Lesotho is a small, landlocked mountain kingdom in the beginnings of Winter. About 7,500 feet up in the small village of Mount Moorosi in the district of Quthing, a few major changes have arrived since my last visit in 2006: water, electricity, the possibility of obtaining access to internet; those things which so many of us in the States take for granted. The last time I stayed here was as a US Peace Corps teacher of English at Maseribane High School, then later as a visitor from Cape Town. I come this time as a researcher in anthropological drag, audio recorder in hand, subjecting the very same village individuals that demanded I speak Sesotho (the most widely-spoken language of the Basotho--the people of Lesotho) when I was a young teacher here to a 30 minute to 1 hour long English conversation. There is a sweet justice served until I realize they are more than happy to speak English with me, that this time something is different. Perhaps it’s the fact that I am older, the reality that this time I am merely a quick visitor, maybe it is the presence of the recorder that brings people into a performative space: they are speaking not only to me, but an imagined American audience via the recorder. Whatever it is, things proceed differently in the quiet little village, now lit by rows of lights at night whereas before they were cloaked in darkness.
My research surrounds developments in Lesotho that individuals have noted as they have grown up in Lesotho. They speak to me of other, more distant villages higher in the mountains, the capital, Maseru, as well as their experienced contrasts between time spent in South Africa and their return to Lesotho. Almost everyone, when speaking of Mount Moorosi, mentions the water and electricity projects implemented by the ruling party of the Lesotho Government, Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD). Many that are outside the village and living on the school campus (separated from the village by a long, dirt road) say that everyone in the village has electricity now. This utopian vision is quickly overshadowed by the fact that those within the village tell me that many cannot still afford the electricity, that many still do not have it. Water, for the time being, seems to be another story, the water being pulled from a borehole higher up the mountain and delivered to a few taps located within the village center. For a village that, in 2003-2005, was nearly dry and many villagers had to come to the school campus to gather water from the reservoirs filled by the school pumping water up from the Orange River (2 km downhill from the campus) with a diesel pump, a source of regular, clean water is a welcome reality. And herein lies a very interesting and long-standing power dynamic between a school physically separated from the village and the village, largely composed of attendees of the school past and present.
Maseribane High School is run by an Indian man (originally from Kerala) who regularly commutes on the weekends from his house in Mount Moorosi with his wife (a teacher at Maseribane, also originally from Kerala) to their house in Zastron, South Africa. As headmaster (the British version of a principal), he has attempted to implement a number of small school development projects across the campus. To speak to just a few of them will shed some light on some challenges facing even the smallest of development projects in Lesotho that many outsiders seem to face.
In the early years of his position as headmaster, a garbage bin project was implemented around the campus whereby a number of oil drums were set up to gather the ever-present piles of garbage that people discard on the ground. After a few were stolen, he chained them to the ground. After the chains were cut and the drums were all taken to hold water, he gave up.
A pig and chicken-rearing project were begun under the agriculture department. It’s apparent initial success was quickly tamped down by the realization that many of the pigs had been stolen, many of the chickens had died and no one had been keeping records of anything related to the growth or lack thereof of the livestock. This project quickly fell to its knees.
The annual yearbook project which was initially supposed to fall within the hands of the English department was quickly relegated to a succession of Peace Corps volunteers. Those years that no Peace Corps volunteers were present saw no yearbook. It was a yearbook dependent, it seemed, on the presence of outsiders to organize and help print the annual publication and quickly became known as such.
While there are many more projects to highlight which have at first flourished and then quickly declined, the few projects mentioned shed light on the pervasive problems outsiders and Basotho themselves face with even the most miniscule attempts at development in Lesotho. While it is easy to regurgitate the commonly heard statements (from Basotho and outsiders such as Peace Corps and GTZ volunteers) that the “Basotho are lazy” or “The Basotho are dependent on aid and handouts,” one goal of my research is to try to look deeper and understand why many people think such projects do not seem to take root in predominantly-rural Lesotho. And as I speak to many, one element emerges time and time again: poverty. As I wade through commentaries, I wonder if it truly is as simple as “empty stomachs” or if there is something else at play altogether. Like many things, I imagine there are multiple elements at play and comfort myself with the notion that perhaps time will tell.
More to come...
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