Life is Short Brutish and Nasty

Life that is Short, Brutish and Nasty - so said Hobbes?, the Bard ? or some other frequently quoted notable - a phrase that is, sadly, very relevenat to life in 21st century Lesotho.

It has been a tough week in Pitseng that certainly bears reflection as we get ready to celebrate Christmas. Last Friday, one of the workers at Sister Celestine’s bakery was robbed and murdered during a roadside run-in with thugs on a country road about 10km from here. He was carrying a load of bread and about 1500 Rand ($180.00). We were heard this news from the local Catholic priest (and one of my French students) as we walked to the bakery on Monday morning. We were met by the eerie spectacle of two nuns scrubbing the back of the truck to remove the bloodstains. As tragic the circumstance – strangely, the mood was a bit somber but very much business as usual. In a country where death is a very frequent visitor and the national life expectancy is low and falling, death is very much part of daily life however it arrives.

The next day we had some very sad news that one of our teenage friends, Mohapo, had been dispatched from her home in Pitseng village to live with her grandmother. Mohapo is part of a very tight threesome of teenage girls we call the “Puzzling Girls” because of their fascination with tireless repetition of the three jigsaw puzzles that we bought for the centre. Mohapo has been a “double orphan” (without mother or father) since she was twelve. She had lived with her aunt and uncle in Pitseng for the past five years trying her best to remake her life and friendships in a new place and circumstance. On one of our classic thunder and lightning storm nights last week, Mohapo apparently forgot to do her job and shelter the family firewood from the storm. This might have been a single occurrence or the “last straw”, we don’t know – in any event, one week before Christmas she was summarily dispatched to live with her grandmother some 80km away in the mountains where she will, I’m sure, try her best to rebuild her life, friendships and school networks once again. Such is the fate and fleeting attachment to love and security endured by thousands of orphans in Lesotho day after day. We will miss Mohapo’s cheery laugh and broad-faced grin very much.

On a brighter note, school has ended for the summer holidays here and the centre is teeming with children and youth, many of whom are attracted to our newly installed volleyball court – our own gift to the youth of Pitseng. On the final day of classes at our neighbouring Raphoka Primary, Patty and I went to the “final assembly” - basically 150 kids crammed into a battered and beaten classroom- and sang them “Jingle Bells”. Being a nation of profoundly talented singers, the children caught onto the catch chorus very quickly – no matter how Patty and tortured this tune in our delivery. Two weeks later, we often here children yelling their greetings over the fields and singing the chorus back to us. Unfortunately, something was definitively lost in the delivery or translation as what we often hear the chorus delivered to us as – “Jungle bells, jungle bells, jungle all the way … “.

With best wishes to all for a merry Christmas and a happy, healthy New Year. May you join us in some of the lessons we’ve learned in our experience in Lesotho – namely, being greatly thankful for what we have and being a whole lot less inclined to complain about what we have not.