I am grateful for the comments on the last journal post about my visit with a Lesotho government official. It was risky for me to do what I did. Originally, I wanted to go straight to the Minister of Education and deliver letters my students had written to him, but my principal trembled at the idea. He could create a lot of trouble for her, she said. I should go to someone slightly lower ranking and be sure to keep my claws retracted during the contact. Also, personally, as a Peace Corps volunteer I am required to stay out of politics. But I won't sit idly by. I went, and I'm glad I did, and I'm not finished.
Matt asked in his comment why the Basotho don't do something about this kind of thing. Perhaps one reason Basotho are not as eager as I to do something about this fumbling with the books is that the money used to buy the books is not theirs. It is coming from other countries. How can they care a whole lot about a gift that is late? How can they bite the hand that feeds them?
In America, we can easily get pissed off about our government screwing with our tax dollars. But the government here doesn't deal with much of their own tax dollars, and this book rental scheme in particular is entirely funded by other countries.
Further, I think this situation is a microcosm of what happens with foreign aid in general. The funds largely get stuck up top with corrupt or selfish or incompetent officials. The people the aid is intended to help don't get much if any long term aid. It is one more reason to believe Paul Theroux when he concludes in his book 'Dark Star Safari' that "Only Africans were capable of making a difference in Africa. Everyone else, donors and volunteers and bankers, however idealistic, were simply agents of subversion."
And this calls into question my own presence in Lesotho, of that I am fully aware.