LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Lesotho: South Africa
built 634 days ago
The currency unit in Lesotho is the loti (plural maloti), which is divided into 100 lisente (6.40 maloti equal U.S.$1; 2005 average). Most trade is with South Africa, with which Lesotho is linked in a customs union, along with Botswana, Namibia, and Swaziland. In the early 1990s principal exports were wool, mohair, wheat, cattle, peas, beans, corn, hides, and baskets. Chief imports were corn, building materials, clothing, vehicles, machinery, medicines, and petroleum. In 2002 imports cost $800 million and exports earned $358 million. Remittances from workers in South Africa were estimated at more than $300 million in the early 1990s.
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Lesotho is a tiny country in Southern Africa, and landlocked within the Republic of South Africa. It used to be known as Basutoland when it was a British Protectorate. It is spectacularly scenic, and has a large mountain range (part of the Drakensberg), forming most of its border. All of Lesotho consists of high mountainous terrain. Even the region that is referred to as the lowlands is over 1000 meters high. The main attraction of the country is its ruggedness and its people who in many cases still follow a traditional way of life.
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Completely encircled by the Republic of South Africa but separated from it by forbidding mountain ranges, Lesotho has endured decades of turbulent politics, periodic economic crises, and grinding poverty since gaining its independence from Great Britain in 1966. Though culturally conservative in the main, the people of the country welcomed the modernization programs begun in the 1990s, which have brought new wealth to the country but at the cost of much environmental damage. Tourism and revenues from the country's diamond industry have ... helped to improve material conditions, and the capital, Maseru, has grown to become one of Southern Africa's most attractive cities. Of these changes, Sotho writer Mpho 'M'Atsepo Nthunya remarks,
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The HIV and TB epidemics in Lesotho are driven by poverty and high rates of migration for labor in South Africa. Lesotho has only one doctor for every 20,000 people, compared to one for every 390 people in the United States. Only 7 percent of households have access to electricity and only 12 percent to running water. As the HIV/AIDS epidemic has taken hold, average life expectancy has plummeted to 35 years. Lesotho ... suffers from high prevalence of tuberculosis, with 544 active cases for every 100,000 people (compared to just 4 per 100,000 in the United States). Outside of the capital city of Maseru, most of the population lives in remote mountain villages, several hours walk from the nearest medical outpost.
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The Lesotho trip was more than just an evaluation that had to be done at the request of AngliCORD. It was a wonderful living experience, a tremendous privilege to have been accepted into the hearts and minds of so many people, not only the Basuto themselves but people from Europe and other parts of Africa. Collectively they have left an
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The small southern African kingdom of Lesotho is completely surrounded by the Republic of South Africa, though separated from it by formidable mountains. For many years after gaining their independence in 1966, the people of this former British protectorate suffered from political turbulence, economic crises, and a growing incidence of HIV/AIDS.
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