British Pupils’ First Impressions of Lesotho, Dances and School Opening Speeches

A few weeks ago, I went to a recently established secondary school near Teyateyaneng (TY) in Lesotho to celebrate its having gained recognition as a government school. The privilege means that the Government will pay its teachers and it can access various grants.

I have a rather tenuous connection to the school; it was set up by a friend’s cousin’s husband, who is a teacher in the UK but who spent some time in Lesotho a number of years ago.

Each year he brings out a small group of his sixth form students (usually 16 to 18 years of age) to Lesotho. Here is a link to the Foundation.

Things I was impressed with:

· The motivation of both the Basotho and British people who helped to set up the school and who have given up time and effort to run the school.

· The enthusiasm of all of the teachers (as far as I could tell, 1 Mosotho, 1 Cameroonian, 1 Ghanaian, 1 Brit*), most of whom had given up other safe posts to be part of what they felt was a well-run school with a drive to improve.

· The turn-out of the local village population to support their school (although I admit, the economist in me asked why they weren’t busy being productive).

· The Basotho pupils, who seemed to have a real drive to improve themselves and to work with the school.

· The British students, most of whom had not been in a developing country before. I was interested to know what their first impressions were of Lesotho.

o One regular response was that they thought that they thought that they would see more poverty by which they seemed to mean starving children (or food poverty).

o Another regular reply was how happy and friendly people are “despite the fact that they have nothing”.

· The Basotho and British pupils/students** for making an effort to talk to each other and mix.

· The effort put in by the pupils/students to put on dances/singing and the effort by the organisers to put on such a wonderful afternoon.

Something I was less impressed with:

· The length of the speeches. In fact, some people went on for so much longer than they should have that some of the dances that the pupils had been practicing for weeks had to be cut from the schedule to make up the time. The audience was visibly bored, but people just carried on and on and on. Why do people feel that they can dominate an occasion like that? It was a real shame as the same things were repeated over and over and over, and the speakers just didn’t seem to care about the consequences of their behaviour – just as long they get to speak to an audience, all is fine. Yes, I was quite disappointed by that behaviour...

To end on a positive note though, everyone was very friendly and very accommodating and the afternoon, overall, went wonderfully well.

* There are some concerns that now the school falls under the Government umbrella, the non-Basotho teachers will no longer get paid. Despite this risk to their jobs, they were all genuinely pleased that the school had achieved this recognition.

** I am using ‘pupils’ for those before sixth form and ‘student’ for those in sixth form.