Voices of Basotho Youth

When I joined Peace Corps, I knew that writing, for reflection, stress-relief, and documentation, would be an important part of my service. What I didn't anticipate, was that the writing would not always necessarily be my own...

As anyone who has ever been a PCV can tell you, the idea of putting such an intense array of emotions, memories, challenges, and joys down on paper can be a daunting task. Seemingly impossible, in fact. I journal and blog, compile little snippets of my thoughts and experiences, but the ability to convey an overall sense of my journey in Lesotho still escapes me. I wonder if I'll ever be able to describe it.

Yet the longer I've worked with youth in Ha Selomo, the more I've come to realize that I am telling the wrong stories. If I want to truly convey my own experience in Lesotho, then the story isn't just my own... It also belongs to my kids.

My work and life in Lesotho seems so intimately entangled and invested in the lives, futures, and dreams of my kids (both at school and in my village) that their experiences have, in a sense, become my own. Their problems are what keep me awake at night. Their successes are what I celebrate. Their sorrow and loses are what I mourn, and then struggle to come to terms with. Their world view is the one that I am attempting to learn from and understand. It took me a while to realize that theirs are the stories that I want to help send into the world... Theirs are the voices that are rarely heard or validated.

So this past August, I began collecting short stories, poetry, and art work from youth of all ages, in the hopes of eventually creating a publishable book! It's my small attempt to encapsulate some small part of what it means to be a young person in Lesotho... To, rather than leave a legacy in Lesotho, allow my kids to leave one for the world.

And it has turned out to be a greater blessing than I ever could have imagined...

For one, it has given me the opportunity to get to know so many youth, that I might otherwise never have spent one-on-one time with... Some of the writers are my high school students, but others are young adults, fresh out of school and facing an uncertain future and impossible job market. Others are primary school children, evidence that languages and cultures may differ but the joys and delights of childhood are universal. Some are struggling through impossible situations: family's with no money for food or young women in abusive relationships. Children who can never say aloud that AIDS robbed them of their parents, but for whom whispers still follow them everywhere. A 16 year-old mother, who has already known the grief of burying a child; a young man forced to herd animals, rather than attend school.

The intimate thoughts, stories, and secrets they have placed in my trust, have nearly instantaneously endeared every single one of them to me, in a way I'd never anticipated. As I watch them write, think, and struggle to find words (often in a foreign language) to describe their experiences and world view, I can see them also desperately searching to give voice to something more important... Each story is absolutely unique, both in topic and perspective, but they all ring of a common message, to my ears:

They say, "Don't forget us. Don't forget us... We also belong to this world."

I know that these youth have something to say that deserves to be celebrated, forgiven, or merely acknowledged by this world... And that is all the motivation I will ever need.

With Love from Lesotho... Mary E.