Letsema

I participated in something known as Letsema, which is essentially a day when the village gets together does work for a school for the morning and then gets fed. I work at two different schools, each with its own personality. This particular school was in desperate need of repair, due mostly to a lack of maintenance. Funding may have been different before 1994, but now there is money for that, it just is spent on ‘Transport and Catering’ which to me seems at times to be a slush fund when teachers attend conferences or anything remotely related to school business. Fortunately we’ve now decided to have some policy for reimbursements, such as a per kilometer fee, etc.

But back to this lovely event called Letsema. It kind of reminds me of Habitat for Humanity in the states, as in we do manual labor, cleaning, painting, building, and get fed. This particular Letsema was bigger than most because in was the one selected by the district, so the entire Area Project Office (think School District size, except bigger) was there and the school was demarcated with flags, advertising the Letsema.

Work was done all morning and then there were a series of speeches from a town councilor, the village chief, the principal, among others. It was great to see everyone out there supporting the school.

However of note was how little work was done. Yes, the school’s taps were replaced, the classrooms cleaned, and a wall was painted, but it all seemed more symbolic than actually helpful. As far as the wall went, we only painted one small side of the three buildings that are the school. It seemed everyone wanted a turn to wait… and have their picture taken while doing that. For some, they only ‘painted’ until their picture was taken.

Another rather irksome fact was that, where I live, a clean school yard is just dirt, and so the volunteers spent hours pulling up grass from the schoolyard, even though we have a problem with erosion. The original thought behind the pulling up of grass is to prevent snakes from coming close to the buildings, but this was rather excessive, and with the next heavy rainstorm, a lot of soil washed away. To combat this, I’m hoping to convince my school to build flower beds, strategically placed to combat erosion. Even if there are no flowers in these beds, at least the perimeter bricks will do something to prevent the further formation of caves undermining the concrete foundations of the school.

I’m grateful for the work that was done, but like many things, I think the amount of work really paled in comparison with what is left to be done at the school. Still being the idealist that I am, I would have liked to see actual improvements- shelves, repairs, etc. rather than just a cleaning. To me it seems the Letsema was more for show, a demonstration that people were doing something, a half day that made people feel good about themselves, regardless of the actual benefit of the actions. From what I hear, there will be another Letsema in April. I hope this time to have my principal arm the workers not only with mops and brooms, but hammers, nails, screws and wood.