Around a corner I came upon a beautiful vegetable garden and beside the road was a bucket filled with carrots. Huge carrots. They sat dipped in the water still attached to their fresh, green stalks.

“Well, it was peaches on the road to Teyateyaneng the other day, and today it will be carrots,” I thought.

But there was no one around to sell me the bunch of carrots.

How easy it would have been for someone to steal them, but that didn’t seem to be the way people lived in this rural corner of Lesotho. They obviously trusted one another more there than people do in places such as Johannesburg.

Then I saw the figure of a man working in the garden far away.

“Ntate,” I called out, hoping he would hear me. He didn’t respond but he nonetheless seemed to know exactly what I was asking for.

Suddenly from out of the greenery emerged a thin woman with whom he spoke. He was obviously telling her there was a carrot buyer up on the road.

She slowly made her way through the pathways between the rows of vegetables, up to the road.

She wore a sunhat and long dress and a waist wrapping that acted as a long skirt.

The lady offered me the bunch for seven maloti.

The maloti is the money used in Lesotho. It’s worth exactly the same as the South African rand. No one in Lesotho minds if you pay them for things in Lesotho malotis, South African rands or a mixture of both currencies.

Often they’ll give you change in both countries’ money.

Before handing me the carrots she asked: “Checkers?” That meant, would I like them in a packet. Packets, after all are associated with the shopping chain that for years was called Checkers, and is now known as Shoprite.

The carrots were delicious. Sweet and juicy.

Sometimes people would ask me for money, which I did not wish to hand out. I wasn’t carrying much anyway.

I’d offer them a carrot and sometimes have one myself as we had little chats.

But after not too long I became sick and tired of carrots, delicious as they were.

Image: Duncan Guy, CC-BY-SA

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Do you think there’s anything special about being able to leave something you’re selling on the roadside?