I am blessed to have incredible friends in Lesotho. On a daily basis, my Peace Corps family is absolutely critical to my emotional health and happiness... From the moment we boarded the plane at JFK Airport, they were my support system. Friendships came easily and unbidden because we were on this crazy adventure together, whether we liked it or not! :) Given this, it may be surprising to hear that the most rewarding relationships that I have in Lesotho are not with other Americans... They are with Basotho.
Nine months into my service, I consider myself blessed to have built 2 or 3 strong Basotho friendships. This may seem like a pathetic boast to most, but it's not to me. It's important and truly meaningful. Its meaningful because its not a given or guarantee that when you join Peace Corps you will be successful at forging lasting relationships with host country nationals. Its difficult to create true friendships in a country where you don't speak the primary language, and where cultural differences can sometimes make it seem like you have very little in common with people.
A few of my friends and colleagues!
Me, Rethabile, Hente, and Ernie.
I'm incredibly happy and comfortable living in Ha Selomo. So it's sometimes difficult to understand how, while everyone in my region knows OF me, very few Basotho KNOW me. I sometimes wonder if any of my neighbors ever ask themselves what it feels like for me to live 8000 miles from home. If the man who screams "Lekhooa!" at me from the street ever wondered what I like to do in my free time, or how many siblings I have. If my colleagues, who know me as the "Math and Science" teacher, realize that I wrote my Anthropology Master's Dissertation on "Embodied Experiences of Pain During Childbirth." If the children that ko-ko at my door realize that, up until a few months ago, I had never been (or necessarily wanted to be) a teacher. People know 'Me' Limpho, the lekhooa teacher that lives in Ha Selomo. They rarely take the time to get to know Mary Beth Bird, the Army Bratt, who loves Jane Austen novels and inner-tubing down the Maury River with her family every summer. It’s just a fact of living here: Building cross-cultural friendships can be difficult.
Yet as challenging as these relationships can be, they are unbelievably rewarding. Take the case of my friend, ‘Me’ Makabelo… 'Me' and I have been friends since my PST, where she was one of my Sesotho teachers who lived in Makola with us trainees. She's an English high school teacher and part-time seamstress, who lives in Maseru with her husband and three kids. She’s a wonderful person, and her fluency in English and worldly attitude allowed us to quickly become fast friends. She's been a constant source of support and guidance for me ever since.
During PST, modeling our new seschweschwe that ‘Me’ made! Zoe, Me, Me Makabelo, Kim, and Amanda
Yet when I decided to visit her and her family for a long weekend over winter break, I'll admit that I was a little apprehensive. I was incredibly excited to see her and meet her family, but I was also nervous that my visit would put her family "on-edge" or make them uncomfortable... That’s because I often feel that the "honored guest" status I am sometimes given puts up a wall between me and my Basotho hosts/friends. It's a difficult line to walk, between respect for their desire to welcome me properly and with respect, and the intimacy of informality and friendship. There always seems to be this pesky apprehension- Fear of doing or saying something wrong, wanting to make the other person comfortable, but not knowing how. It seems an inevitable initial awkwardness anytime I visit a Basotho friend for a meal or afternoon. But this was going to be more than that… I was going to be in her family’s personal space (without my own to escape to) for a long weekend. It was going to be a new “cultural” experience. To be honest, I didn’t know what our friendship would be afterwards.
As it turns out, however, my apprehension was completely misplaced. From the moment I walked into their house in Matsieng, I was treated like family. It was an experience that was truly refreshing compared to previous encounters with Basotho families (even, at times, my own host family.) I felt absolutely at home with them. ‘Me’s youngest daughter, Lily, entertained me endlessly with demonstrations of "how clever she was," we went to church, cooked, curled up in bed with popcorn and movies, went on long walks, and talked for hours on end. It was an incredible weekend, and by the end of it, I could tell that 'Me' and I had really strengthened our friendship. I felt absolutely blessed that she and her family had welcomed me with open arms, and I could tell that my coming to visit meant a lot to her. And best of all… I got to spend the weekend as "Mary Beth," and being able to be myself with a Basotho friend meant the world to me. It was a wholly new experience for me in Lesotho.
So on my way home, I found myself thinking a lot about why my friendship with 'Me' Makabelo means so much to me... I have lots of friends here, but my relationship with her makes me feel something different than my Peace Corps friends. And then it occurred to me... Building my friendship with her gives me faith. Being friends with Americans is easy for me. Its a given. It comes naturally, without thought or reservation. But my friendship with her, while it did develop organically, might never have happened. It might not have happened if we both hadn't been people who look beyond stereotypes and our own comfort zones. It wouldn't have happened if we both weren't open to accepting different world views. Our relationship is built on empathy, humility, and desiring to understand someone who was raised in a very different social, cultural, and economic environment. At it's base is a mutual respect for human difference.
So building Basotho friendships gives me faith in humanity. It gives me faith that building cross-cultural bridges really is possible, whether in international policy, global healthcare, or peace building operations. And beyond that, I can honestly attest that I feel like my life is enriched for having cross-cultural friendships. I’m a better person for having people in my life, that I trust, who have a very different way of looking at the world. Through them, I get to experience a whole new dimension of everything. That makes my life here in Lesotho immeasurably richer and more meaningful… These friendships are possible because of the things that bind us as humans. They exist in spite of the things that set cultures apart. That gives me faith.
With Love from Lesotho… –Mary E.
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