One of the most striking scenes I have seen here in Lesotho is that of a group of kids playing football in the shadow of the stupa that marks the site of Amitofo Care Centre’s (ACC) expansive, spacious campus for orphans from childhood to young adulthood.
The Christian kingdom of Lesotho is one of Africa’s smaller and poorer nations, with a vibrant history and fascinating past. Its direction moving forward is now part of the ACC story, and ACC itself is now part of Lesotho’s future. In this sense, Lesotho and Buddhism are intertwined as much as Christianity and Buddhism have been since the onset of modernity and the transition from postcolonialism to our post-industrial, post-modern, increasingly multipolar world.
Aside from the main Buddha hall, which stands between a pair of two-story buildings that serve as the guest dormitories and the dining hall and guest reception, there are the dormitories (boys and girls live separately) and a block for classrooms. At present there is a new wing being completed with a Buddha hall and multi-purpose facilities. A new girls’ dorm was also recently finished for female students going into their final year of senior high. All in all, the size and scale of this campus is nothing short of breathtaking.
When Pearl Wu, the director of ACC Lesotho, points out that some young graduates can find the outside world tough to handle when the leave ACC (especially with finding jobs and working under tough employers), it isn’t hard to see why: this is an impressively family-oriented environment where educational and social needs are cultivated to an extent that is hard to imagine for the average Lesotho citizen.
The sunset is particularly beautiful here, with Earth’s local star descending on an expansive plain that is characteristic of the Lesotho landscape. We missed out the snow, apparently, but the air remains crisp, clean, and cool – an overall cold but comfortable temperature for the children and the staff working on campus. There are many hurdles before ACC is truly a mainstream in Lesotho, many of them cultural while some are administrative. But under Pearl Wu’s leadership (and she is in regular contact with the other directors of ACC in other countries), the generational diffusion of Buddhism as a culture and way of life in the kingdom has strong foundations.
