History

This is a picture of Socks and his best friend, Mick. (the beloved late owner of Malealea Lodge). Socks had a scary start to life, almost losing it when he was just a puppy. Despite this, he grew to be an incredibly strong (and quite large) dog. Sock’s exact breed was never really known to anyone who met him, but it was apparent that he had a lot of Irish wolfhound traits, and looked quite like one too. This leads us to the question of: ‘How did Socks, or rather how did Socks’ ancestors come to be in Lesotho?’

Mervyn Bosworth Smith, founder of Malealea Trading Store, was born at Harrow School, England in 1878. His father was Assistant Master there for 37 years. Mervyn had five brothers and three sisters. All his brothers were educated at Harrow, but Mervyn went to Rugby, where he excelled at rugby and athletics. He was also a brilliant scholar, writing Latin prose at 14 years old. On leaving school he went to Oxford University.

In about 1898 he came to South Africa and taught/coached rugby at Bishops. This was too tame for him, so he went to try his hand on the Diamond Diggings at Lichtenberg, where he did not have much luck. He decided to join the B.S.A.P. in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), where he said he did not do much police work, as he played rugby most of the time.

At the outbreak of the Boer War, he returned and joined the Dorset Regiment and served throughout the war. At the end of the war, he went to Maseru to visit his brother, Reginald, who had joined the Colonial Service and had been sent to Basutoland as Government Secretary.