I have become inured to the pain an orphan must feel at being alone. I work with orphans almost daily. Yes, I see the struggles they face, life is not easy, but they seem to survive. Some have relatives, others neighbors, to ease the hunger and loneliness. Recently I was reminded of my callousness.
Mamokete is a young girl, 16 years old, with no parents, no family – at least none interested in her well-being. She lives at an Anglican Mission in a little village, some distance out of Maseru. She has not been past primary school. She had no one to pay her school fees nor to help her apply for the bursary available to orphans. So she taught herself to weave with grass and earns some income selling Basotho hats and other things she has created.
Attached to the Anglican Mission is a school. It is the school that our friend, ‘M’e Malibuseng, has spent the last year doing her teaching practicum. ‘M’e Malibuseng, one of the Mustard Seed board members, is a gentle and compassionate soul. To those in need around her, she reaches out with warmth and comfort. Her practicum placement is over, and yesterday, I was out to pick her up and bring her and her things back to Maseru. Mamokete was there to say goodbye.
Mamokete kept herself busy helping to load things into the vehicle and then with other mundane things. I thought nothing of it until it was time to wave good bye and I realized she was struggling with emotion. As we began to pull away, she could contain her sorrow and sadness no longer. Tears gave way to sobs, and then to wails as she collapsed to the ground. Someone who had taken the time to love her, to support her, and to encourage her was leaving, and she could not contain her anquish and loss and the loneliness of being without a family who cares. We stopped and ‘M’e Malibuseng returned to console and comfort a 16 year old girl facing her world alone, ... well not quite alone.
Through ‘M’e Malibuseng's efforts, Mamokete has become one of the girls the Mustard Seed will support. It will mean another distant village to travel to, but how can we turn away. It was Ausi Moselentja who recently reminded me of why we cannot turn away from those that God specifically brings across our paths.
Ausi Moselentja was over one day recently, and with Wendy, we sat under the cool of the grape arbour and visited. Ausi, with her broad smile, was talkative and she shared a bit of her journey of the past year. She told us of the year before she became a part of Mustard Seed. No food, no safe and dry home, no hope. At the age of sixteen she was plagued with the worries of how to care for and feed her three younger siblings. Should she try to work as a domestic somewhere? Anywhere? She had fretted about where and how one even begins to look for work. She told how in her despair she escaped her fears and desperation by immersing herself in television. Certain friends and neighbors had television, and there she would spend her time, in mindless entertainment. Her school work left undone, she failed her year.
Today she has a different challenge. Those same friends and neighbors now harass her for not spending time with them watching television. “Who does she think she is now?” they ask her. “Does she think she is better them them or something?” Moselentja doesn't think she is better. Rather, now she spends her evenings at home working on her school work and caring for her siblings. She has hope and a dream. She envisions being a teacher. What made the difference? The folks from a little organization who told her she mattered by being there, by providing a few dollars a month to cover basic food needs, and by helping her with a little house of her own.
It is with a humble and grateful heart I say thank-you to those who have supported the work of the Mustard Seed in little and bigger ways. They have enabled us to make a difference - in the life of Moselentja and in the days ahead, in the life of Mamokete. Mamokete and Moselentha remind me that I am right where I am supposed to be, and I am grateful to each of you who have chosen to be a part of what I am involved with. Thank-you.
~ Benno ~
