Commuting to the Camptown

I try to go to a camptown at least once during the weekend. This is my chance to get fruit, vegetables and electricity/wifi. Luckily, I have two camptowns that are roughly an hour away from me and two more camptowns about 2 hours away. Many PCV’s throughout the country are more than 2 hours away from just one camptown and/or a main road. I usually plan to meet a PCV friend in a camptown which determines where I will go.

Traveling around can be very stressful and even though I wrote the estimate of time to get to a camptown, it can be from half an hour to 3 hours. In order to get anywhere outside my village, I walk to the main road. It’s a 2.5km walk which takes me about 35 minutes. Walking to and from the main road is usually very nice and peaceful – it’s only rained on me a few times. Once I get to the main road, I take a taxi to where I want to go.

There is basically one main road that goes through the entire country and several side roads that connect from there. There are a couple taxis that go all the way to my village but that only happens a couple times a day and isn’t really precise on timing so I prefer to walk. Most of the traffic drives along the main road, so it is easy to get a taxi once I get to the main road. A nice change from California, there is never traffic (except in Maseru or during commute hours in Maputsoe, both which I go to rarely). Passing slower vehicles is very frequent, (but oftentimes scary when there is oncoming traffic). Taxis usually drive pretty fast and pass trucks and tractors – the taxi ride is usually where my commute can be determined good or bad.

Taking a taxi in Lesotho is a lot different than in the US: The taxi’s are vans that hold 15-18 people and consist of a driver and a conductor, who is a guy that stands/sits next to the back sliding door, opens and closes the door, and collects money.  Most of them begin at one camptown and wait for the entire taxi to fill up. Some camptowns are organized and make sure one taxi is filled before the next one, but other camptowns are hectic and the conductors are very aggressive about getting people in his taxi. They each have a specific route that takes them from one camptown to another and they put a piece of paper with their destination in the front windshield.

Taxi driving on the main road past my stop

Once the taxis are en-route, they continually stop to let out people and/or pick up more people. Sometimes they just stop for no apparent reason. If the taxi is not full, they continually slow down to honk at people to see if they are going in that direction and also stop to talk to people to make sure they are not going in that direction. Sometimes, even if the van is full, they pick up people who have to stand in the aisle or sit on people’s laps, luggage, or whatever they need to to fit inside (The police here have been having checkpoints, so it has not been happening as much recently). The taxis can take two or three times more time than necessary to get to the destination.

I go home the same way I came. I am getting used to walking over a mile with all of my groceries and I think it is getting easier. But I am still exhausted once I get home – it feels so nice to plop down on my bed and just rest and relax until school starts again on Monday.

My walk to the village