Leading on to the big day, I learnt that William would not wear a wedding ring, that a dessert was named after every royal bride (Chocolate Kate anyone? Or rather Crème de Catherine?), and that Kate had three different dresses made to ensure that no one could reveal the biggest secret of the day.
A series of (more or less) fortunate events meant that I had the day off and could watch the ceremony – in Lesotho. Given that Lesotho has a GDP per capita of US$800, no own TV station and not a single Woolworth’s food store, I had little expectations for a glamorous afternoon.
However, Lesotho may be a tiny country with more mountains than people, but many multilateral organizations and embassies have offices in Maseru. So there are a lot of diplomats… and a lot of bored diplomats’ wives who refuse to give up smoked salmon just because it takes their drivers four hours to get it.
So, rather unexpectedly, I found myself in a beautifully decorated house with a TV broadcasting the wedding in every room. There were – oh so British - smoked salmon sandwiches, scones and cream, fresh strawberries and champagne, champagne and more champagne…
When I got back to my friend’s house – after nine hours of wedding coverage – I couldn’t stop talking about how awesome my day had been and how surprised I was about the luxury in Lesotho. It turned out that this lavish lifestyle was actually quite common and that my friend, in his first mail after arriving in Lesotho, had told his family that they should not worry about him as he had just spent an evening eating oysters and sipping champagne…
While everyone in the Mountain Kingdom was excited about the British Royal Family, I was equally excited about meeting a member of Lesotho’s Royal Family. A friend of mine teaches at a local primary school and the Princess of Lesotho is one of her students. Sadly when I went to visit the school, the Princess was not there. Apparently she had to attend a rather important state visit to South Africa... to check out boarding schools.
But even though the Princess was absent, there was still a feeling of royalty in the classroom. The kids had all been working on newspaper articles about the Royal Wedding and so I learnt that “William and Kate met at an ice skating rink and that is where they had their first kiss” and that “VIP people must be very proud of them”. But while all the kids’ newspapers agreed on when the wedding would start, the car the couple would come in and that the bride would look beautiful, there was one area of disagreement. Priscilla reported that “they are getting married because they love each other”, whereas Mohato claimed that “they love each other because they are getting married”.
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