A beer, an ancient minibus Taxi, and the rocky road to Leribe Clinic

---Well, yesterday was St. Pat's day and I celebrated in true Irish-style with a Maluti beer (a locally brewed beer). It wasn't my beloved Guiness but it was better than a Miller Lite, MGD, or some such crap. This beer came at the end of long but interesting trek out to a Canadian run HIV-ARV(antiretroviral)clinic in Leribe, a town about 180 km from Maseru.
---The trek commenced at the Maseru taxi-stand. The taxi-stand is pretty much akin to every other "taxi-stand" I've ever encountered in sub-Saharan Africa. Forget your western-style regimentally lined up taxis at the airport. Here a taxi-stand involves a noisy mob of the ubiquitous volkswagen minibus. These poor minibuses are used in Japan for a couple of years (no doubt, based on my experiences in Japan, living the luxury life) and then they are sold on the market at rock bottom prices to countries all over the world, especially to sub-Saharan Africa. Thus begins the harsh existence of the minibus. The minibuses in Lesotho are actually in much better shape than the ones I encountered in West Africa, where doors flying off in midtrip and large gaping holes in the floor are not uncommon. Well, inquiring around a bit I discovered that the next bus to Teya-Teyaneng (T.Y. to the locals) was just about to take off. T.Y. was the first of two connections I would have to make. I climbed on board the minibus over one old lady, 2 small school children chanting "whitey woman", three boxes of computer paper, and 2 large bags of carrots,finally managing to find a wee spot next to a woman who gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "baby has back." Unfortunately, this translated into Tarra having a precarious perch on the back seat while the nicely endowed lady spread out so-to-speak. The reason I'm complaining about this was that Teya-Teyaneng was another 80 km away and half of the trip was on a rutted dirt road detour (the main bridge had washed away several weeks ago). Instead of the fat lady needing to sing she needed to get off the damn bus.
---Although the road was not the most comfortable I had ever traveled, the scenery was simply amazing and more than made up for my discomfort. The mountains and valleys were full of tiny blue and yellow wildflowers and tall rows of maize surrounded by small villages with thatched rondavels. The sheer amount of space combined with a startingly blue sky and the light playing off of the reddish cliffs was breathtaking. Lesotho has to be one of the most beautiful places that I have visited.
---The trip was memorable not only for the scenery but for the people. One small young woman (who had to be around 15) was sitting next to me with her infant breastfeeding and asked me in halting English where I was from. When I told her that I was from America her eyes lit up and she told me that she "always wanted to move to New York." She disembarked about half-way through the trip and disappeared behind some stalks of maize on the way to her village. I wonder what will become of her. Two other instances stand out in my mind. One was the number of closed-down garment factories in Maputsoe and the amount of prostitutes on the street there (mostly ex-garment workers), and the other was a cemetery along the roadside with a huge number of newly dug graves. Mostly AIDS related deaths I was told. The toll that AIDS is taking here is evident in the number of orphans that I encountered. There are an estimated 100,000 orphans in Lesotho (a staggering number if you consider that it's out of a total population of 2 million people) and that number is growing daily. The clinics and the hospital that I have visited are overwhelmed and ARV treatment is still in its infancy here, although the government plans to have at least 28,000 on treatment by the end of the year that number is simply a drop in the bucket. The Canadian clinic in Leribe is doing amazing work considering the resource constraints it is under.