The Joys and Tightropes of Culture

Patty and I have just finished a one week leadership camp sponsored
annually by Help Lesotho and, this year, involving 250 participants
ranging in age from 10 to adult teachers. Attendees participated in a
series of workshops covering topics such as drug and alcohol
addiction, HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention and promoting gender
equality. Each day was capped by a wonderful and often raucous talent
show featuring many traditional songs and dances.

Over the course of the week, I developed a real appreciation of what
it is like to grow up and live in a rich culture that extends back
thousands of years. The Basotho, the people that constitute the vast
majority of Lesotho's 2 million population, are able to tap into a
deep vein of tradition that serves as both a foundation and code for
an important part of their lives. Unlike Canada with our wispy,
weather vane cultural mores, the Basotho look to their traditions and
culture as compasses for basic guidance on many issues. This can, of
course, be good and bad. It is startling how early in life this
cultural code implants itself to define children's impressions and
beliefs. In so doing, it serves as a real barrier to the advancement
of gender equity, for example, with restrictive, stereotypical roles
and behaviors ascribed to women surfacing without questioning among
young children of both sexes. I have discovered that one of the great
challenges in any volunteering is knowing just how far you can push a
principle or advocate a change in behavior before slamming into
the often unyielding wall of cultural correctness. I cannot claim to
have finessed a technique around this but I have learned to see the
wall. On the positive side, it does provide a population with a
collective "something-we-stand-for" . It also provides a rich
mother-load of traditional songs and dance that seem to be programmed
into the collective DNA for performance at a moment's notice.

All of this makes me reflect on Canada's culture and traditions. What
traditional Canadian songs and dances would both young and old would
be able to perform with the joy and ecstasy that I was privileged to
witness among the Basotho camp participants - all of whom seemed to
most willingly to join in with effortless, multi-layered harmony to
boot. What is the collective compass that we subscribe to that gives
us traditional direction and allows us to withstand incursions from
the latest fads and trends? This is not to say that Lesotho's culture
is immune from outside change. Indeed, I have heard many elders tell
me they are deeply worried about the future of their culture as young
people are bombarded with the external forces of rap, cellphones and
the like.

However, their culture does provide a backbone to withstand the
daunting pressures and challenges of a tough life in Lesotho with
admirable grace and dignity.

In other news, the latest shortage to befall Pitseng seems to be
coffins. The constant parade of death and dying exceeds the capacity
of the funeral operators to provide enough coffins to meet the
demand.  The backlog is currently up to 3 weeks between death and
burial - a long time to keep one's departed loved ones unburied and in
30 degree heat to boot.  Indeed, the importation of coffins from South
Africa factors with some prominence in Lesotho's official trade
statistics.


Stuart Culbertson

On Safari - and Suggested Reading

Dawn. To the east, the sky lightens above a black grove of trees, deep blue, then orange, then creamy yellow. The clouds lose their purple tint slowly, then dissipate, leaving behind a single star. As we pull out of camp, we see a caravan of giraffe, their long necks at a common slant, seemingly black before the rising red sun, strange markings against an ancient sky. It was like this for the rest of the day, as if I were seeing as a child once again, the world a pop-up book, a fable, a painting by Rousseau. The silence interrupted only by the crack of a bone or the rush of the wind , or the hard thump of a vulture's wing as it strained to lift itself into the current , until it finally found higher air and its long graceful wings became motionless and still like the rest. There, in the dusk, over that hill,m I imagined the first man stepping forward, naked and rough-skinned, grasping a chunk of flint in his clumsy hand, no words yet for the fear, the anticipation, the awe he feels at the sky. And I thought to myself,: This is what Creation looked like.

Did I write that ?!? - I wish. In fact, it was written by the man who is about to become the President of the USA. We are both reading Barack Obama's 1995 memoir, Dreams from my Father . (Does this ever happen to you? - two bookmarks racing through a book with lots of negotiating as to whose turn is it to read it). I cannot imagine that any President-to-be has written a more insightful and candid self-portrait. If you would like to know what drives this guy, how he thinks, what he struggles with and how his social and political formation developed, I highly recommend this book - which is very well written and highly engaging to boot.

On his section on his return to Kenya to meet his father's family circa 1993, Obama says of Africans that they need "courage [and] honest, decent, men and women with attainable ambitions and the determination to see those ambitions through". This phrase resonates very true with me. I have seen a lot of courage and met many decent and honest people. It is the appropriate scaling of goals and ambitions and the commitment to realize them that is needed. In my experience, admittedly limited as it is, this is a place where a hard look is needed when setting goals - to ensure that they are attainable and sustainable in a local setting. And that progress should be measured in small victories rather than monumental milestones.

We're en route back to Lesotho via Ficksburg, SA where we are enjoying our last blast of Internet, electricity and cold beer. Ficksburg is deep in Boer Afrikaner country and we have been here a couple of times - always in pursuit of the things I just mentioned at the end of the last sentence. I was struggling to associate it with something I had seen or read when I realized that it seems frozen in the 1970's and looks very much like it could have served as the backdrop for Archie comics. Indeed, I expect to see Reggie and Veronica turn the corner at any moment. Our B+B hostess even wears matching pant suits. We do enjoy the peaceful order that seems to be in place in this community and the broad, leafy streets that provide ample shade from the sun.

We're heading to Tanzania in February where I hope to sharpen my writing skills to Obama's level to capture my impressions of our own safari experience.
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