Dear Family and Friends,
This part Southern Africa just can’t seem to get a break. The rains simply won’t stop. Everyone here says they have never seen this much rain in their lives. In Church last week the congregation was praying for the rain to stop! This is unprecedented. At every service I’ve been to for the past two years the prayers have been for rain. “Be careful what you wish for”, has gained a whole new significance.
The road (if you could call it a road – a track really) to this village is now entirely washed out. Not even 4×4s can get within several kilometers of the village. I’ve had to do a lot of village to village traveling these last few weeks and every trip has been a very wet adventure. There is one area that is a series of sandstone rocks that has to be climbed either up or down to get to and from a neighboring village. It is no a waterfall that must be scaled. To say I’ve been getting wet is such an understatement. Yesterday I rode Lance to a meeting in Mate. We had to cross a river. I gave him his head and balanced with my feet up on the saddle. The water came over his stomach but my brave horse kept his footing and we didn’t have to swim. Just my trailing skirt got wet. The ever-watching villagers ululated and clapped when we reached the other side. Sometimes this job is really fun!
But the rain is exacting a terrible toll on the fragile economy here. Some crops are rotting in the fields. It’s time for the corn and sorghum to be drying out for harvest but it just keeps raining. Our winter vegetable fields, which lie in lowland close to the river, were completely washed out just after planting. We lost every seed and every seedling and had to spend valuable resources replanting. At the moment they are OK.
Here’s the worst part. The group that determines where the UNWFP food will be delivered –a totally corrupt group of officials collectively called the DMC (disaster management committee) just issued the edict that because northern Lesotho has been getting such wonderful rain, we have no more need for food deliveries – they are diverting our food elsewhere. My guess is into somebody’s pocket. Without even visiting our projects to determine the consequences of this decision they gave us 30 days notice. This is such a disaster for our projects. The 95 families that are fed by the UNWFP work projects are the poorest of the poor. Either they don’t have fields to plant or they didn’t have money to buy seeds for their fields or they are too old or sick to do the grueling labor that farming their land requires. We have an additional 57 families that are caring for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) that we’ve finally, after months of negotiations been able to get onto a UNWFP program for food aid and they too are now cut off. This DMC decision spells potential starvation for many of these good people.
I’ve just sent a letter to the head of the UNWFP protesting this decision. I wrote it but it was signed by the Member of Parliament for this area, the chairman of the Menkhoaneng Community Development Association and several chiefs. I’m hoping it will make a difference. As Peace Corps volunteers we are supposed to avoid any political involvement but this situation is testing my resolve to remain politically neutral. I have good friends at the newspapers that I would like to ask to write an expose on the DMC. We’ll see. The DMC is the same group that allowed 400 50kgt bags of cornmeal to rot in a warehouse because they had spent the funds for delivery on “workshops” at a posh resort in South Africa. This was during the time that we were pleading for help and being told there was no food available –a time when we were burying adult corpses weighing 80 pounds.
On the positive side, what we’re doing in face of these recent challenges is planting winter vegetables like mad. There are still lots of good fields. We’ve ceased work on the cultural village and every able-bodied man, woman and child is working on expanding our community-cooperative gardens. If the winter is mild we should have cabbage, swiss chard, beets and a type of spinach that is tough and resilient to cold. We are also buying all the excess corn and sorghum from those lucky farmers who’ve escaped the floods to help get the poorest of the poor through the coming winter months. We’ve received some generous contributions to the American Friends Fund lately and the Association is doing an admirable and intelligent job is allocating the money wisely. No one has starved to death in this or the surrounding villages for over a year now and our goal is to maintain that record. The steely determination of these good villagers to protect those in need in their community is very inspiring. It spurs my efforts to bang on the doors
of those in power.
The Village Association has applied for another PCV to replace me when I leave in July. I’m so hoping they get one. There are so many more applicants than there are volunteers. Really, the Peace Corps should be a much bigger organization. Do you know the annual budget for the entire global operation is somewhere around $350 million? We spend that in less than a week in Iraq.
I recently attended an all-volunteer conference in Maseru. The session on “best practices” made me so proud to be an American. The work that my fellow PCVs are doing here is making a real difference. You’d be astounded and proud of their accomplishments – computer labs, orphanages, traveling puppet shows to teach children about AIDS, income generating projects like pig farms and craft shops – it’s just wonderful. In this little country, where the Peace Corps has been active for almost 40 years, everyone loves Americans. They see us as helpful and generous and peaceful. In many ways this is a very comfortable place to be.
And on that note I’ll close with love from the quite soggy heart of Africa,
Peggi
By Dr. Stacey Francis, Smart Women’s Café Contributing Expert
