I’m in Lestoho?

According to a training manual on secure land tenure and inheritance rights put out by Habitat for Humanity Lesotho and funded by CIDA and the German government, I’m in Lestoho. Well, on the English side anyway. They managed to get it right on the Sesotho side…luckily. I suppose worse than misspelling the country name are the contents of the document. I’m only halfway through a reasonably comprehensive tool for sharing information on land and inheritance rights in Lesotho but so far I’m not impressed. Okay, spelling errors aside, the contents are important but they are tough. Partially tough to understand with the mumbo-jumbo semi-legal speak and partially tough to understand because women cannot inherit or own land. Okay, okay they can but only as a last resort.

Under Customary Law, if the head of the household (read father/husband) dies, the eldest son inherits the land/home. If there is no son, the uncle/father’s brother gets the property. If for some reason there is no man or boy to be found, um, I’m not sure what happens, the manual doesn’t seem to say. If the heir is a minor though, the mother looks after stuff until her son is 18 but she can’t sell any of the assets, she just gets to keep track of them.

Now, there is also Civil Law in Lesotho and under this law, if a woman’s spouse dies, she gets half of the estate so long as it doesn’t amount to more than M1200, roughly $171 at today’s 7-1 exchange rate. Better than nothing? Gee I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway since it’s ultimately the King’s land anyway.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to convey but I suppose it is that I have been consistently bothered by gender relations here in Lesotho. As such, I would like to share the definition of marriage in Lesotho. Maybe it’s the same as the definition of marriage in Canada, which is not something I’ve ever looked into. Anyway, here is Lestoho “Marriage is a legal relationship, established by means of a state ceremony, between two and consenting persons of different sexes, obliging them to live together for life and to afford each other conjugal privileges exclusively.” How romantic. I hope one of my suitors proposes obliged shared lodging and exclusive conjugal privileges for life this Valentine’s Day. My co-workers would totally go for it. They are really pushing the prospect of a customary marriage in which I might be worth 20 cows. I say I’m asking for 40 which I've been told is completely unreasonable and unattainable. Um, yeah, thanks tips, that’s the point.