Friends (Thabana Li-Mele Reprise)

For two weekends in May I spent some time with ‘friends’. What are friends? Friendship here can take on a different hue. It is easy to be a bit uncertain about friendships, at least when it comes to our Basotho friends. In many ways it is an unequal relationship. I have so much -, opportunity and resources. They have so little - materially. There is so often the temptation to cynically ask, “Do they really want to be a friend, or do they see me as just a means to possible material gain.” It is a question that so often clouds my mind, but those two weekends in May have offered me a different perspective. Yes, friends are those whose company I enjoy and who enjoy doing things I do. However, what I was reminded these two weekends is that friends are those whose presence enriches my life.

The initial May activity was a planned hike with my niece, Jillian. We would climb Thabana Li-Mele, a hike that Wendy and I had done some months back. Bokang, our Sesotho guide would be along, but why drive out with only three in the car. (Wendy was busy with something else.) I knew of others who were interested in climbing the mountain. So many Basotho only know about things in their country, but it is us foreigners that get to experience them. So I filled up the spare seats (plus one) in my car with Basotho ‘friends’. Though the forecast promised rain, we were undeterred and off we went.

Our goal, the twin peaks, shrouded in cloud.

This was a 7 hour hike with a significant elevation gain. Amongst our troupe was a twenty-six year old mother of two. It was delightful having her out front, leading the way and calling back when she needed directions. We literally had to put a pack on her back to slow her down so we could keep up. Then there was a couple. Their home village lies beyond the mountain, and they could hardly believe that they were climbing the mountain that they had looked at so often, doing something they had never dreamed of doing but quietly thrilled that they were.

A loving husband tending to sore feet.

Approaching the second summit peak.

The sun peaked out now and then to encourage us on the trek up, and then the clouds parted and we spent a few glorious minutes in the sun at the top. The rain finally caught up with us on the way down, but even trudging through a light drizzle for the last hour did not dampen their spirits. The mother of two was actually doing a little dance when the drizzle let up and we were nearly back to our starting point.

Goofy gals celebrating at the top.

The summit view.
We started down near the center of the picture.

The contentment and quiet enjoyment I felt, watching and listening to their delight and pleasure … maybe they should be questioning my motives for hanging around with them.

Then a couple weekends later, Jillian and I visited the rural village, 80 kilometres (but three hours driving) out of Maseru where the couple mentioned above are from. (The source of my ‘Village Vignettes’ photos.) It was a great two days. The ‘store’, where we gathered maize and pumpkin, was a fifty minute hike away. Nearly as far the women gathered firewood. Ah, but the joys. The extended family includes two small boys. One quietly took my hat, and made it his. Luckily Jillian had brought some gifts from Canada, and I was able to get my hat back for one she brought from Canada. The other was a little shadow, but always ready to help. The pace of life in the village is certainly slower, and the simple pleasures I derived from just being and sharing time with this gracious family enriched my soul.

Jillian with a cool kid.


Hat one.


Hat two.


Our gracious hosts.

So what is friendship? If it is being enriched by time spent together, then any small material gain my friends realize from hanging around with me is more than compensated by the joy and pleasure I experience spending time with them and enjoying their presence. My life is rich beyond compare.

~ Benno ~

(Post Script: Even before the stiff and sore muscles had healed, the hikers were considering another hike, Thabana Ntlenyana - the highest point in Southern Africa at 3482 metres. But the elevation gain will be less than Thabana Li-Mele as in that area the road runs through mountain passes over 3200 metres.)

Village Vignettes

Hello folks. It has been a while since I started a couple of entrys. Before I could publish we lost Internet service for over two weeks, and then I was in South Africa for a week+. Now it is time to catch up a bit on computer work.

The weekend of May 23, 24 I spent with my niece in the village of our friends, Ntate Kuena and ‘M’e Malibuseng. It was a most enjoyable visit. When there, I am always confronted with the challenging rhythms of life faced by those in remote rural communities. The road out continues to deteriorate, but the piles of rock and gravel along the road suggest that improvements may be forthcoming.

