Thursday was an early day, starting off with a 7 am breakfast meeting with the local Governance Program manager from the EU,  Mariam Homayoun.  She talked about the 3 main focuses of the EU programs, Energy, Health and Governance.  The EU has found in many countries that it is more effective to work with NGO's rather than just the government, because NGO's can usually get the work done in a more timely manner due to less red tape.  She discussed the project that Habitat Lesotho took part in.  She was impressed that they were able to get done with everything on time, and were even 3 months early in getting their review done.  It showed the efficiency of work done by Habitat Lesotho and good stewardship of the grant money received.   She stated that she hoped to work with Habitat Lesotho the next time a suitable project came around.

After breakfast, we went to another part of Mafeteng district and met with families once more.  My team was dropped of in the village of Tebang, and we met with Malira Ramakobo.  She is the guardian of her 17 year old nephew Neo Ramakobo, who is an orphan.  Before Habitat Lesotho intervened, she was living with her 11 year old daughter, Neo, and 2 nieces, one 12 and the other 13 years old.  They were all living in a 1 room house that was disintegrating every time it rained, due to poor construction.  Neo would not want to go to school due to constant worry that the house would collapse while he was gone.  The new house has brought him much relief, he now has a quiet place to get his homework done and doesn't have to worry about his house falling down anymore.

After we were done visiting the villages, we drove for about an hour and a half to go to Thaba-Bosiu.  We were joined by members of the HFH Lesotho staff.  We climbed up the mountain and learned all about the history of Lesotho and got some good exercise as well.

Did you know that Lesotho has sand dunes?  They sure do!!

We also got to see the mountain that the Basotho hat is based off of.

We ended the day with a wrap dinner with various members of HFH Lesotho staff, where we had a long discussion about the trip and what we would like to see come out of it.  We will all take part in writing up family profiles for everyone we visited, so be on the look out for that coming out this fall.

Overall, this trip was very informative, and I can tell that HFH Lesotho did a great job putting it together and will reap the benefits of our hard work once we return home for a long time to come.

Friday was a travel day to Johannesburg, with most of the team either continuing their vacations or returning to the States on Saturday.  I look forward to getting to work on the profiles as soon as I get back home.