Dreaming about the World Cup

There is a new kid on the block! The three sisters have done it again adding a glossy publication to their stable.
Scrutator is not complaining over the sisters’ new media effort. If anything Scrutator is pleasantly surprised by the unexpected Christmas present.
The timing for the inaugural issue is perfect coming during the festive season.
Where I come from there is no better way of wishing your people a merry Christmas than pitching up with a new gift. Growing up in the cold mountains in Qacha’s Nek my poor parents made a point to indulge my festive ego with some particularly new present. It could be a cheap toy, frock, knickers or a pair of shoes — anything new.
And the sisters have just made me nostalgic. Helang! But newspapers and magazines should not pre-occupy themselves with extensively covering their proprietors if they harbour the slightest wish to be taken seriously.
Scrutator’s initial impression was slowly punctured by the fact that the sisters decided to be both the publishers and the news while at some stage achieving the unprecedented feat of being the reporter and the newsmaker at once. Scrutator hopes that this is just a finite incident and not a trend.
After securing prime space for their photoshoped images on the cover page and the back page, the sisters appear variously as newsmakers or editorial manpower on 15 pages — 2, 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 26, 28, 36 and 88.
Scrutator is convinced that if this happens again she will not be the only one to turn her back on the glossy brochure. Coming out once every month, there is definitely enough time to go beyond the family horizon and talk to real newsmakers out there crying out for publicity. Lets agree we “deserve carefully selected and refined content”.
The Fifa World Cup arrived in Lesotho on Monday.
I must confess that that night I did not sleep with excitement.
I had this crazy nightmare in which I was part of the Likuena team that had lifted the 2010 World Cup trophy at the final in Johannesburg.
You see, we were having a jolly good time and Lesotho had exploded into a frenzy.
We were just about to receive our medals when someone who looked like the Lefa acting chief executive, Mokhosi Mohapi, approached the podium and whispered something in Fifa president Sepp Blatter’s ear.  
A clearly irritated Blatter twisted his face and started shouting into the mic.
“This man here is the acting chief executive of Lefa from Lesotho. He says he wants a chance to say something before the medals are handed.”
I thought he was going to deliver the speech with the same thundering voice he uses when he threatens journalists but I was disappointed.
He looked shockingly timid as he approached the microphone. 
“Bo ’mé le Bo ntate, I want to tell you that Lesotho does not deserve the trophy because Lefa has not bothered to do anything to develop football in that country,” Mohapi with his head hanging on his left shoulder said.
“It’s a confession that I thought I should make because if we get this trophy I will live with a guilty conscience all my life,” he added.
“Our players are still playing in potato fields masquerading as football pitches because I was busy shouting at journalists instead of building proper grounds.”
Then tears started dripping down his ashen cheeks.
“This trophy is too big for us. How can I, Mohapi, the man who spent most of his time dishing out T-shirts could possibly have organised Lesotho’s football into winning this trophy? And where are we going to keep the trophy? When will we polish it? Who is going to guard it? Please Mr Blatter let there be a replay so we can lose and go back empty handed like we are used to.”
With that statement Blatter snatched the trophy from Lehlohonolo Seema.
When I woke up I was looking for Mohapi under the bed, the cattle kraal, the dog kennel and fowl run.
I just want to know why Mohapi’s shenanigans are now disturbing my sleep.
There was real excitement, excitement that I had not seen in a very long time, after the new Pioneer Mall opened its doors to the public last Wednesday.
By all accounts that was a joyous moment for Lesotho and its beautiful, peace-loving people.
At long last we now have somewhere to spend quality time with our boyfriends and families without worrying that our children will be run over by cows or pinching our noses because of the foul smell from some nearby pig sty.
I am dead sure that the new mall will go a long way in radically transforming Maseru from a medieval city into a modern 21st century city.
But there are some among us who are so blind and lazy that instead of seeing a forest will only see trees.
Where there is good, they focus on the negative.
I thought about this after I read a depressingly lazy piece by that academic who is still hanging out in the newsroom at that stable across town.
“New mall threatens prison, school”, shouted the headline in the weekly, as if the mall was an extra-terrestrial about to strike humanity into extinction.
In any case, how does a mall threaten a prison?
“There is muted disquiet among the leadership of the Lesotho Correctional Service over the encroachment of the new Pioneer Shopping Centre on some land hitherto occupied by the prison service,” wrote the reporter.
I thought you were an advocate of development. But this story was anti-development.
The story, I suspect, is part of co-ordinated noise about the Land Bill from misguided and excitable youths who want us to remain stuck in the Stone Age.
Drop that negativity and move on with the times ntate!