I walked away from this interaction, as I do whenever I interact with the tough, resilient rural communities we visit, thinking about how hard some people have it, and how much I take for granted.
While this realization is true, it can also become an obstacle in our own introspection. When we know there are others with so much less, why should we give our own struggles and challenges any thought?
If we just compare ourselves to others, we will never give ourselves permission to be honest and open about our own situations. And so we must reach the point of seeing others, realizing their struggles, but not comparing them to our own. We do need to spend time being honest about our own situations.
It’s with that in mind that I share: this year has not been easy.
We returned from furlough pretty much at the end of 2021, and started back at work here in the new year. Furlough itself was tough, trying to do school for Jane while traveling soooo much. When we got back, we had hopes and plans all set out for all the things we wanted to achieve in the year ahead. Great ideas to improve PCC, and grow and learn in my work at MAF. After the first months of the year passed, we still hadn’t found our groove. Not quite getting done much of what we hoped to. Just surviving day to day, not making forward progress.
As much of the world by early 2022 moved away from Covid protocols, Lesotho clung to them all, until recently. The border still required testing and certificates up until about 2 months ago. The evidence of a post-covid world was all around us. Reports of crime far more common, people without jobs, more people asking for money or help whenever we left the house.
In June we went away for a weekend and had a Mosotho friend of ours stay at our house. At 9pm on the Saturday we received a call that 7 armed men had broken into our house, held up the security guard at gunpoint, assaulted our friend and searched the house for money. They found none and left without stealing anything. But the damage had been done, especially to our traumatized friend, security guard, and our feeling of safety.
We returned home on the Sunday, and decided to stay with friends for a few weeks while our house had some security updates done. Stronger bars, solid doors and an upgrade to the alarm system.
Since that incident, we have heard of similar events almost every week around the city. Break-ins, carjackings, mall and gas station robberies seem like a common occurrence in the last few months. Where smaller, petty crimes, were a normal part of life in the past, the things that are happening now show a new level of planning and violence. In a word, it is unsettling.
The effect these events have on our general feeling of safety and security is significant. We feel like we have just come out of 2 years of Covid restrictions straight into necessary security restrictions.
These things on their own seem manageable. But it’s amazing what an added level of anxiety can do to your day. You just don’t get done what you need to get done, never mind what you want to. It’s not that there are more things to get done, it’s that everything you were trying to get done has some weight added to it, and that takes a toll.
I don’t mean to paint a bleak picture. It’s not all bad, but I do think it’s important to share some honest news, as well as some wonderful, positive things that have happened this year.
