Dangling by a rope at 206 meters or hovering over a dirty, unflushable toilet? You choose.

The night, drifting seemlessly from the candle light of an "It is DONE, Meh; we turn light out now" Leribe Hotel to the Milk Stout-supported candle light of Jay's Canadian, blue-tiled palace, had so deteriorated into drunken debauchery and card games with fuzzy rules that my gently cramping stomach the next morning surprised me but a little. Eschewing (that one's for you, Amanda Lake) the second cup of coffee and enjoying my cream cheese with cucumber much less than I expected, Joe and I hitched a ride to the combi stand in Maputsoe with Libby and set off to Maseru, amusedly crammed into the back of a 15-seater van with Aude, Thibeau, and 12 Basotho. The ride got ugly quickly and I tried to sleep in an effort to ignore the rising sensation in my esophagus, the sweat creeping through my clothes, and the taste of bile in my posterior oropharynx. This was clearly no mere hangover; I now suspected the ham on my tropical pizza. I was in the farthest seat from the door (back right corner) and my mouth was out of reach of any window. Fear led me so far as to take my knitting out of its zip-lock (TM) bag to prepare for what felt like it might be an inevitability. Fortunately, I survived the 2-hour, twisty (and totally beautiful) journey without tossing my cookies. Joe and I explored the outdoor bus/combi/taxi hub of Maseru for a few minutes, turning down a hundred offers for hair clips, chicken feet, accordion music, games of pool, 40's of beer, green apples, green bananas, newspapers, socks with toes, I heart Jesus hats, and rides all over the country, and finally found the line for the 4-hour bus ride to Semonkong. Just as we settled our bags between our feet a man walked up to us and offered us rolls of toilet paper. A febrile wave came over me, the sun seemed to attack from all directions, I inexplicably waved him away, and instead walked off decisively to find the bathroom, all the while wondering whether the next thing to escape my body would be gas or liquid. After a sickening little walk around the now-illness-magnified outdoor-smellodrome of this Basotho Grand Central, I found the barred window where I could pass a woman half a Maloti in exchange for a small wad of toilet paper and the opportunity to wait behind six women while employees and their children dumped small buckets of brown water from the sink into the two "working" toilets to encourage them to "flush". Ay-ay-ay, Bimbo! I finally made it to the front of the line and repositioned the awaiting piece of paper towel which then tenuously kept my single-hinged stall door shut. As soon as I had dropped my pants to hover over the toilet which had clearly not been attended to, several people started knocking on my door. Good lord. There was no getting me up once I had so hovered but I was sure their knocks would dislodge my paper lock. I yelled out, "just a minute", heard laughter and increasingly bold knocking, finished my awful business, and came out, pale and shaky to face my entertained audience. I still don't know what exactly was so funny but I had made it clear to myself that the ride to Semonkong would be good for nobody. Joe called Semonkong to see if there was a way we could arrive the next day at noon (the next bus available) and still get him back in time for work on Monday morning but we ended up having to cancel, much to the anger of the European rappellers, the disappointment and queasy guilt of Liz, and the gracious understanding of Mr. Joyner. Thibeau picked us up and dropped me, with a glass of water to sip, into the cool, waiting arms of the guest room futon at the public health intern house, and went with Joe and Thibeau to some international food festival that I wanted to hear NOTHING about.

I slept for over three hours, waking only to visit the bathroom and once to notice that Zinnia, the owner of the intern house, was standing on my futon closing the curtains and placing an extra blanket over me (oh, sweet mother figure, she). I got up at dinner time to this sunset and felt like I could handle a little salty broth from Peace, the karaoke Chinese restaurant I'd heard so much about. I have never been in a place like this. It was clearly closed when we got there - lights dim, door padlocked, no tables in sight, display counters nearly empty of food, no staff visible. But Aude said, "Oh good, it's open!" and yelled through the gated door. A man came up from the shadows of the next building and pressed the door bell for us which played Fur Elise. In Pavlovian response, three Chinese employees appeared laughing, one running apologetically with a key to lead us to a large empty table with a lazy susan just past the side gambling room. There was no sense of apology, however, for the cockroach in the dining area, the bathroom door off its hinges or the lack of hand-washing supplies. Our waitress managed to take our order wrong despite the traditional numbering system of the menu, the waiter had an enormous tuft of black hair sprouting from his chin mole, the soup was thick and eggy in contrast to its description, and the steamed chicken was sweet, goupy, and reminded me of Christmas cookies in a blender. Strangely, I had a quite wonderful time, finding everything amusing and making a game of keeping all my utensils off the table for the duration of the meal. We barely touched our main courses so were able to provide a serious dinner for the two nice homeless men warming by a trash fire in the parking lot on our way out.

After the soup my stomach felt it could even handle tea and Joe and I stayed up watching _The Good Shepherd_ and sipping Rooibos herbal tea until retreating to our guest rooms.
Feeling 92% Kat and Aude drove us across the border into Ladybrand, the Free State border town adjacent to Maseru. Living Life is a gorgeous farm-house restaurant with fresh herbs, flowers, and veggies, a varied and delicious European brunch menu, a mixed-race clientele where even Afrikaaners look truly friendly while sipping berry juice and watching their children play on the jungle gym, and a very satisfying bathroom sink carved crudely of yellow stone and attended by --not one!-- but three clean hand towels and moisturizing "white cedar" soap.

After purchasing a six-pack of coconut Amarula balls to last me the week, we grabbed our stuff from the intern house and hopped a combi back to Leribe. This combi ride was so incredibly different from that of the previous day, rife with the fear of personal explosion as it had been, that I experience three hours of unadulterated health-happy joy despite the fact that my femur was longer than the distance to the seat in front of me, the guy next to me for the middle hour smelled like he had bathed in last year's Halloween pumpkin, and the Sesotho narration of the football match between the Orlando Pirates and the Kaiser Chiefs was blaring from the speaker an inch from my right ear. The whole thing was wonderful. The whole world seemed happily and curiously amused by my presence and my insistence on knitting in my tiny corner of the combi, our fellow-passengers all felt like it was a good day to practice their English and ask about my iTouch (I showed them pictures of my friends and family, scrolled through my music albums to much oohing and aahing, and oohed and aahed at the cell phone pictures shown to me in response), and the sunset blew my little American mind. My only complaint was that I got the line "purple mountains majesties above the fruited plane" stuck in my head. The mountains were indeed purple and stretched farther than my neck could rotate in my cramped seat. The clouds glowed pink and orange, the nearby rocky outcroppings were golden and outcroppy enough for a noble appearance by Simba, and the wheat in the fields along the road had dried to a rich maroon. I was grinning like a true Lahoua, unable to contain myself.

The final combi dropped us at the bottom of our hill and we cooked up a couple chicken burgers from Spar, shredded some squash to stir up with butter, salt and pepper, diluted the guava juice, and watched the end of _Return of the King_, the final movie of _The Lord of the Kings_, as Aude calls it. Oh dear...

So with Gollum and the Ring destroyed, the hopes of men regained, and Sam and Rosie self-propogating happily in the Shire, I had my penultimate sleep at the convent and the first of my returning home anxiety dreams. Life is so complicated in the place I actually live... But it also involves really good hugs and talk with people I love, wonderful and necessary pieces of my journey for which I have longed and worked hard, and adventures I can't yet imagine. But first: carrot cake!