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