The life story of Ms Mathaba Mnako, compiled by Michelle Carter, CARE Lesotho
Ms Mathaba Mnako is 70 a year-old widow who lives in Maksiseng village in Mokhotlong district, where CARE implements a World Food Programme (WFP) funded ‘’Cash for Assets Project’’. During our conversation, facilitated by a staff translator, I learned that only a few years ago, Ms Mnako was enjoying a good life with her husband and five children, twelve cattle and two donkeys on a farm of decent size. Then, all of a sudden, her luck started to turn against her: She lost her husband and three of her five children, two of whom died of tuberculosis and the third was murdered. In the end, Ms Mnako was left with three grandchildren (six, eight and ten years old) under her care and one donkey – all the other animals were stolen from her.
When CARE implemented its Cash for Assets project in Maksiseng from March to May 2013, Ms Mnako was very happy to participate. Out of this project she managed to earn a total of 1,500 Maloti (approx. USD 150) at the rate of M500 (USD 50) per month. Prior to the project, the area was so eroded that water was running off and the fields weren’t doing well. The project helped her conserving soil for better agriculture. However, she was concerned that she had to spend M110 (USD 11) for each round trip she made to Mokhotlong to collect her monthly payments from the bank. Ms Mnako told me that she has already used all the payments to buy food and other necessities and has nothing left. Fortunately, she and her son are harvesting maize on her farm that she planted last year using seeds provided by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). She expects to harvest five bags of 80 kilograms – a big improvement compared with the previous year in which she didn’t harvest a single bag. This confirms a recent crop forecast that was made by the Lesotho Bureau of Statistics, predicting a 100 per cent increase in national maize harvest as compared to the 2011/12 agricultural year.
At the time of the release of this forecast, CARE expressed its concern that this optimism tends to hide huge challenges faced by thousands of vulnerable households who couldn’t recover from last year’s shocks. Ms Mnako will have to share these crops with her landless son who helps her in the field. She also needs to sell some of the crops to buy seeds for the next summer planting. Perhaps her biggest cost is to rent a pair of oxen to plough her fields, for which she has to pay around 1,100 Maloti (USD 110). Adding all these expenses together, Ms Mnako’s crops won’t last more than a few months at best, while the next harvest will still be a year away. Ms Mnako has no idea how she will feed herself and three grandchildren with all these costs piling up. She told me that one of her remaining children sends her money once in a while, but she is struggling for her own family.
Unfortunately there are thousands of households in Mokhotlong in similar circumstances. CARE implements a separate project that distributes seeds and promotes improved agricultural techniques, but so far it only has the capacity to target a small number of households compared to the needs.
The country might be small, but the needs are big and so I hope that we can reach out to the world and altogether help families like Ms Mnako’s to prevent further disasters.
Please read a blog by country director Michelle Carter to learn more about the chronic vulnerability of Lesotho or read our Country Factsheet.