Here are some pictures from our visit.

Me and my littler cousin, ... I love her.

Bath time.

Threshing beans, using a stick.

Resting on the door step after doing the laundry.


My niece working on a different pile of laundry.


Surveying part of the sorghum harvest.


The bean harvest uncovered.

Winnowing the beans.


Helping hands.

Collecting groceries for supper.
It was a 50 minute walk, one way, to the fields for maize and pumpkin.

My hat ... on someone else’s head.

The view out through the house door.

Gathering firewood included a long and uphill walk.

Bringing home more pumpkins from the ‘store’.
The last few hundred meters we were joined by a helper …

… and friend.

I am the guy in the white shirt and the 'wood lot' is the dark area to the left of me in the picture.
The 'store' is just behind the hill above my head.
And we are about a kilometer from the house in this photo.

A trade to get my hat back.

It is a month later, and as I complete this post I am again awed my the determination and strength of the human spirit. With dignity and acceptance people live life in ways that so many of us in our western world may no longer be even able to comprehend.

Village vignettes.

~ Benno ~

The God of Time...and Perfect Timing

Who can understand the mind of God, for truly—TRULY it is amazing! I am discovering, of late, that God is a God not just of time and eternity but also of TIMING. There is just no other explanation for the perfect weaving of circumstances and people that I have been observing lately. Coincidence just is not a broad enough determiner to explain how people ebb and flow so well here…

One example:
At a local orphanage, MIS, that survives on the generosity of volunteers, I have watched so many volunteers come and go, and I keep thinking, how will the kids survive—how will things proceed when this person or that person leaves, yet someone else is always coming just as someone is going. There’ve been Aussies, Americans, Irish, Canadians…God just keeps leading people from all over the world. And how do they discover this small ramshackle little spot? There just isn’t any other really GOOD explanation, other than the Physics of God.

Another example:
Sarah and Dean, or neighbors, leave for Australia--their home--and leave a big void! Then just a couple of weeks later two young Americans are set to arrive. And they do... And just yesterday one of them, Karlee, was just telling me how she got to attend the university she is at...It was a compact made with a friend who decided not to go there after all, leaving Karlee on her own to go; but if she hadn’t attended that particular university this year, she’d never have gotten involved in the church she’s attending, never have found out about Beautiful Gate or Lesotho, never have met Lauren, never have thought about and then decided to come here…

Then the two young men I mentioned in my last post. They arrive almost at the same time as the two gals next door. I could not have chosen such a good combination of personalities. They are age-mates and they all get along so well, their personalities all mesh so well, even with ours, and having each other here really is enriching the lives of both parties, and me too! They are a joy. They've really added a fun dimension to life, too, since the girls come over almost every day to say hi and stand and visit with me or the guys and me in my tiny kitchen, have Chai or Hot Chocolate, play cards, watch movies, visit with the guys and bring laughter or just quiet conversation, or Sesotho language practice, and shared meals... Yes, God is amazing. It's been neat to see how God has brought us all together here.

Just yesterday the girls, Bokang, three of my IB1 students, and I headed up a close-by mountain for a hike—lovely, lovely day for it—while Raps went over to the college to work on his car, to get it going so he could drive it over to our place. Now Raps’ car is ‘special’. It’s his creation out of any possible scrap he could find, and it won him a science fair prize and a place at Machabeng College. Raps is brilliant in his creativity and determination. Anyway, he’s driving the car home yesterday and some guy in a VERY NICE BMW stops and offers to escort him home since the car is not exactly ‘highway-worthy’. This guy is a young Basotho businessman who is pretty passionate and full of energy and enthusiasm to empower Basotho in this country. He was very interested in Raps’ story and the two of them talked for hours yesterday. It’ll be interesting, no doubt, to see if this leads anywhere. If nothing else, I know it was a big encouragement to Raps, just to know that people do admire what he’s done and support him in spirit.

