`I knew what I should do': Paul Williams meets Me Mokokoane, a pioneer of women's empowerment in Lesotho. (Turning Point).

As the seventh of ten children, growing up in rural Lesotho in the 1940s, Alixe 'Malikeleli Mokokoane learnt hard work and discipline from her father, and generosity from her mother. She has put these qualities to good effect in a life devoted to the women of Lesotho.

Now Acting President and Project Manager of the Lesotho Homemakers Association, Me Mokokoane looks back to her childhood with mixed feelings. Her father, a clerk at the Treasury Court in Peka, was a hard task-master, who got his children up at 2 am to work on his land. It was hard work (`like a rough military exercise')--ploughing, cultivating, harvesting, weeding and doing the domestic chores.

`He didn't discriminate between our brothers and us girls,' Me Mokokoane remembers. `Sometimes we used to weep when we had to do the farm work before we could enjoy school celebrations. We grew up tough and programmed for self development.'

Her mother, by contrast, was generous to a fault, `always giving things away'. She sent her children to church with bare feet, so as not to embarrass their friends who had no shoes and could not fit into theirs. One of her favourite sayings was, `Always welcome visitors to your hut. Never raise fingers to count them.'

Me Mokokoane trained as a teacher, but was unable to find teaching work in the area around Maseru where she went to live with her husband, a policeman. To supplement their meagre income, she started growing vegetables in their back garden and soon expanded onto six extra plots of land at the police farm. Making good use of her early training, she was soon running a thriving market garden business. `I worked hard and God blessed my sweat.'

COOKERY CLASSES

To this growing business she added the sale of jam and chutneys and a range of handicraft items: `tie and dye, batik, sewing, knitting and crochet work'. With a loan from the white wife of the Police Commander, she bought a superior knitting machine across the border in the South African town of Bloemfontein. `I was the first black person in town to own such a high-tech machine,' she says. By the time her first child was born her efforts were bringing in 20 times her husband's salary.

The turning point which launched her into voluntary work came one evening when she was sitting alone counting up her earnings for the month. `All of a sudden, one of my mother's sayings came into my mind, "Give, and you shall be given to by the Giver of Life".' She thought of the increasing number of children who were leaving primary school without any job to go to. `I already had my fourth child, but as I stood up to go to bed, I knew what I should do.'

Soon 18 young girls were coming to her home for twice-weekly classes in cookery and sewing, using the scraps of wool and material from her handicraft projects. Most of them were too poor to bring a lunch box and had to be fed from the vegetable garden. That scheme lasted four years.

It was followed by a project for out-of-work girls, under the auspices of the Christian Council of Lesotho, and then by a project for herd boys, often called `the forgotten generation'. They roamed vast distances with the cattle under their care, missing out on any regular schooling. Some 105 boys, gathered from nine villages including her husband's, were given instruction in tree-planting, human and animal nutrition and hygiene.

HOME OR SOCIAL CENTRE?

There were always people in and out of the Mokokoanes' home. A teacher friend called one morning to find her kitchen full of women--some collecting mealie meal or paraffin or vegetables, others who had come for second-hand clothing or simply for counselling. `Is this your home or a social centre?' the friend enquired.

Me Mokokoane first joined the Lesotho Homemakers Association (LHA) before her marriage, as a young primary school teacher. The LHA is Lesotho's oldest women's organization and seeks to educate and empower women through its clubs in towns and villages all over the country. In 1972, after four years on its executive committee, she was elected President, and held the post for seven years.

During that period she was also elected President of the Lesotho National Council of Women, and appointed Commissioner for Women's and Youth Affairs, working from the prime minister's office. She held that position for 11 years and often represented Lesotho abroad. `I became aware that the plight of women is the same everywhere in the world, but only differs in magnitude,' she says. In 1994 she was made Honorary Life President of the LHA.

Today her consuming passion is the completion of the LHA training centre in Maseru. This will also serve as a woman's refuge and as the movement's HQ and conference venue, and will carry her name. `Up to now we have always operated from members' homes, under trees and in churches,' says Me Mokokoane. `Knowledge liberates. We have to free our people from ignorance, disease and overwhelming poverty.' Over 14,000 [pounds sterling] to help with the first stage of the building was raised by Merched y Wawr, the Welsh women's movement which has been linked with the Homemakers since 1989 as part of the twinning scheme between Wales and Lesotho.

She pays tribute to her husband and family (she has four children--two others have died--and five grandchildren) for allowing her to spend `three quarters of my life' doing voluntary work for her people. `I love life,' she says. `I love people.'