory days of youth.

My partner and I moved to Morija because it is home. It provides the comfort and community of village life, yet with just enough proximity to the noise and disorientation of the capital, Maseru. Many friends have asked why we would make an exodus in the opposite direction of the capital when most people would rather be in urban spaces. The truth is that we wanted peace, simplicity and a strong sense of connection. To ourselves, to history, or something undefinable that urban life cannot provide. For me especially, I can listen to the earth and the memories it carries. I can unearth answers to questions I have asked about myself and my family for a long time, and find rooting in the work that spirit has assigned for me. It does not hurt that the cost of living is a lot more modest in comparison to urban spaces, so there is room to invest in the big picture and long term.

If too much time passes and I don't see or hear from him, I start to ask after him. You see, Sebete is the type of person you don't want lingering around when you need to focus, but you genuinely miss him when he's missing. He is family. Some weeks before Easter he dropped by to say hello (i.e. score some coins for a smoke) with a single butternut in hand. When we declared that we couldn't find coins he insisted we should try harder and even sacrificed his butternut in exchange. Before I could say otherwise he was already putting it on the couch and promising me lemons.

"I can see you're the type to put lemon in your tea" he said, to which I laughed.

Just after the holidays he dropped off four lemons that looked like they had spent the better part of their week basking in the desert sun. He apologised for them and mentioned that he had had them for a while but had not found the time to bring them (he needed coins again). Sebete is a sharer you see, he will tell you about his day, his troubles, triumphs, and if you're lucky, even some of his ideas. It's always so striking to us how he will casually mention his latest jobs along with the subsequent drinking and spending sprees, while he is in the process of hustling money off of us. It is beautiful and telling. This is the charm of being in the village, it reminds us that even a curated and isolated life is filled with texture from outside. In our modern and mostly global way of life we are reminded to always look outward from where we are and not get lost in the internal world we have created. In a world characterised by public image and perceptions, here life is not for or about the ‘Gram’. It is about being present.

Sebete returned again on the weekend to deliver a healthier looking batch of lemons, big and fresh. This time around he had a takeaway bottle in hand, the red Coca-Cola label wrapped around a beige liquid, instead of its typical liquorice colour. He sat on one of the stairs and faced west in the direction of the setting sun while sipping periodically from his bottle. The sunsets from the Makhoarane mountain are nothing short of spectacular, they add colour and painterly tones to the peace I referred to earlier. He lit up a cigarette and then started to talk.

In his opinion there is no reason for people to be sending their children to private schools in Maseru when Morija is both a wellspring of knowledge and has perfectly capable ones in its midst. According to Sebete, all we need is a bit of recreation for the kids, offered in secured locations where they are properly attended to. He spoke about extracurricular games and activities that would appeal to kids while allowing parents to be present during their down-time with friends. "We have everything we need here, right under our noses. We just need to walk the talk". He's right. Changing parents' school preferences may be a bit of a stretch but apart from that, everything else he said made sense. Every time the village puts something together in their own name, people show up. If they don't, it's because there's a reason and it rhymes with Ms. LaBelle’s first name. 

One of the dangers of modernity has been the rise of individuality. Basotho love to reminisce about idyllic times when communities came together for the collective good. Before class systems and titles, people abided by social hierarchies that responded to everyone’s needs. In times of strife, questions of ownership and boundaries were diluted in the spirit of survival. When there was triumph, nothing was too small to give in the communal celebration. If a woman lost a husband she did not lose marital rights so long as there were still males among her in-laws. Her children did not go hungry. A man who lost his house in a fire would have a place to lay his head, and a travelling party was always welcomed in the village, even if they were strangers with no kin.

These values have not been completely erased, however, they have grown extremely conditional. People are quicker to offer prayers over money. In-laws fight widows and in some instances the widowers too, based on assumed inheritance. Orphans are discarded and left to toil for themselves because relatives claim insufficient means to feed more mouths. Siblings con each other out of property and inheritances, embroiling in extended disputes that make magistrates dread going to work sometimes. This is not a case of nostalgia, where I reminisce about a past I do not even know. If observations on human behaviour in my lifetime are anything to go by, I am sure there were still issues, disputes and double-dealings even before capitalism took over. Crimes might have taken a different character back then, but they were crimes nonetheless. But it appears there was more cohesion and a willingness to build together, than to leave everyone to their own devices.

A clear difference between those romantic olden days and now is that people understood displacement then. As it happens with small animals of prey, people saw strength in numbers and leveraged it as security. Nowadays we have more options. If you have money you can buy yourself some friends, a new life, heck, you could even relocate. We know that we always have somewhere to go back to, which is both an advantage and grounds for complacency. We have become opportunistic and mask it as collaboration as long as self-interest comes first. You get two extremes where people fake docility in order to exploit a situation or become entitled because they overstate their contributions. I find that the most generous people rarely seek thanks or recognition, but capitalism has maladjusted us to fixate on the individual and his expectations.

Someone like Sebete is easily dismissed because most people do not take him seriously. He is the village clown and people speak to him any which way they like. He takes it, either by laughing it off or by dismissing it. He is a goofball that does not take himself seriously, which I admire. But I wonder if he was always like this or if life in Morija shaped him that way. Could it be the reason he appears to be a bottomless pit that would do well to acknowledge its own limits? The simple life he leads, is it a sign of having given up on life, making do with the little he has, or is it a sign of ‘wasted potential’ as some others perceive him? Simple lives, or the perceived ‘simple-minded’ people that inhabit them, can these be natural responses to the harshness of modern life?