Hmm…one last example…Last week Raphalane came into the house, concerned. He’d just gotten a call from his family, and his sister who’s been accepted at Machabeng for next academic year just found out that she was not accepted for Manpower funding because she’d missed hearing the radio announcement about interviews. Well! She has no electricity in her village, so how was she going to hear? When she phoned to check with them, they told her she’d missed the deadline and they were NOT open to considering her plea. I went to talk to our headmaster and his recommendation was that she write a letter, so I had Raps send her an SMS inviting her to come in for a couple of days so she could sort this out. She and I sat down and composed a pretty darn convincing letter (She’s a good English student, I see ;-) and she took it to the Director of Manpower, who was unmoved!
She came back frustrated and disappointed, but still determined. The headmaster had also advised her to talk to the Ministry of Finance. They, fortunately, were sympathetic. She ended up going back and forth between the two for most of one day last week, but finally was able to get a “yes” from Manpower. So it looks like she’s in! Now…things COULD have just gone smoothly, her being accepted without all these complications, but I’m guessing these complications are part of a bigger plan. How else would I have had the chance to connect for a couple of days with this wonderful little lady! Who knows how God will weave this fabric! I just have a hunch that that thread is still hanging, waiting to be woven back in…

I am learning, over here, as I see how people flow in and out of our lives, that God is the God of PERFECT timing. He is a true orchestrator of the incredible.

So Blessed!

Wow, time disappears! I see Benno’s last entry was over a month ago, and mine…well, whew! I keep thinking about writing a blog. At times there is so much I could say, but sitting down to write can be a challenge. Anyway, here are a few current thoughts…
***

What makes people wonderful? Normally I would not think that picking up garbage qualifies, but it does.

Currently Benno and I have four wonderful young people living with and around us. Two of my former IB2 students, Raps and BK, are staying in our ‘guest house’ for six months. They were fortunate enough to get jobs once they graduated and will be working until they head to university in January. Working. Oh yes! From 8:00-5:30, five days a week and half-days on Saturdays. And the pay? They’ll be lucky if they make M1,200 per month, which translates to $167.00. I am not kidding! Isn’t that just…overwhelming. So I am more than happy to have them living with us since their families live out of the city.

Next door we have the other two—two young gals from Oklahoma who are volunteering at Beautiful Gate for two months. They are just delightful! They are so full of good cheer and smiles and fun. The guys enjoy the young company and most evenings we have all four in playing cards or watching a movie. The gals usually drop in for a visit and tea or dinner or whatever. It was the other night that the four of them were just so wonderful—well they always are, but this time, especially so!

We were having dinner together and I mentioned that I was ‘on a mission’ to clean up the garbage at the end of our road. You see, the city only picks up garbage when the mood hits them, so if everyone on the road puts out their garbage bags and it doesn’t get picked up and the dogs get into it…Yeh! Well, garbage is my biggest pet peeve here. I hate it’s ever presence. It is the only disgusting thing here. Anyway, I told the ‘kids’ about my mission and they very diplomatically suggested that they would help on Sunday when the guys had the day off. Hmm…well…when I’m on a mission, it doesn’t wait from Thursday to Sunday. I told them that I did not want to feel like I was living in a slum for another day and that I was thinking of going out after dinner… I KNEW they weren’t keen, but they ARE wonderful. Now, consider the fact that the two guys had left for work at 6:30 a.m., got home, ate dinner and currently were doing dishes for me and the two gals had been at Beautiful Gate volunteering all day and were also helping with dishes when I made my appeal for help. Those wonderful gals! …”We’ll help” (spoken with resolve). Of course the guys came along and soon we were filling garbage bags with lots—LOTS—of yucky garbage. It was gross, but they were all so cool about it. Raps sister, Mapoulo, was in visiting overnight and she pitched in too, so there we were doing out community service for the day--me, with the makings of five very very wonderful young adults that will be world changers because they already are.

