Delivering Hope

Sights and Sounds

Posted by Phil Andrews

Behold some of Rob's multimedia work from the Delivering Hope assignment.

A special section on the assignment also forms part of today's Mercury.

Back, but not back.

It's been a few weeks since I shared my thoughts on this site. My last post was from the parking lot of the Motebang Hospital in Hlotse, Lesotho - the wireless hot-spot that proved to be a lifesaver for me in my reporting and blogging work. Had that Wi-Fi not been available, I'm not quite sure how I would have gone about filing stories and photographs. My one experience on the trip of having to find an Internet cafe in a remote area was a bit nerve-racking, and involved driving a fair distance on a dark road populated with an ungodly number of goats who claimed an unreasonable lordship over territories immediately along the side of the road. How I avoided a goat slaughter continues to baffle me. 
I've avoided revisiting this blog until now mostly out of some persistent sense of grief and loss, I think. I've been too sad to share. My mind has been sort of out-of-it, swimming in a fog of low-level depression, reverse culture shock and something like homesickness for Lesotho. I didn't expect these feelings, but now I understand better what Anne-Marie Zajdlik felt when she returned from her first two visits to the country and found her Canadian life shockingly different. 
 My return to Canada was a tough one, and the mental and emotional weight that assailed me a couple of days after getting home to Guelph on Sept. 5 was something I had never really experienced before. My managing editor, Phil Andrews, told me to stay home for a few days and rest. I spent most of that time sleeping, and seemed unable to find clarity in what I was feeling. I just felt low, out-of-sorts, and there was nothing much that could pick me up.
 Lesotho was one of those places on Earth where I felt at my best - firing on all cylinders, being daily challenged, experiencing daily adventures. I loved the people. The people were truly loveable! A part of me wanted to live in such a place, stay there. I know, Canada is a wonderful country and a privileged country. But there is a standoffish character to Canadian culture, a reservation in the Canadian personality, that has always kind of bugged me, or made me feel somewhat repressed. It's like you can't just say hello to anyone you meet on the street and expect a warm smile and enlivening hello in return. In Lesotho, you can. If you are warm, they are warm. You smile, they smile.
  So coming back was hard. My first couple of weeks back in the newsroom were particularly challenging. Still with the low-level depression and sense of lose and homesickness, I tried to dive back into my Lesotho experience and do good work. It was a grind. The witty and bawdy banter that characterizes a daily's newsroom, which I normally get a huge rise out of and enjoy participating in, was rubbing me the wrong way because of my mood. And revisiting all of those heavenly spots in the Lesotho landscape, those beautiful faces on the streets, those gorgeous children in the orphanages...It all hit me hard.
In fact, the experience of reporting on Lesotho once I got home was much harder than reporting on Lesotho from Lesotho. I felt constantly upbeat in Africa, and downbeat at home.
But I'm getting my mojo back. This week I'm being eased back into the daily rotation of the newsroom, and it feels good. The 5,000 word feature for the Delivering Hope special section, which comes out in just under two weeks, is done, along with a feature length piece on a South African woman who was able to build a new home from her Bracelet of Hope craft earnings. And there is a long, first-person narrative, and a nice chunky feature on Zajdlik's experience in Lesotho. The writing, for now, is done, and my daily reporting is about to reignite.
It's good to be home, but it was just as good to be away. I'm still caught between worlds. I still long for Lesotho.     

One last note from Lesotho.

This will likely be my last dispatch from Lesotho. Tomorrow morning we start back to Durban, from there to Johannesburg. We fly out Saturday afternoon for Toronto.
 
I've really enjoyed the blogging experience very much. I'm a novice at it, having learned the day before leaving Canada for Africa. My only regret is I didn't learn quite enough to be able to respond to the comments visitors to this site made. I appreciated them a great deal and thank you all for responding.

  The hat knitting man. This guy made his fortune off me. The one on his head? I own it now.

  I'm not sure how I'll ever find the words to thank the fine people at the Mercury who gave me this opportunity, took a risk and showed such trust in me. To managing editor Phil Andrews, city editor Brian Williams, and all my colleagues who were writing about Guelph's efforts to fight HIV/AIDS in Lesotho long before I came to work at the paper, I thank you all very much.
  Once back in Guelph I have to reload and write a staggering number of stories (I exaggerate) for an upcoming special publication in the Guelph Mercury. And I will continue, for a time, to contribute insights and experiences to this blog. We'll talk.

