The King of House

I was at the gym yesterday afternoon, doing my crazy intervals on the exercise bike (woo-hoo!), rocking out to house music, when I saw two police cars drive into the parking lot, followed by a stealth, black SUV. About five minutes later, four men in suits (mostly tacky tweed jackets, and mismatched pants) came upstairs and were surveying the gym. At first I thought they were there from some business venture (the gym in sponsored by the Central Bank of Lesotho), but then I realized.....they were with the King. I'd heard rumors that the King of Lesotho works out at the gym, but I had just to see him.

So after I finished my workout, I asked one of the security guards if he was there with the King. I wasn't sure if it was going to be like Buckingham Palace, where he would pretend he couldn't hear me and just stare awkwardly forward. It wasn't like that at all. In fact, when I started talking to him, he laughed like a teenager, and tried to speak to me in English, but, surprisingly, his English was terrible. He could hardly understand me and just kept laughing awkwardly.

I went downstairs, and lo and behold, the King was in fact there. He's really tall, and less fat than everyone had made it seem. He was just running on the treadmill, in his Nike outfit, watching the football match on TV. Oh, and he was surrounded by three body guards. Actually, they weren't much of body guards, as they were just men in bad suits staring at him. I thought about trying to go talk to him to see what would happen, but in the end, I really didn't care.

Oh, and one other thing I may have mentioned about Lesotho, but I can't remember, is that everywhere you go, there is house music blasting. The combis (public mini-bus taxis) ALWAYS have house music playing, and usually at a deafening volume. A lot of people hate it, but I actually think it's kind of great that I can walk down the street, and, if the spirit moves me, I can just start to dance on my way home.

Today I was at one of the hospitals in Mapoteng, and I got so much work accomplished. I was a really good day. We devised a new system for recording patients in the OPD. I began Quality Assurance training with the newly formed QA team. I visited two health centers to see how they record their statistics, and I did follow-up from the workshop we had last month.

And we only saw three dead animals on the drive there (2 dogs and 1 sheep)!