It's a Boy

Basotho women are tough. We continue to be amazed with how they deal with hard work and few conveniences, pain and child birth. Our friends, Ntate Kuena and 'M'e Malibuseng, were expecting their third child. 'M'e is a student in her second year of teacher training, and is currently doing an extended practicum placement in an outlying village. She recently mentioned to me that students don't get maternity leave.

On Thursday evening 'M'e Malibuseng had some discomfort, but the next morning she was feeling better. So, off to school she went. She taught her first three classes, but by then things were happening. While the students went to an assembly, and with help from one of her teacher colleagues, she delivered a baby boy, in her classroom. Someone then helped her to a local clinic where everything appeared okay, but just to make sure they sent her off to the hospital. That is where Ntate Kuena and I found her.

Everything checked out okay at the hospital. At 2:30 p.m., still in a lot of discomfort with back soreness and (likely) after pains, we helped her into my vehicle. The baby by then was all of 2 hrs and 20 minutes old.

We headed back to where she was staying at her school and the teachers helped her with whatever women help one another with in times like this, and than at about 4:45 we loaded her and the baby up and headed in to Maseru. Her teacher/midwife colleague came along to be with her for the night.

She will be home for the weekend, but is planning to be back in the classroom on Monday. Thankfully within two or three weeks school breaks for the winter holidays. She will get about six weeks of time with her little boy before recommencing her practicum placement.

Baby Tsokotsa - 2 days old

I am left just shaking my head at how tough the women here are. 'Tonka tough' as our Australian friend, Sarah, would say.

~ Benno ~

Love and Marriage - Traditions

Who says love and marriage iare related?

Getting a wife in some of the remote areas of Lesotho continues to follow traditional cultural patterns, good or otherwise.

Tradition 1: The proper, honorable way, to acquire a wife involves:

• the boy informs his parents of the girl he wishes to wed.
• his parents visit her parents to present the son's interests
• the girl and her parents take time to discuss the suitor's proposal
• if the girl and her parents accept the proposal, a further meeting between the families, not including the couple, is arranged and a bride price agreed to - some number of cows usually
• once the bride price is agreed to, wedding plans are made and carried out
• after the wedding there are then some interesting cultural expectations such as the girl moves to her husband's family home or village. The bride's mother is not allowed to visit for a year, nor may the new bride visit in her mother's home during this time

Tradition 2: Then there is a less honorable tradition. It is sometimes reverted to if the honorable approach is not successful or if one fears they might be rejected using the honorable approach. The steps in the less honorable tradition:

• the boy and his accomplices observe the movements of the girl who holds his interest or of a random girl who happens by
• if an opportunity presents where she is alone or otherwise vulnerable, the boy and his friends 'drag' her off to a hiding place where she is kept until after dark
• after his parents are in bed, the boy and his buddies take the girl to the boy's home where he knocks and calls out to his parents, "I have brought home a visitor," code words for "I have got me a wife"
• the next morning the boy's family sends a messenger to the girl's family telling them not to worry about their daughter, she is with them as the wife of their son

The girl's parents may or may not protest, but it is apparently the exception that they will demand the return of their daughter. A bride price may still be negotiated, but the girl's parents would be in a weaker bargaining position. (The extreme in this approach is when the boy rapes the girl and thereby claiming her as his wife, though dragging her home and making her his wife seems not a whole lot different.)

These practices though not common in the city continue to occur in the rural areas of Lesotho. One of Wendy's students, when home for Christmas, was so raped. She returned to school but when she learned she was pregnant, she accepted the 'marriage'. Then a friend of ours, found herself in a predicament because of such a marriage.

Our friend works and has two small children. She had a girl that lived with her and helped with the childcare when she was at work - a live in baby sitter. The girl went home one weekend to visit her mother. It was to a remote village, and the girl had told how it was a long and lonely walk from where she would get off the taxi to where her mother lived.

Sunday the sitter did not return. Monday her mother called. Her daughter, she advised our friend, was married ... tradition 2. The predicament for our friend: no sitter, no notice, and no sympathy from her employer.

Traditions.

~ Benno ~

(As yet no one has come for or arranged to pick up the sitter's things. Thank fully, through a number of unrelated circumstances our friend was able to secure another sitter; another story for another time maybe.)

Pathos - Update

Writing. Sometimes it is easy to ask myself, "Does anyone really read this stuff?" "Do I really have anything of interest to say?" Then, as life goes by and other things come up, it is easy to neglect writing. But today, today a couple of updates.

Pathos. I wrote a while back about the challenges of a couple of the girls that the Mustard Seed is supporting, Ausi Mapulane whose grandmother died, and Ausi Moselentja who has no home. Here is a short update on those two stories.

