After Awareness

At the beginning of this month, I was fortunate enough to travel to Lesotho for the first time with the Springfield Rotary. As a Wittenberg student, I was very familiar with the country through the stories of my friends who had traveled there during service trips in the summer. I watched many come back changed with a new outlook on life after just one month in the country. But even though I heard all the stories, I was completely unprepared for the influence this trip would have on me. And in fact, I am still having trouble putting into words exactly how it is that I am changed.

            

Above all, the trip made me aware of so many issues that go unnoticed or ignored in my daily life. I learned what the term “economic disparity” actually means for our country as well as abroad. The question came up throughout the trip of why we should put our efforts into helping other countries when there are people right here in the U.S. experiencing extreme poverty. I myself thought about this a lot. I believe it’s so important for us to give back to the communities we live in, and contribute our own assets to the growth of own neighborhoods. But this trip showed me that I am also a part of a global community. The people of Lesotho are also my neighbors. Kaofela rea tsoana. We are all the same.

With children after a hike in Roma, Lesotho

The second half of our trip, we traveled down toward Capetown, stopping to go on safari, hiking up to the lighthouse at Cape Point, and taking the boat out to Seal Island. The transition from being a visitor in Lesotho to a tourist in South Africa was one of the strangest and most eye-opening aspects of the trip. And for me, it solidified the global awareness I felt I had gained through my experience.

            

But I think the biggest feeling I’ve experienced is this question of, what now? What comes after awareness? At times in Lesotho, and during our time in South Africa, I was overwhelmed by the poverty and the inequality that exists there. How do we even begin to combat a problem this big? And how do we do it from so far away? I think that part of the challenge of international service is communicating the story of Lesotho to the people back home. Raising awareness is the first part of my job now that I’ve had the opportunity to travel there myself and become acutely aware of the poverty in this country. But we also have an opportunity to go one step further.

On our last day in Lesotho, we visited the high school in Maseru to meet the newly formed Interact Club there. During our meeting, a boy named Theko performed a poem for us that he had written himself. In it, he told us about his life, how both of his parents were lost and described in detail what a life on the streets means for the youth in Lesotho. Hard work and long hours for little pay is the most many youth in Lesotho can hope to achieve. Theko told us the very things that we hear every day but still don’t seem to know about—children waiting for leftovers on the street with no home to go to at the end of the day and no one to care for them when they get sick. But despite these odds, the last stanza of his poem was filled with hope:

Damn it, it’s okay.

It’s okay with me being a resist

But one thing for sure

I will step on stones that

Haters throw at me

Till I make it to the top

And show future what I will hold for it

Because it’s not what the future holds for me,

But what I hold for it.

Theko, standing left of his teacher, at his High School

The last lines of this poem show a spirit in the Basotho that is just waiting to bloom. Theko has the power to change not only his future, but the future of his community. I think that Theko is a minority in the sense that his hope is at the surface. Many of the kids in Lesotho still need to be empowered, to be given the tools and the chance to change their futures. Hidden under the gravity of each of their situations is the strength they need to change it. This is where we can help. After awareness comes our ability to equip youth like Theko with the resources they need to be the change in Lesotho and uncover the possibilities of a brighter future.

Khotso,

Catie 

Catie Stipe is finishing her senior year at Wittenberg University, and visited Lesotho in March 2012.