Portfolio > Learning to Hope series: Botswana & Lesotho

Malealea Valley, Lesotho

Leshonono is an 18-year-old shepherd and in the 7th grade at Malealea Primary School in mountainous Lesotho. Over half of the population lives on less than $1 a day, so school fees are often prohibitive. Leshonono lives with his grandparents and tends their small flock of sheep. He worries about what will happen to his grandparents if he passes his 7th grade test and has to move to town to attend high school. Fluent in his second language, English and conversant with all aspects of the HIV epidemic, his ambition is to become a teacher in the Malealea Valley. ”I have to tell the little boys how to be good,… and I have to teach them how to learn everything that I learned at school.”