Lesedi Cultural Village

When I was in South Africa for the World Cup, I wanted to immerse myself in African culture as best I could. It’s a bit difficult to get the flavor of a country when you’re there for sporting events, so I was glad that places like Lesedi African Lodge & Cultural Village exist.

Lesedi showcases the cultures of several different well-known tribes existing in South Africa: Ndebele, Basotho, Zulu & Nguni, Xhosa, and Pedi. When I first arrived, they took a large group of us around to each of the different villages so we could learn about the distinct cultures. We saw how they hunted, what they ate (and even got to try some dried bugs), listened to the Xhosa tribe sing, which was especially interesting to me because when I was in college we studied the !Kung in one of my anthropology courses and I was totally fascinated by the click consonant. The Xhosa language also prominently features the click consonant (which can be heard in the video below).

After our walk through the village, we settled into our cozy huts (mine was in the Zulu village) before heading to the main dining room, where we were offered such fare as ostrich, crocodile, and “beans that thunder the buttocks”. I tried a few different new-to-me meats, and while I wasn’t a big fan, I’m glad I tried them!

One of my favorite parts of the whole stay there was seeing all the tribes perform songs and dances together. And the best part of it was when a little boy got up to dance with all of them–he was beyond adorable. At the end, the tribespeople pulled the audience out to dance along for a bit before returning to our huts for the evening.

 The trip to Lesedi was one of the most fascinating things I did while in South Africa. While I generally think things like this are a bit gimmicky, I thought Lesedi was very tasteful and interesting. It’s a great place to learn about and experience several of South Africa’s different cultures in one place. Additionally, it’s relatively easy to access from Johannesburg and Pretoria, settled within the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site.