  Last chance for BBQ chicken heads and feet. Mmm...

Old and very much alone.

  Things can happen very spontaneously here – especially if you have access to a vehicle.       
  This morning, Sister Charity, one of the nuns here who we have become friends with, asked if I would like to come with her and another nun to visit a very old woman. She tried to explain that the woman is so old that she must crawl to get around her tiny, one room hut (known as a rondavel), but I couldn’t get her meaning. So she got down on her hands and knees, and her meaning was clear. I agreed to drive them to see the old women, who are helped by the convent.

  I suspect Mamolahlehi Sekhonyana, 99, is one of the oldest people in Lesotho.

  We picked up Sister Malefu at the Motebang Hospital – well, the pick-up was supposed to be at Motebang, but Sister Malefu decided to fetch some ice-cream before we arrived and when Sister Charity went into the hospital to find her, she was gone.
  “We go,” Sister Charity said, once back in the van. She was steamed. “She said she would be here and she is not! Oh, so angry.”
  As we left the hospital, Sister Malefu was seen crossing the road, hurriedly, in our direction. Sister Charity gave her a piece of her mind, and then the two laughed about the minor incident as we drove off down the Butha Buthe highway.  I’ve found that these ‘hurry up and wait’ situations are a common occurrence here.
  They directed me down a back road on the edge of Hlotse, a road that would have taken the entire undercarriage out of my car, and nearly did the same with the big Toyota van Andy rented in Durban for the ground trip.

  Charity left, Malefu right.

  The path took us to the rondavel of Mamolahlehi Sekhonyana, born in 1910. She may well be the oldest person in Lesotho. She lives along, and for the past four years she had crawled to get around her room. Her legs are just no good anymore. She has family nearby. Her son buys her simple supplies. She can only eat soft foods – there is just one tooth left in her mouth. She likes to drink tea.

  I gave Sister Charity a bit of money for the son, so he could use it to buy necessities. Sister Charity is feisty and very direct, and she assured me that no beer would be bought with the money. Men do so love their beer here. The old woman has an agreement with the St. Saviour’s Convent to make a list of the things her son buys and present a receipt for those purchases.
  I followed the nun into the neighbouring rondavel where she was to present the money to the son. “Camera!” she said, wanting to capture the moment.
  As it also seems to fluidly happen here, one visit flows into another, or agendas are disclosed along the way. “Would you mind we see one more old woman?” Sister Malefu asked. “Not at all,” I said.
  They directed me up the side of a hill, taking another undercarriage scraping road, where a blind old woman lives alone in a hut just like Mamolahlehi’s – just a bed, next to no possessions, no carpets on the floor, only a few plastic or tin pales holding one knows not what.
  Soon after we arrived, Lipuo Mphanya, born 1939, told us about how she was raped in 2007, how she cried out and tried to fight back, but it is hard for an old, blind woman to fight back, she said through Sister Malefu. I watched as the nuns conversed and laughed with her, comforted her and assured her they would pray for her and come back soon.

 
   

More images from a final walkabout.

 A lot of men seem to start drinking beer fairly early in the day. Beer before noon is not so unusual. We discovered a young man dancing in a market bar, breaking off some of the best dance moves I've seen in a long time. Luckily I had my video camera and capture some footage. I'll start learning the steps as soon as I get home.

What we call the 'corn-row' hair style back home is very popular here among women. There are numerous salons where the procedure is done, and the results are incredibly artful.

Sister Charity of St. Saviour's Convent took us on a brief tour of the convent's facilities this morning. We were introduced to the woman who runs a thriving communion wafer operation, supplying the flour-based wafers to denominations throughout the Leribe District.

  The young sister Charity and one of the oldest residences of St. Saviour's Anglican Convent.

The convent's coal bin.

  A man bags coal at the coal yard. Coal is widely used in Lesotho to heat homes.

   A woman in her sun hat. She was washing clothes outside her home.

A Last Walk Through Hlotse.

