Off to Lesotho for 1 week

Lesotho, small mountainous country in the middle of South Africa, the other of the 2 African remaining kingdoms, famous of its grass-hatted and wool blanket-wearing shepherds and farmers with a beautiful nature and warm-hearted people definitely stole a piece of my heart. With similar health related (HIV) and economical challenges as Swaziland, the mountains bring along even bigger challenge when people live isolated and roads are hard to keep in condition due to erosion and winter snow.

On the other hand Lesotho surprised me with holding one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, propably because Lesotho invests over 12% of its GDP in education, primary school is for free and higher education is strongly supported economically. And still it was so sad to find out that during several years already, the National University of Lesotho, which has up to 12 000 students, has had severe economical troubles and lack of human resources. The teachers had just ended 3 months of strike in order to raise their salaries when Intraversity Games started. 60 % of the students are accommodated on the campus and they live throughout the year with minimum electricity and without hot water.

I had honor to meet the head of the health sciences and head of the social sciences and it was interesting to find out that the University used to educate professionals to 3 countries, before Universities of Swaziland and Botswana were founded. This is why the Intraversity Games is organized between the Universities of these countries. Almost 70 years old University of Lesotho used to be one of the top 20 Universities of Africa and there are still dormitories named after the famous Swazi and Botswana frontbenchers.

It was encouraging to meet the head of the health center of the University who even with only 3 nurses creates many innovative projects in order to promote the health of the students and prevent HIV/AIDS, and the head of the nurses association who works hard to reach all the nurses, to create cooperation with other health care professional associations, to draw policies and to offer wellness center services for health care staff.

The Intraversity Games consisted of 4 days of sports, cultural activities, evening parties, visits to the capital Maseru, trips to the country side and 'creating sustainable friendships through sports'. I was astonished by the talents of the choir singers, dancers and all various sport players. I think all of them deserved to win.