Thursday, March 23, 2006
Back from the mountains and things are going very well on all fronts. Three of us went up – Penney (who arrived at the same time as I did and has been sharing responsibility for Makhelefane with me – but doing most of the work), Shauna (a ‘youngster’ (24) who had just arrived and will be at Makhefane for the next six weeks) and moi). We discussed plans for the new building. The school principal there is like the Godmother for the whole district and each day a work crew of men and women come from a particular village nearby to work on the building. The foundation is done and the walls are rising. They are entirely made of stone and mud. Penney says the construction is very much like dry, rubble walls in England. The wall is about 80 cm thick and has large stones on the outside and inside and smaller ones and mud in between. They work with great skill and few tools. Including working a tiny quarry they have started near the work site, I have only seen a long, steel pole, two shovels, a pick and a trowel. They do not use a level and their line for keeping the wall straight is woven from grass.
MONEY ALERT CANCELLED – it turns out that there Help Lesotho has enough money to pay for the door, windows and roof materials along with the shoes (below) so no need to donate for this project. If anyone would like to donate, the Help Lesotho site (helplesotho.ca) lists a number of projects needing support. In addition, you can support a poor child so that they continue in school. The number of children with heartbreaking stories is so large.
I have spent the morning shopping for school shoes for children at Makhelefane. There are 99 students who do not have shoes and winter is coming – last winter, a large number of kids were coming to school barefoot, even when there was snow on the ground. One child died of pneumonia last winter. Buying so many children’s shoes is like buying one pair. You know the kids are growing like mad so you want something not too costly. At the same time, you do not want them to fall apart on you (especially considering the rugged conditions in the mountains). There are shoes made in Lesotho, but the manager of a large local store (who sells them) says they are not very good and the soles tend to break. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but I bought one girl in the orphan residence here a new pair of sandals in January. She was wearing different shoes on each foot and one of them was missing half of its sole. It is very sad to see such things.
While we there, Penney and I had a really neat experience. She intends to return next year as do Ray and Carol and we had heard of a school called Bokoko which is much poorer than Makhelfane – which is hard to believe considering. We decided to go and see this place. It was 3 ½ hours walk each way over very difficult terrain – perhaps 500 m of vertical and rain on the way back which made it very slippery - and all at 7500'+ elevation. We had to ford a roaring river which was at mid-thigh level for Penney on the way back. Very hard to estimate how far we walked but I would guess 20 to 23 km. The children there, the most attractive little ones you could ever imagine, had never seen a white person. Their first reaction was to run away in fear but then curiosity took over – they would get close and then back away when you looked at them. After a little while we were playing games based on the idea that they were afraid – it was very cute. They all wanted to shake hands and see what my skin was like up close.
The little school has one room which is much smaller than an average Canadian classroom – but there are 88 kids in 5 grades. It is mud inside, floor and walls and there a few holes in the roof. The windows do not have glass and cannot be covered since they are the only source of light (other than the door). Fortunately we had a teacher from Makhelfane there as guide and translator as the two teacher s do not really speak English. We are now planning what can be done there next year. Any materials that would be needed (lumber, paint, glass, etc) would have to be carried in on donkeys. Penney, Ray and Carol could go in on horseback, although it is steep in places.
We could have borrowed horses to go there but it was the funeral of one of the local chiefs and just about everyone with a horse was going. We were invited to come to the funeral and to say a few words (which would have been interesting since few of the folks there would have understood). We begged off which was good because it was starting to get dark by the time we got ‘home’. My muscles and cardio were up to the task, but my knees were pretty sore as was my lower back. In total, it was more than worth it to experience something like this. A last comment about this – Bokoko only goes to Grade 5 and the Grade 6 and 7 kids (there are currently 6 of them) walk this route every day. It boggles the imagination. Almost worth teaching kids in Canada again so that I could respond to their complaints about how hard it is to get to school on snowy days.
Only in Africa
- Speaking of horses … if I see one more example of this I will puke … a family is out for a journey in the mountains, dad is riding his horse, mom is walking with the baby strapped on her back and a load on her head. And this is where a good horse is worth $1000 or more. They could both walk and have a fortune to spend on things that might benefit the whole family.
- Speaking of lack of gender equity … the shoes mentioned before were for 64 girls and 35 boys and yet the population of the school is pretty equal.
MONEY ALERT CANCELLED – it turns out that there Help Lesotho has enough money to pay for the door, windows and roof materials along with the shoes (below) so no need to donate for this project. If anyone would like to donate, the Help Lesotho site (helplesotho.ca) lists a number of projects needing support. In addition, you can support a poor child so that they continue in school. The number of children with heartbreaking stories is so large.
I have spent the morning shopping for school shoes for children at Makhelefane. There are 99 students who do not have shoes and winter is coming – last winter, a large number of kids were coming to school barefoot, even when there was snow on the ground. One child died of pneumonia last winter. Buying so many children’s shoes is like buying one pair. You know the kids are growing like mad so you want something not too costly. At the same time, you do not want them to fall apart on you (especially considering the rugged conditions in the mountains). There are shoes made in Lesotho, but the manager of a large local store (who sells them) says they are not very good and the soles tend to break. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but I bought one girl in the orphan residence here a new pair of sandals in January. She was wearing different shoes on each foot and one of them was missing half of its sole. It is very sad to see such things.
While we there, Penney and I had a really neat experience. She intends to return next year as do Ray and Carol and we had heard of a school called Bokoko which is much poorer than Makhelfane – which is hard to believe considering. We decided to go and see this place. It was 3 ½ hours walk each way over very difficult terrain – perhaps 500 m of vertical and rain on the way back which made it very slippery - and all at 7500'+ elevation. We had to ford a roaring river which was at mid-thigh level for Penney on the way back. Very hard to estimate how far we walked but I would guess 20 to 23 km. The children there, the most attractive little ones you could ever imagine, had never seen a white person. Their first reaction was to run away in fear but then curiosity took over – they would get close and then back away when you looked at them. After a little while we were playing games based on the idea that they were afraid – it was very cute. They all wanted to shake hands and see what my skin was like up close.
The little school has one room which is much smaller than an average Canadian classroom – but there are 88 kids in 5 grades. It is mud inside, floor and walls and there a few holes in the roof. The windows do not have glass and cannot be covered since they are the only source of light (other than the door). Fortunately we had a teacher from Makhelfane there as guide and translator as the two teacher s do not really speak English. We are now planning what can be done there next year. Any materials that would be needed (lumber, paint, glass, etc) would have to be carried in on donkeys. Penney, Ray and Carol could go in on horseback, although it is steep in places.
We could have borrowed horses to go there but it was the funeral of one of the local chiefs and just about everyone with a horse was going. We were invited to come to the funeral and to say a few words (which would have been interesting since few of the folks there would have understood). We begged off which was good because it was starting to get dark by the time we got ‘home’. My muscles and cardio were up to the task, but my knees were pretty sore as was my lower back. In total, it was more than worth it to experience something like this. A last comment about this – Bokoko only goes to Grade 5 and the Grade 6 and 7 kids (there are currently 6 of them) walk this route every day. It boggles the imagination. Almost worth teaching kids in Canada again so that I could respond to their complaints about how hard it is to get to school on snowy days.
Only in Africa
- Speaking of horses … if I see one more example of this I will puke … a family is out for a journey in the mountains, dad is riding his horse, mom is walking with the baby strapped on her back and a load on her head. And this is where a good horse is worth $1000 or more. They could both walk and have a fortune to spend on things that might benefit the whole family.
- Speaking of lack of gender equity … the shoes mentioned before were for 64 girls and 35 boys and yet the population of the school is pretty equal.