  We leave Lesotho bright and early tomorrow morning, making our way first to Durban, South Africa, then to Johannesburg, fly to Washington, D.C. and then home. I don't want to leave, but I also want to be home. I miss my wife, my colleagues, my favourite coffee shop and baseball. I'm torn.
  I am making a commitment to myself to return to Lesotho in the not too distant future. I have friends here now, people whose lives I want to follow.

Gosphine Mohlomi, 26, and Gift Mofokeng, 21, prepare chicken feet, a local street meat favourite.

  Philip Maher and I both have colds today. His is in the advanced stages, mine just beginning. I am convinced that the stress of driving up into the mountains yesterday made me physically vulnerable to a cold bug. But despite my fears upon leaving Canada that I might catch some dreadful illness here, I have been in excellent health throughout the entire stay. No traveler's diarrhea, no cholera, no hepatitis, no food poisoning.  Maybe I didn't need those six vaccinations afterall.

  Philip and I - the two white photographers - took our final walkabout town this morning. We remarked, with wonder and amazement, at the fact that we have encountered hundreds of people here and not once was a single one of them angry, unkind or impatient. People here have huge problems and struggles, there is no doubt about that. It's a male dominated society, and the conditions for women certainly aren't fair, local women have told me. But there is an underlying happiness here that is undeniable. It would take a much longer immersion in the culture to understand why.

  You'll never guess what this woman is making. Give up? It's a communion wafer operation.

We meandered through the market. I checked in on my hat knitting man. I have made him a small fortune during my stay here, buying up his hats as fast as he can make them. I'll give them away as gifts. In fact, a few days ago a quite unkempt man in a tiny village, who was wearing with a floppy hat and carrying a tradition Basotho walking stick, approached me and offered to trade his battered hat for my brand new knitted one. "It's a deal!" I said, and we exchanged. He was transformed, and went about proudly, a man about town showing off his new hat. I washed his when I got home.

  This stylish lady had chickens for sale in the market, and insisted I take her picture.

People love having their picture taken here, but most of them don't understand the whole phenomenon of digital photography. Some ask for money to take their pictures, others want you send them a copy, but most are willing just to pose and let you "shot, shot!" The next time I come, I am going to bring a small photographic printer so I can run off some copies and give them to the subject. Philip and I think there might be an entrepreneurial opportunity here a street photographer.

A dressmaker at work. She is wearing a traditional formal dress.

 

Getting high...really, really high.

Lesotho is known as the Mountain Kingdom, and it would be a shame to come here and not get high, really high up in the mountains that are visible in the distance to the east of Hlotse. This morning, Philip, Andy and I took to the Pitseng road yet again, sped beyond and began our ascent.

There are a few driving conditions that cause me trepidation. Highway 401 west out of Toronto in rush hour is one, and driving through mountain roads is another. I never used to be afraid of heights. When I was a kid, no tree or lookout tower was too tall that it couldn't be scaled. But now, I have a touch of vertigo, especially when peering over the side of narrow strip of blacktop and seeing a sharp drop of hundreds of meters. I just can't help thinking of tumbling over and down in a fiery crash.

Life is much more sparse, and subsistence farming much more of a reality in the highlands, where we saw large trucks delivering bean seeds for the sowing season, and where goat and sheep herding was the predominant occupation.
Our destination was the Katse Dam, a spectacular mountain top reservoir and concrete dam that generates power for the country and regulates the water supply. But after climbing steep grades in second gear for far too many kilometers, and taking one too many mortifying glances down into the mountain gorges, we decided to turn back, with our lives intact.
This three hour trip held some of the most jaw-dropping natural beauty I've ever seen, and the most stressful driving conditions I've ever undertaken.

Orphans in the night.

AIDS has killed over 200,000 people in Lesotho. Most of them were working age people, the parents of small children. There are now thousands of orphans in country, hundreds in the Hlotse area alone.

  In a country ravaged by HIV and by staggering levels of unemployment, the culture’s traditional social safety nets are in tatters. Not long ago, orphans would be absorbed into families, unquestioningly. Now, there is such a scarcity of financial resources that many families simply can’t cope with another hungry mouth to feed. The situation is simply depressing.

