Mountain Passes and other Engineering Marvels

In July the Mustard Seed took our girls who last year successfully completed their school grade on a trip into the mountains. The trip was to visit a couple of sites that are part of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. This water project transfers water from the Orange/Senqu River basin to the Vaal River basin, an inter-basin transfer that provides water demanding Gauteng Province - the industrial and population heartland of South Africa, including Johannesburg - with a additional water source. Along the way the water generates hydro-electricity for Lesotho. The project is considered a remarkable engineering feat, but it is something that many local Basotho never get to see. So on a Monday morning we loaded up our girls and headed for the hills.

The three scholars.

Our first stop was Katse Dam, until last year, the tallest concrete dam in all of Africa, though now second to a recently completed dam in Ethiopia. To arrive at the dam meant traversing a mountain pass. What I keep forgetting is that "mountain pass" has a different meaning in Lesotho. It is not a road through or between mountains, it is a road over the mountains.

Twisting and turning, snaking up grades in first gear, we arrived at a hair pin turn just before the final climb to the summit. It was an engineering feat. Before the road was built, the turn would have been air. On a tiny spur of the mountain the engineers had build castle sized retaining walls to hold enough rock and rubble to construct a turn out over what once had been air. This first pass was the worst (or most spectacular, depending on one's frame of reference).

The "pass" is just left of centre on the ridge line.

We topped out at 3090 metres with two other passes at 2650, and 2510 metres.

The top.

Looking down from the top of the pass.

It was a cold and windy day, with snow flurries (in July), so the tour of the dam was chilly until we got "inside". I didn't know that a concrete dam would have tunnels, pretty big tunnels, and I found it just a bit disconcerting wandering around "inside" a dam that was holding back billions of litres of water. "Don't these tunnels weaken the stucture?", was what I was thinking.

The dam face through snow flurries.

Our chaperone, with her six week old baby on her back.

Looking down the spillway.

The next day we were off to the power plant a considerable distance from the dam. (The water travels 45 kms via tunnel. We had to take the road). This road was not the twisting, snaking, ordeal of the previous day. After that drive, this was a pleasure. I was able to reach speeds of 80, 90, even 100 kms per hour. Ah ... , but I had to temper my exuberance and consider the others that I shared the road with - cars, taxis, slow moving trucks, pedestrians, fellows pushing wheelbarrows, cows, sheep, ox drawn carts.

The girls enjoyed the power station the most. Maybe it was the crazy ride in the back of open pick-up into the bowels of the earth to reach the power plant. The power plant is buried deep in the Clarens sandstone. The crazy ride took us some 600-700 metres into the mountain. By the standards of some of the giant hydro-electric projects in Canada it was small, but it was remarkable that the whole project was under ground.

We finished off the tour with a stop at a historic site. While I found this quite interesting the girls found it less exciting. Then it was back home. Two days, six hundred kilometres of paved road, and over 10 hours of driving. I was beat, but iI do admit I am looking forward to a future trip we hope to take into the mountains. That trip will take us over mountain passes that exceed 3200 metres.

A traditional kitchen.

4000+ year old San rock paintings.

The other 'guy' on the trip.

This is the little fellow who was born in a school classroom.

~ Benno ~

Mustard Seed Happenings

It is past due to provide a couple of updates on what the Mustard Seed is doing. The last few months have been relatively quiet really. The school year is up and running, and our focus has been on implementing some plans that we had developed earlier. Things will get busier in the next couple of months as we will be winding up the society's fiscal year, and begin the process of planning for the next school year. But here is a bit of information on some of our recent activities.

Cherish Camp: This was a four day workshop we held at the beginning of April. Eight of our girls attended, actually seven of our girls. The eighth was someone from the community who was invited by one of our girls who was so excited about what she learned the first day she had to bring a friend, who has become a Mustard Seed associate.

Girls here face very similar challenges to girls anywhere I guess. They too have needs for acceptance and belonging, and they too have hormones and all that that entails. The focus of the camp was to invite the girls to accept themselves for the special creation they are in God's eyes, that they are valued and loved and complete in him, and that He has a plan for good in their lives. The workshop then invited them to make choices that would build positively on the special creation they are. It was a timely topic.

A number of our girls are struggling, like adolescents anywhere, to discover who they are and what they want. Then there are peer pressures, some good, but too many encouraging them to follow I life of living for the moment. But in the context of Lesotho, living for the moment, even briefly, often has life-long consequences from which it is difficult to recover - extreme poverty, abuse, illness, disease, and no hope for a future. Second chances are hard to come by, here. Our desire is to see our girls develop a dream for their future, a dream that will help them made better choices. One girl wants to be a lawyer, and I have been inviting her to picture herself in her robes before a magistrate. A more concrete dream that hopefully will better enable her to assess whether her choices are helping her move towards that dream or getting in the way of her dream.

Rapt attention for the facilitator, Ruth.

Food, part of any workshop, ...

... as is fun.

With their completion certificates.

One four day workshop is only a start however, and recently we got the girls together for a Cherish Day. Under the guidance of 'M'e Lerato, one of our Masotho board members, they talked about what they had learned at the workshop, how they were applying what they learned, and the challenges they faced in making wise choices. They had fun, but were also serious about seeking to encourage and support each other to choose wisely.

Maths Tutoring: A second major activity we are implementing is providing the girls with extra help with their Maths (here it is 'maths', not 'math'). It has been hit and miss to fit the tutoring sessions into their lives, but we are making progress, and now during the winter school break we are holding what we are calling Maths Camps.

One of Wendy's former students is working with a number of girls for four hours a day for four days, reviewing what they learned in the first half of the school year, and introducing them to some of the topics they will cover in the final months of the year. I am not sure how Maths is taught in the schools here, but most students struggle. It has been encouraging to see a girl, with some tutoring, increase her Maths marks from failing to passing grades and to see her joy and building confidence.

Meanwhile, God continues to provide and invite me to continue to trust him one step at a time. At the house we are currently in, and can stay in for another few months, we have been able to adapt space in one of the outside rooms into a classroom/meeting space. What a blessing this is. Our home is in a somewhat central location and this makes it much easier for the girls to get to this classroom than to the space we had used for a while. I continue to marvel at how God continues to provide what we need.

Ausi Moselentja: We still have not started building a little house for Ausi Moselentja and her family. Through some past work of 'M'e Lerato, Ausi is now living in an outside room at a near neighbor's, a room where she can have her three younger siblings with her, and where she can also cook. Now the family is not spread about with various neighbors with the place to cook at yet a another neighbor. I am having to trust that the roadblocks in getting started on the building of the house is in God's hand and in time, the right time, we will be able to move forward.

Ausi Moselentja continues to be source of inspiration. She has so little materially, she has so much in terms of responsibility, yet just knowing that there is some one thinking of her brings a huge smile to her face. If anyone has nothing it is she, and being able to bring a bit of encouragement and support into her life is good for the soul.

Thanks for your thoughts, and for those of you who pray for the Mustard Seed, thanks for your prayers. I also want to thank God for those who continue to provide funds now and then. Each day we have the resources we need to continue to serve girls here in Lesotho.

~ Benno ~