Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Our world isn’t so very big after all


Matseliso Ma-Tlali Mapetla speaks at Gonzaga University on Thursday  about sustainability in Africa.  
 (Jed Conklin / The Spokesman-Review)
Pia K. Hansen The Spokesman-Review

Anyone who’s lived in Spokane for more than a couple of years is familiar with the low degree of separation people have around here.

After a while you just take for granted that everyone is second cousins or went to school with your best friend or worked with your dad, or all of the above.

Enter Matseliso Ma-Tlali Mapetla, a visiting scholar from the Institute of Southern African Studies in Roma, Lesotho.

Passing through on her way to Vancouver, B.C., to present a paper at a leadership conference, Mapetla stopped at Gonzaga University and gave a presentation on the challenges to sustainable leadership in her country.

Curious about anything Lesotho-related, mainly because I spent a month there as a mentor of female reporters last year, I meet Mapetla for coffee at Starbucks on Hamilton.

News in Lesotho hasn’t changed much: Mapetla told me about the proliferation of HIV/AIDS, of poverty, of climate and environmental concerns,and some instability after the last election.

“People are being dissatisfied with the government delivery rate,” said Mapetla. “The government is trying to do the best it can, but sometimes the government’s priority doesn’t match the people’s priority. The government doesn’t always go back and ask the people what they want.”

I smiled and said sometimes it’s the same way in this country.

“What did you do in Lesotho?” she asked.

“I volunteered at the Public Eye Newspaper in Maseru,” I said – and Mapetla looked at me over her narrow glasses.

“Do you know Halitso?” she asked, and that’s when we have a Spokane moment that spans the globe.

Halitso was an intern at the Public Eye when I was there.

I remember a smart and sassy, yet somewhat protected, girl with a definite gift for writing.

“She’s now at the University of Cape Town, she’s studying mass media and communication,” said Mapetla. “Her parents are friends of mine.”

It’s hard to believe and it’s not.

Feeling like new best friends, but short on time, we reluctantly return to her business of research and mine of interviewing.

“We are looking at social protection,” Mapetla said. “We have so many new orphans who were robbed of their parents’ assets.” Children are most often orphaned because of HIV/AIDS, and once their parents die the family typically claims any assets, leaving the children with nothing. It’s estimated that there are 100,000 orphans in Lesotho out of a population of 1.8 million.

Later, during her presentation, Mapetla pointed out the generational gap almost all of Africa is experiencing: There are lots of children and old people, but the middle generations are dying out.

“My neighbor died, people in my family die, all from HIV/AIDS,” she said.

The rate of infection is about 30 percent, even in the youngest groups.

“I don’t know,” she added, “how someone 10 years old gets HIV/AIDS.”

Infection at birth and prostitution come to mind.

Like so many other developing countries, Lesotho depends heavily on foreign aid.

“My prime minister was just here shaking hands with Condoleezza Rice accepting a $362.5 million grant, and I want to say thank you,” Mapetla said. The grant is for the construction of a dam, creating 12,000 jobs and furthering Lesotho’s business of selling water from the highlands to the Republic of South Africa.

Of course, the grant comes with conditions – and that’s where Lesotho and many other developing countries fall short; they get the grants, but they can’t meet the deadlines along the way.

Last year, Lesotho was one of the developing nations that returned most foreign aid grants, often because competing branches of government – the local chief, the parliament member, the aid organization – can’t collaborate.

“If you speak well, you go into politics, but most times our politicians are illiterate,” Mapetla said.

On the local government level, 58 percent of representatives are women, “but they don’t have a strong unified voice, they are not empowered and they are not heard,” Mapetla said, adding that Basotho culture and politics don’t mix well. “Our culture says that you will not allow women in charge of natural resources.”

It’s freezing cold when I leave Jundt Auditorium, heading across campus toward my car. And I think of the women I met in Lesotho and how hard they worked, and the men I met and how little they did.

If I could have my way tomorrow, all foreign aid would be left in the hands of African women. They are the ones doing the hard labor anyhow, the ones with the egg circles and the grocery clubs, the ones who haul the water, take in the orphans and preserve the indigenous knowledge that makes it possible for people to survive in that sometimes harsh, mountainous country. And I send Mapetla all my best thoughts, hoping that I’ll see her again – in Lesotho.