Earlier today, the Guelph delegation was accompanied by Sr. Charity and Sr. Dineo of the St. Saviours Anglican Convent to a building on the edge of town where orphans are giving a simple, but filling dinner on weekdays. A plump and loving woman named Aletta had prepared massive loaves of bread and a colander of soup. The children had yet to arrive.
 
Philip Maher and I drove back to the Swaales program as night fell. We met dozens for children, their clothes dirty and in tatters, hurriedly and hungrily eating the food Aletta prepared.
As in any situation here involving children, they will swarm your camera whenever you aim it, pose, smile or act up.
Of all things sad about this country, the orphan situation is far and away the most heartbreaking.

 

Images from a heavenly hike in a heartbreaking land.

  Philip Maher and I were out of the convent door by 6:30 this morning, heading for a small hut in a valley in the Pitseng London area, about a half an hour from Hltose. There, Philip was scheduled to photograph a children that is being assisted in her education by Help Lesotho. The little girl has lost her parents and lives with her auntie in the mud hut. She was one of my creative writing students at Help Lesotho's centre in Pitseng a few days ago.
  I had the morning to myself, wandered off and spend a couple of hours hiking out of the valley and into the village of Pitseng.
  While I was warned before coming that Lesotho is in the winter season, spring has definitely arrived during our time here. The peach and apricot blossoms are bursting and the past couple of days have been quite hot. Breathing is laboured in the high altitude.

 The landscape is so intensely beautiful that after spending an extended period of time in it one feels overloaded with beauty. And at every turn there is another striking Basotho man, woman or children whose image must be captured.

  With my Canadian timidity fairly intact, I walked into opened doors, down back roads, up lane-ways and into yards, expecting at every turn to be greeted with some measure of hostility or warning to stay clear, some sharp inquiry as to what I am doing there. It just never happens. People are friendly, inviting and curious no matter where I walk. I smile, they smile. I wave, they wave.

  I strayed into a guest-house building to catch this picture of a boy watching parrots in a cage.

  Matlotsiso Mootsangane works at a Pitseng London shop with one pool table and three video games.

 The view through homes in rural Pitseng.

  Pitseng window.

   Pitseng Village.

  The more one experiences this magnificent country and its beautiful people, the more intolerable it becomes to think that so many of these people will die from AIDS, and so much of this culture is threatened by the disease.

A rich man with very hairy arms.

  I have extremely hairy arms, funny looking glasses and extremely poor eyesight, a bit of a pot-belly and untold riches and happiness, according to the children of Hlotse.
  I conducted my third creative writing workshop with school children in the Leribe District today, and this time I was the writing subject. In a classroom at the Help Lesotho offices in Hlotse this afternoon about 20 bright and eager students gathered to learn a little about how to tell a good story using the power of observation and the magic of the imagination.
  As in my previous workshop, I had the children observe and describe as many details in their immediate  environment as possible. Then I sat in front of the class and asked the children to describe me and invent a life for me based on their observations and feelings about who I might be.
  The results were exciting, loads of fun and insightful. Many of the children assumed that I was rich – that I owned a large home and two cars, and that I had many children who were all very happy. Perhaps they were projecting on to me their own dreams.
  I assured them that, by Canadian standards, I was far from rich and that my house was quite tiny, but that I did have relatively happy children in my life.
  One of the girls made an intuitive leap about my relationship with my son, saying that I likely had a lot of fun with him and a very warm friendship. She assumed this based on my happy disposition. She was dead on.  
  My hairy arms garnered numerous descriptors, as did my wedding ring. Many tweaked on to the fact that was married and imagined that my wife was very beautiful, very kind and very proud of me. They were surprisingly accurate.
  But on the subject of my physical condition there were contradictory points of view. Some described me as “not too fat and not too thin,” while others seemed to think I was an accomplished athlete but with a gut. And many seemed deeply concerned about the state of my eyesight, given that I wear a huge pair of black glasses. I assured them that back home in Guelph, my glasses are a fashion statement and “very cool.” They were suitably impressed, and laughed in chorus.
The children were truly enthused by the exercise, laughed and smiled throughout, and seemed to learn a few lessons about how to see what is around you, and how to let you inner creative writing voice flow onto the page.