SEMONKONG – Every school-day, seven-year-old Mpho Mohau and her young brother, wake up early in the morning to prepare for the difficult journey to Semonkong African Methodist Episcopal Primary School.
The school is situated about two kilometres from her home in Semonkoaneng village, and the children live with their grandmother while their parents work in the capital, Maseru, about 115 km away.
School-preparations do not take much time for Mpho and her brother who is in kindergarten, because they know breakfast would be ready for them at their respective institutions.
Just behind the mountains in Ha-Sethuoa, Majoe village, Mpho’s friend, Rapelang Latuma, is assisted by his grandmother to prepare for school each and every morning. The last child in a family of six, Rapelang went to stay with his grandmother following the death of his father a few years ago. Rapelang’s mother, who works in South Africa, had to separate the children by placing them under the care of different relatives.
Although he misses his father and is separated from his siblings, young Rapelang’s life improved when he started going to school early this year. He realised there was a lot to like about school, the youngster said.
“I can now read and write and also eat porridge in the morning and papa with either beans or fish for lunch,” Rapelang said with a big smile during an interview this week.
Such level of excitement is common at the country’s 1025 primary schools where hot meals are served daily, courtesy of a unique initiative by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). Under the programme, up to 200 000 students and 50 000 preschool children are provided meals in Lesotho.
Speaking during a visit to the school by the Minister of Education and Training, Makabelo Mosothoane, Principal Secretary Keratile Thabana, WFP Country Director Mary Njoroge and other officials from both the WFP and ministry, the children said they did not have to worry about learning on empty stomachs, which they indicated helped make their school experience better.
Minister Mosothoane led a tour of three schools as part of her first assessment of the progress made so far in the construction of kitchens and storerooms at 23 schools in the five districts of Maseru, Mohale’s Hoek, Leribe, Butha-Buthe and Mokhotlong.
WFP is constructing the facilities through M8million (US$760,000) from the Government of Lesotho. Of the 23 facilities, five have already been completed and the roofing of the other eight would be finished this month . Completion of the other 10 buildings is expected in February next year.
Construction is almost complete at Semonkong AME and Litsoenya Government School, while Thaba-Ntso Lesotho Evangelical Primary School is already using the completed kitchen and storeroom.
“We are happy about the new kitchen and storeroom because we struggle a lot when it comes to maintaining hygiene in the dusty, old church-hall we use”, said Semonkong AME Principal Raphoka Makara. “We are also storing food in the village which is very far.”
Semonkong AME has 37 pupils, and only goes up to Standard Six. For the seventh grade, the children are enrolled at St Leonard School.
The cooking of fortified meals at Litsoenya Primary School is done in a small tin-shack. According to the chef, ‘Manthati Mahamo, there is a lot of smoke and heat in the shack during the preparation of meals, which she said makes it extremely uncomfortable for her.
“It’s difficult to cook in this tiny shack which also leaks when it rains,” she said.
However, it is a different story at Thaba-Ntso Primary School where pupils now have to do their lessons in the new kitchen and storeroom after the roofs of their classrooms were recently blown off during a violent storm.
“The challenge we had during construction was that it’s hard to reach the school,” said WFP’s National Engineer, Teboho Mokhone.
Mr Mokhone said because Thaba-Ntso school is located in a steep valley, wheelbarrows had to be used to transport the building material.
However, in an interview, Minister Mosothoane said the tour had helped her appreciate the challenges involved, adding she was happy to see the collaboration of her ministry and WFP bearing fruit.
“We value the role played by WFP in ensuring we work together towards the improvement of facilities that will contribute to the sustainability of the national school meals programme,” she said. “We’ve started small, as far as the construction of kitchens and storerooms is concerned, but the most important thing is we have taken this bold step to develop the infrastructure needed at various primary schools benefitting from the school meals programme.”
The minister further said feeding in primary schools had contributed to the current net-enrolment rate of 82 percent— up from 80 percent in 2009.
“We know that there are many orphans and vulnerable children who have no food to eat before they can go to school,” Ms Mosothoane said. “The school meals programme provides an incentive to encourage such children to remain in school until they have completed their primary education. Together with the free meals, we have also made provision, through the Education Act (2010), for free primary and preschool education in all public schools. Primary education is also compulsory.”
Ms Mosothoane also said her ministry was collaborating with WFP in the development of a national school meals draft policy.
“Last year, we requested WFP to manage the programme until 2017, while efforts are being made to build our capacity to run the programme in 2018,” she said. “The Policy will go a long way to provide guidelines on how we are going to manage the programme in a sustainable way.”
She further said through the policy, the Government would promote the purchase of food commodities from locals.
“We would like the children to eat local and fortified food they are familiar with and in the process, support our local smallholder farmers throughout the country,” she said. “It is for that reason that the ministry and WFP launched a Local Purchase Pilot in 51 schools. The idea is to link the school-feeding programme to agricultural food producers and suppliers.”
Commenting on Thaba-Ntso Primary School, which was damaged in the storm, Ms Mosothoane said priority was also being given to the construction of durable classrooms using quality building material.
“We are not happy that the roof of the school was blown away by the wind,” she said. “That is why we are closely monitoring the current building processes going on at all schools to make sure we have high-quality infrastructure. At the same time, we would like to appeal to our partners, who include churches, to contribute to the maintenance of schools.”
On her part, Ms Njoroge said WFP would continue providing food assistance to schools until the Government is in a position to take over the programme.
The school meals programme, she added, was assisting to address micronutrient deficiencies and undernutrition among children.
“Our mission is to respond to challenges faced by children from food-insecure households,” said Ms Njoroge. “Their education is vital to efforts meant to break the cycle of poverty and also make sure they have all the support they need to perform well in their studies. On the other hand, assisting to build the capacity of the Government to manage school-feeding in a cost-effective manner is also at the heart of our efforts.”- WFP Lesotho
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