P.S. I ‘glossed over’ the guys doing the dishes point, but it IS noteworthy. You see, in Basotho culture men just DO NOT do kitchen things. In fact, men, traditionally, don’t even serve their own food; it is served to them by the women who eat after the men. Men just DON’T belong in the kitchen, so it is just a huge, huge stretch for them and Raps and BK do so with such kindness. I’m really enjoying cooking for them. It’s so cold in the house that any excuse to use the oven is a pleasure ;-) Food AND heat! Bonus! I cook, the guys clean up all my dishes! Good deal.

I AM so blessed!

Fall

Fall has arrived in Lesotho. Someone was correcting me again last week. I said I was going home during the summer. “Winter”, they pointedly reminded me. Yes, the leaves on the trees are turning fall colours - in late April. We have also our first frost, and it is that time of year when one begins to layer up to stay warm when inside.

Fall does have its advantages. We no longer need the mosquito net at night to obtain a quiet and restful sleep. The number of bugs in the house is noticeably less – no five centimeter long praying mantises on the walls. And the grass will not need to be cut for a few months now. Though not related to winter, we have also finally gained the upper hand on the ants who were using our home as their preferred restaurant.

One interesting aspect of ‘winter’ in Lesotho is that it brings on the winter gardening season. I have been developing a couple of small garden plots at our place and my cabbages, swiss chard, peas, and cauliflowers were doing great!! ‘Were’, being the operative word. I was also enjoying some long tailed little birds that began to visit our yard, though I was wondering what it was that was chewing on my flourishing cauliflower and cabbage plants. There seemed to be more and more of the little birds, and then I noticed a couple of them, down in the garden, voraciously attacking my plants. (It seems that it is not only cats that our loyal ‘guard’ dog seems indifferent to.) Then to make matters worse, on the last Saturday of April we had a severe, late season hail storm. A couple of days later, about seven of the little feathered ‘friends’ showed up just to made sure there was nothing left. It had me thinking of the plagues in Egypt.

Plague and pestilence.

Fall has also been a season to say goodbye. Our good friends and neighbors, who were also colleagues at Beautiful Gate, returned to Australia in late April. We had the privilege of accompanying them to the airport, and seeing them off. They are now taking a bit of time at home to rest, reorient, and reflect. They both talked of ‘when’ they will return to Lesotho, and hopefully their desires fit into God’s plans and we will see them back here sometime before our own time comes to say goodbye. But for now the yard is emptier, and we miss their energy and presence. And while one cannot simply replace friends, there certainly is another presence, with lots of energy, in our lives.

We are delighted to have my niece, Jillian, visiting with us. We picked her up in Johannesburg on April 25. She keeps me on my toes and she brings a lot of youthful energy. She will be helping out at Beautiful Gate a few days a week, we have plans to see some of rural Lesotho on weekends, and a trip into the Eastern Cape, including a game park and the ocean, is scheduled for June. She has settled in well, and has enjoyed meeting her internet chat friend from here in Lesotho.

Internet chat pals.

Jillian will be returning to Canada with Wendy and I when we visit home in early July. But it may be a long ten weeks for me as I am already saying there are too many women in the house, to which she and Wendy offer no sympathy whatsoever. Sigh … ☺

~ Benno ~

Treasure - Part 2

Over the years,
I have come across a saying a couple of times.
It says,
"The best things in life, aren't things."

Treasure, it comes in so many different forms. Things, possessions, ideas, experiences, memories. We had a treasure a weekend ago, the presence of a little fellow who left a treasure of delightful memories. The little guy just turned two, and he is bright and busy, VERY busy. Wendy thought we should give his mom a break, so we had him over.

Let me help with washing the car.

I can use a broom too, even in this improvised toga.
(It was hard to keep my clothes dry washing the car.)

It was a long day, and now an even longer night shirt.

A new day. H'mm, what adventure might it hold.

They could have told me not to dump sand on the car.
Sigh ..., back to washing the car ...

It was fun, and we will want to do it again, though it is always peaceful, as grandparents are want to say, when the busy little treasures return to their mothers and in their place leave behind memories to treasure.

