split the village
The goal will be to discover a performative context for the oral histories, the rituals of land and water, and the expression of “place” that are about to be lost.
Preparation is underway to begin work in March 2012 on an environmentally-focused, community-based installation/performance project, Split the Village: Assembling, Mapping and Performing the Cultural Construction of Place. The project involves the people, place and culture along a 14 kilometer stretch of the Phuthiatsana River in rural Lesotho, southern Africa, slated to be flooded in 2013 when construction of the Metolong Dam is complete.
Lesotho, a small mountainous country completely surrounded by South Africa, is the site of the multi-phased Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) which has already completed two massive dams, the Katse and the Mohale, as Phase 1. Building the dams destroyed burial grounds, grazing plateaus, ancestral kraals and the network of paths connecting one village to another – all now submerged beneath the resulting reservoirs. The devastation upset the ecological balance, disrupted rural webs of communication, destroyed livelihoods, and cut social ties between communities. Basotho families were often forcibly removed and relocated from their farms and fields in the harsh but stunning mountains to foul, square-shaped urban dwellings. The dams’ Diaspora is spread throughout Lesotho.
Unlike the dams of the LHWP, which primarily siphons Lesotho’s water off to South Africa, the smaller, more localized Metolong Dam is supposed to provide both water and electricity to Lesotho’s capital city, Maseru, as well as to the area around the National University. And, unlike most sites about to be inundated in Africa, there has been a pause while the area along the Phuthiatsana destined to be flooded is explored and catalogued. Since 2009, an archaeological team from St. Hugh’s College, Oxford (UK)1 has been working with Lesotho’s Department of Culture, the World Bank, faculty from the National University of Lesotho (NUL), and community members along the Phuthiatsana to trace and photograph important rock art sites, record historical markers, and assess archaeological deposits. They are about to finish this stage of their work.
Split the Village hopes to join in the next stage of the team’s efforts, which will “focus on the oral history of the area’s inhabitants and the contemporary use and cultural construction of the Metolong landscape.” We propose a collaborative frame which includes theatre students and professional actors; faculty from NUL’s departments of geology, environmental studies, and development studies; members of the Metolong Dam archeological team from St. Hugh’s College; Lesotho’s Department of Culture; local artisans and craftspeople; environmental and social activists; and, most importantly, community members of the Phuthiatsana River valley. The goal will be to create a variety of artistic and cultural “archives” (both live as well as via digital media) of the River Valley, and to discover a performative context for the oral histories, the rituals of land and water, and the expression of “place” that are about to be lost.
1. Mitchell, Peter and Charles Arthur. Archaeological Fieldwork in the Metolong Dam Catchment, Lesotho, 2008-10. Nyame Akuma 74: 51-62.