Last Saturday, May 15, Mapulane's grandmother was finally buried, six and a half weeks after her death. No extended family ever came forward to assist with even the planning for the burial. I have mentioned before that funerals are a huge financial burden. I do not know if there was no extended family, or whether they laid low to avoid any possible financial commitment. Nonetheless, Mapulane and her older brother finally got all the paperwork completed to bury the body. The plan was no service, just dig the grave and deliver the body directly to the graveyard to be buried. But bless the community, and the angels who were there the night the grandmother died, the indignity of her death would not be repeated in her burial.

The angels are two Basotho women, sisters, who happened to be at the hospital the night the grandmother died. These two women observed a grieving Masotho girl with an older white guy, not a usual situation. They politely inquired about what had happened and when they found out they went into action. They knew how to hug and comfort a young girl, and like the good Samaritan, they also reached into their purses and gave what they could. They then assured me they wanted to help further and phone numbers were exchanged.

The angels have kept in touch. They also contacted community members who also wanted to support the family. They were the feet on the ground bringing direction to the community concern. They dipped deeper into their own resources and with contributions from the community, the Mustard Seed, and others, a proper funeral was finally able to be organized. So on Saturday (May 15) the grandmother was finally laid to rest. Her three grandchildren the only family to attend, amidst a good representation from the community.

And the angels continue to work. They are keeping in touch, with us and with the community, and together we continue to look at how we will support this family into the future.

Community members are also working with us in Ausi Moselentja's situation. They have located a place the family can call home. It is not much - an old, old mud and cow dung lined one roomed cell, but it is dry and it is warm, and will provide an interim place for Moselentja and her siblings to be together.

The positive news is that a school in Australia is raising funds to build a little house on the land that was owned by Moselentja's parents. We (the Mustard Seed) are currently working with the immediate neighbors and the chief to resolve some hurdles and if we can get them behind us we think we can have a little house build for her by the end of July; a home where she will be able to remain in her community and continue to be supported by her neighbors.

Also encouraging for Ausi Moselentja was that her older brother who had been in South Africa trying to find work has returned for a visit. He appears not to have found much work, but he did bring home some funds, and seems to genuinely care for his younger siblings.

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Two quick updates. Two situations where I like the way in which the Mustard Seed have been involved. John McKnight is a community developer whose work has influenced me, and in many ways the involvement with these two family situations fits his model - the role of the helping individual or organization is foremost to support the existing community networks to do what they can and are willing to do.

And for me, the other part of this community network is the outstanding work of one of the Basotho volunteers with the Mustard Seed. She has been indispensable to our role helping these families, even as she continues to work full time.

~ Benno ~

Village Justice

What IS justice? What is mercy? Sometimes…well, perhaps often, the line is blurry at best.

Today Benno and I pick up Rethabile for church and as we are driving away from their neighborhood (which is very dodgy and one where we are most certainly out of place) she relates her morning thus far.

She has just come from a neighboring home where a thief had been caught. He was being beaten. His ears had been cut off. Would he live, I queried. Not likely.

I was—and still am—having visions of the blood, and any vain effort to get attention at Queen II Hospital, which is horrific at best, and worse now that the nurses are currently on strike. I am feeling what it must feel like to have your ears cut off—the pain would be unendurable. Then there would be all the other pain…the blurring in and out of consciousness before succumbing to what will likely be the inevitable: death.

What did this young man steal? Twenty liters of paraffin, used for cooking and heating, and some clothing…probably to keep warm…

I've heard other stories about village justice here in Maseru, equally horrifying, but this one is just the most recent.

Then we get to church and the pastor relates how all the sound equipment had been stolen last night, and he prayed for the thief, and prayed for a quick resolution—a return of the equipment, like last time, not so long ago, when the computer and some other equipment had been stolen from the church.

Justice. Two thieves. Two different systems of justice. Maybe. I really don’t know what will happen when the person who stole the equipment from the church is caught. Will the police rough him up? Most likely. Very likely. Will his ears be cut off? Will he be beaten to death, or near death? Not likely.

So…which system is just? What a horrific question to ask, you may say, given what I have just related. The thing is I’m glad I’m not the judge or the jury here. In neighborhoods of extreme poverty and so little protection from the associated crimes, village justice provides some security…for people who don’t have big security fences, and can’t even lock their doors. Without village justice, crime would be uncontrollable…

I think of a student of mine with a small sister—eleven—who is very, very dear to him. Recently I asked him if he worries about her when she spends much time on her own—no mom in the family. What will it be like when he goes off to university and she is on her own even more? I don’t remember his exact response, but I do remember the, “Yeh,” and the something about no lock on the door. It struck me as an unusual worry. No lock on the door… Young girls here can be very vulnerable. So…what if a young girl is raped? Village justice…

I really have no answers. I just listen, and it all soaks in and makes me wonder.