To Our L2L Volunteers and Anyone Wanting to Understand Lesotho:
Here’s a link to an article I hope you will find interesting. It was
written by Mark Behle, the Lesotho Evangelical Church (LEC) missionary who has been helping arrange LEC
vehicles to take all our hardware, gear, and people to Kokobe Primary (an LEC school).
The article’s about Advent, but in it he talks about always having to wait
to accomplish anything in Lesotho: http://globalministries.org/news/africa/the-thorn-of-advent-1.html
I’m not into the religious side of this, but I hope you will take the
general message to heart. Sometimes, coming from our fast paced world, when we go to Lesotho to help, we’re in a rush to get there and get things
done. But if you truly want to appreciate the people of
Lesotho, allow yourself the time to stop “moving” and absorb the
pace of THEIR life. It is very enlightening.
Without an understanding of
both the drawbacks and the wonders of this “waiting,” you will never truly
understand the Basotho.
So, schedule yourself an “I'm going to do ABSOLUTELY
nothing for a day” day. Watch, listen, and absorb the here and now, and don't permit yourself to accomplish a single thing for a whole day.
Unfortunately, you can’t fully understand this aspect
of Basotho life in one quick trip. It takes years to truly appreciate it. But I do hope you’ll give it a try, because ironically, if you
slow down, the Basotho will take you more seriously, and in the end, you’ll
accomplish much more for them.
- Janissa