The man is educated, that goes without a doubt. His various piece-jobs reveal an intelligent mind that was trained to think and adapt. Another thing that I am sure most people do not know about him is that he is a reader. He is updated on current affairs and actually enjoys intellectual banter. On his quirkier days he will adjust his language and start addressing me in English, for which I suffer a lot of teasing. Our unconventional way of life already has some folks referring to our home as Makhooeng—The ‘white people’s place’. It does not help that we have a rather international pool of friends. Regardless, Morija as a semi-rural place is herself an oxymoron, given that although they were not settler colonists in the traditional sense, the missionaries established her as their own village. The oldest remnants of colonial architecture, industry and infrastructure are based here. Therefore, if we are going to speak about Makhooeng, we are talking about the entire village.

Morija’s long history ties back to mine and my partner’s relationship. The oldest families here go back at least 190 years, so us coming together almost felt inevitable. Beyond King Moshoeshoe’s intentional social design to marry a wife from every clan in the name of nationbuilding, in Morija many of us really are related thanks to intermarriage. When I met Sebete for the first time, we were introduced by an uncle of mine, not very much different from Sebete in personality and habit. He did not care that we had just met, he immediately interacted with me like I was his niece as well. At the time we were preparing for a ritual at my ancestral home and I never forgot the way he availed himself…while occasionally asking for a refill or some coins to take the edge off. What edge, I ask? Let us call things what they are; a lifestyle has chosen him. That is all there is to it.

When we eventually settled in Morija, it just so happened that we lived in the same area as Sebete. To his delight. At that point he had made the connection between my partner and I, whom he had raised up in childhood (it takes a village). I was told many stories of after school pick ups and spoils, stories that are always accompanied with laughter and warmth. I would have to be a rock not to have a soft spot for the guy. So on days when I have been sitting in front of the computer all day or consumed with other duties, it is nice to have him stop by if he is lucid enough for a conversation. The danger of being introverts on our part is that we can easily miss new developments taking place in Morija. Sebete helps to fill up that gap because he enjoys a level of critical dialogue.

I believe there are two sides of the coin when it comes to people generally perceiving him as unserious and rugged. On one hand he takes advantage of it to get away with bad behaviour, which does not always end well because some people do not have patience for him. Does he get beat up because he is more lip than brawn, or because by the time he is brave enough to serve brawn his other faculties have already checked out or delayed? In this case, every village in Lesotho, and dare I say, in Southern Africa at least, has a Sebete. On the other hand he tends to surprise with his knowledge of labour law protocol, and other important information related to the work he is doing at that given time. That kind of pushback from an underdog always fuels my fire.

A huge part of the alcohol problem in Lesotho is its ability to sedate and fuel social decay. I say this as a joke frequently—that in such a small country it is surprising that we have much more drinking spots than schools and other social services. Churches come second, which in its own right says a lot. While we have not done a comprehensive scientific study, we have observed since living here and based on our respective family histories, that there is a correlation between the psychological damage enacted by the church and the high rates of alcohol consumption in Morija. What do I mean by psychological damage? The church trains people to be obedient and rewards mistakes with harsh punishment. Basic humanness is suppressed under doctrines, codes and rules that contradict nature’s order, which by now we know bends to no man. Under Christian doctrine you have to watch how you dress. How you speak. Are you giving enough? Are you good enough? You cannot perform this ritual, you cannot hang out with that person. Eat only this. Always be at your best social behaviour. Virtuous woman this, real man that. Under Christian doctrine optics are king. It is hard to keep up. Alcohol is an escape, the liquid courage that some people need to just say: give me a break, I am drowning here. Perhaps the real thing that pulls me to Sebete is his humanness, and how he reminds me to be compassionate with others and myself in dealing with our own humanness.

In the time I have lived in proximity to him, I have identified that at his core, Sebete is loyal, genuine, intelligent, and reliable in his own beautifully complex way. You can rely on Sebete to disappear as soon as he gets his pay. You can rely on him to not be sober past 10am. You can rely on him to do the opposite of what you've asked because when the alcohol level in his bloodstream peaks, he forgets. You can rely on him to always show up with something in hand. Although experience implicates him as being one, he's no freeloader. One needs to do a deeper reading of him. You can rely on him to show up when urgency calls or just to say ‘hello’. You can rely on him in times of pain and when you need a mood-lifter. You can rely on him for an unapologetic perspective, clarity and humour. The conversations, the shared labour, the embracing of humanness, not perfection, humanness, add to the serenity of living in Morija. Lesotho generally feels like a place frozen in time for most people. Some call it slow or even boring.

Morija is all that plus soothing breezes and cowbells, with occasional blasting speakers and so much cultural activity we do not always have to wait for a special occasion. Morija follows a different calendar to the 30 day month. When spring starts you can tell the time through human traffic in the fields, when it is initiation season you can tell by the rain clouds that cover the sky and echoes of song bouncing off the facade of the Makhoarane. When there is a pitso you will see it by the ushering of bodies up the hill to the Chief’s homestead. All these are on-going practices often drowned out by hooting cars and glaring street lights within more urban spaces. In a way these seemingly banal features of life in Morija speak to Christianity’s failure to successfully whitewash Basotho culture. If only there were practices that could help us return to sobriety.

Living in Morija is a way towards quietude and stillness so that the intuitive voice can filter out the noises of modernity. It is a way to return to simplicity, to not take ourselves too seriously, to be free of the rat race, competition, and to return to a way of life dictated by space; not so much policy, development quotas and targets. It reminds us of the duty we have to those who have not enjoyed the privileges we have and to nurture relationships anchored in authenticity, quirkiness and recognising the magic in the banality of everyday life.