~ Benno ~

Treasure

The last time I went to the mountain, I found someone else had been to my quiet place. My initial response was disgust at the rubbish and garbage that littered my place of solitude and contemplation. But as I drew closer I realized something different. The rubbish was not strewn about; rather it was collected into a couple of small areas. What to my eyes was rubbish, now appeared to be some child’s or children’s treasure.

Children, it seems, had visited the mountain to play. Part of their play was collecting what they could find. So what do you collect when you have no toys, no play stations, no nothing? The treasure collection included bits of dirty rags, a rusty nail, broken glass, a condom wrapper, a few tin cans, broken pieces of brick, and bits of plastic. Mountain treasure - collected and stored as part of a day of play.

Poverty. The toughest challenge for me here is seeing the daily, grinding, struggle to survive that so many face. To get to know a family is most often to come face to face with their daily struggle. After rent and childcare is paid, a mother and her two children existing on $30 Cdn per month. Another family - trying to pay the rent and keep food in their stomachs on $60 Cdn per month. The family we have ‘adopted’, essentially four adults and two children, live on about $110 Cdn per month (fortunately they have no rent costs.) But, they willingly share what little they have, having ‘adopted’ or a least assumed the care of, a relative’s baby. Now they are a family of four adults and three children living on $110 Cdn.

How does one respond? That is my recurring challenge. There is an emotional toll when not responding, letting others suffer. There is a sense of guilt looking in the fridge and knowing that the meat we bought for a barbecue with friends cost more than what many families spend on food for a week, or two, or three. What is compassion? Education offers hope for the future, but nothing for today. Help today, most often brings to light yet another need tomorrow. Do I turn away - immerse myself in the expatriate community where we don’t have need? Do I return home? Going home to Canada would avoid the agonizing effort of figuring out how to or whether to respond to yet another need. When does helping actually hinder? Should I worry about creating dependency? Multitudes of other families that I don’t know find ways to survive … or not. If I had never come, I would never have known the need.

On a previous day on the mountain I had again mused of origins. If I am just an accident, one more mutation, then as the noted physicist Steven Weinberg notes, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.”1 Or as Solomon wrote a few thousand years earlier, “Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”2 So where does that leave me. One option is to believe a seeming myth, the story, as one skeptic wrote, that

"a cosmic zombie can make you live forever, but only on the condition that you symbolically eat his flesh, and telepathically inform him you accept him as your master, all in order that he remove, from an invisible organ called a "soul" - found only in humans - an evil force that began residing there when a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree."3

Yet this ‘story’ and all it infers, referred to by Paul as a treasure held in jars of clay4, is what calls humanity to look beyond one’s self and one’s needs to serve the other. Yes, and sadly, many things done in the name of Christianity have marred and mocked this treasure, yet without it the world would be a much darker place. This story, this treasure, is what calls us to a higher place, - to service to others, “the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force [for good] instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”5

Which brings me back to my challenge. The face of poverty, up close, is not an "issue", a political problem, nor even a call to give; it is the face of another human being – a woman, a man, a girl, a child. I can turn, and walk away; or I can be used up in the struggle, trying ‘step by step’ to know and follow where my Lord, (that cosmic zombie) leads. A jar of clay, little more that rubbish when used up and broken, but bearing treasure to its world.

In the vastness of the cosmos, my existence is pointless, just a jar of clay that will return to dust. As the treasure on the mountain was rubbish to my eyes, will the treasure I gather in this life be meaningless rubbish in the light of eternity. Or will I/you follow another way, be used up and broken, spilling one treasure, to paradoxically gain another treasure, one in heaven.6

~ Benno ~

1 http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magaxine/7955846.stm?ad=1
2 Ecclesiastes 1:2
3 http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2009/02/27/tech-footprints.html (Reader comment posted 2009/02/07)
4 2 Corinthians 4:7
5 Anonymous
6 Luke 12:33; 1 Timothy 6:18,19