Motsoalle
These women's relationships usually occur alongside otherwise conventional heterosexual marriages and may involve various levels of physical intimacy between the female partners.[6] Nthunya's account of her relationship with her partner, Malineo, was described to anthropologist K. Limakatso Kendall in a book, Singing Away the Hunger: The Autobiography of an African Woman (1997).[7] Jason Sullivan describes a form of motsoalle relationships among school girls where it functioned like a type of "puppy love" or mentorship.[6] Researcher, William J. Spurlin, stresses that "it is important not to simply translate into English 'M'atsepo Nthunya's use of the Sesotho word motsoalle [...] as lesbian.Because of the social situation in rural Lesotho and the lack of a concept of lesbianism, motsoalle relationships were once widespread, but not seen as an "alternative to heterosexual marriage.