A Study of the “Secret of Divine Civilization”

One Small Candle.

A short story – pure fiction.

By Martin Konstant.

The small group of overweight ministers looked particularly glum. The problem was that their income was drying up faster than young mielies in a severe drought.

“They say, in the final analysis, it is because there’s no progress, they say their money just vanishes into people’s pockets, they call it corruption, even our salaries.”

“Does this mean we’ll get no money this year, I mean nothing at all?”

The blank looks from all the others confirmed that – so far as they could understand – foreign aid money on which they depended almost entirely, was about to dry up totally.

There was, however, one exception of which the ministers knew nothing.

Lee was driving home in her snappy bright yellow little car. The radio playing quiet music helped her general feeling of well-being. The mountain road had little traffic and Lee pelted along in joyous mood.

Lee is not her real name. It is the name Sir Geoffrey used, he just could not get used to the Basotho names. By any name, however, this was the most beautiful lady Sir Geoffrey knew. Every time he thought of her, his heart skipped a beat. Sure she was the age of his youngest daughter. Sure, she was obviously disfigured and slightly disabled in a childhood accident, but her eyes and her smile were heart stopping. Lee’s eyes showed her nature to be soft but strong, caring forgiving and loving, but knowing and wise with unswerving focused strength. Her soft voice and slow gentle smile captivated Sir Geoffrey during those days when he was touring Lesotho under her guidance.

They visited so many villages. The names and the sequence had long since blurred when they came to -- “the last village”.

At “the last village,” there had been more than twenty people sitting in a circle in the large round thatch-roofed hut. It was raining a gentle rain and drops would come through the meager thatch. Lee had explained that there just is not enough grass to make decent thatch.

Chickens, goats and other small animals made contented sounds around the walls of the hut. The children slept in a line on some skins on the floor. The adults and youth sat in a circle around the only candle, which Lee had brought. Sir Geoffrey sat on the floor since the lingering smoke from the cooking fire hurt his eyes.

Lee and Sir Geoffrey had arrived after the evening meal had been eaten. There is no fuel in the Lesotho mountains to burn fires for warmth. As soon as the food is cooked, the fire is extinguished. The door is closed as it is cold and everyone sits huddled under their blankets. The villagers had expected Sir Geoffrey earlier, but, as Lee explained in their language, they had got stuck in mud too deep and sticky even for their 4 x 4.

In the hut they had been talking about the problems of the nation – and the problems of the world. Sir Geoffrey had had ample opportunity to express his view that the problems would remain until the people transformed into a more Godly people. Everyone agreed, how could one disagree? But their unity of thought was not going to make difference in reality. One old man explained rather gruffly.

Lee translated; “He wants you to feel his hands.”

They were strong work hardened hands. His voice was resigned and rough; “I am a farmer, I have farmed all my life, fed my family, clothed my children and sent them through school and on into colleges here and there. They are all better off than I shall ever be, but it need not have been like that.”

“In my village there are two kinds of people. There are the workers and there are the loafers. The workers work and the loafers steal. I have to sleep, I cannot watch my lands all the time. We workers are not strong enough to form a union. We are each on our own, our lands are scattered.”

“One year I complained vigorously to the chief, he just smiled apologetically and offered me more land, another patch far away.” The sad old man sucked his teeth with a loud ‘Ptch’. “Another year I took my case to the police and pressed them to act. We went to court and three of the thieves were put in prison. Six months later they came back, laughing and smiling as they wagged their fingers in my face.”

“I have long given up, I plant what I can and pray that the bugs and thieves will leave enough for me and my family.”

Sir Geoffrey asked some questions and, once understanding dawned, he sat in silence for a long while. This entire nation, despite all the aid that it has so far had, is held in a poverty trap largely because so many citizens are seriously immoral. Lee later commented – yet again - “Honesty is a foundation virtue.”

After this “last village”, Sir Geoffrey decided to take Lee’s advice and stop the systematic process, going straight to the only place Lee had said might stand a chance.

This was the village of Puthaditshulo. The chief was a young man whose home was a metal roofed house among several other traditional homes, which housed his extended family. This chief had a respectable area of peach trees planted near his home. It was the beginning of summer, the fruit trees were well endowed with young fruit.

As they sat inside the room talking, thunder rumbled and clouds gathered outside. Somewhat unexpectedly, there was a loud crack of lightening close to them. As so often happens in this region, that loud crack was followed by rain, which quickly turned into hail.

The chief’s mother appeared at the door of her hut, shouting loudly. The chief was already on his feet and shouting. People appeared from here and there, in particular there was a thin young man who bounded into the room, took three long, well worn thin sticks from the chief, and ran out into the hail which was gathering strength. He placed these sticks into prepared holes in the ground, the chief’s mother shouting directions all the time. As he positioned the last stick, the hail – so clearly audible on the tin roof - turned into rain.

“So help me God!” explained Sir Geoffrey often enough when he got back to England, “I saw this with my very own eyes, I know it happened, believe it or not!”

By coincidence, the discussion with the chief then came down to specifics. The chief had the thin young man, his youngest son, join them. The boy’s name was Lucky and he was ugly. His head was too big for his body and supported larger than usual ears. He sat quietly to one side and wrote things into a school notebook. Sir Geoffrey guessed that Lucky was about fifteen years old.

Late in the afternoon, their discussions completed, the visitors rose to leave. Lee took a moment away from Sir Geoffrey to chat with Lucky. They seemed to know each other well. On the drive back to the nearest town with a hotel, Lee explained that Lucky was the ugly duckling of that family. The other boys were all out in the mountains looking after cattle. This was the traditional activity of the sons of any home; “Make their boy children into cattle fences!” muttered Lee with disgust. But Lucky was physically too weak for this, particularly since, on the one occasion when he did join the other boys, they had killed a man by beating him with sticks. “He was trying to steal our cattle” explained the other boys. Nobody did anything to bury the body, it lay for days on the rocks and just rotted, eaten gradually by rodents and insects. Lucky ran away and went back home. He didn’t tell anyone but absolutely refused to return to the mountains.

“Lucky reads” explained Lee, “In your society he might be called a nerd. I have given him all manner of books to read. Intelligent books from which he learns a lot. He really is hungry for knowledge. His parents have made him an apprentice to the witchdoctor of the area, he has not the skill to ever become a witch doctor, but he knows and understands the how and why of what they do. Lucky has two like minded friends, they form a team which I call Phutaditshulo’s body of scholars.”

“These three weak and ugly children are unquestionably the best educated individuals in the village. The chief knows this and uses his son frequently. That’s why Lucky joined us when we got down to specifics, the chief will glean the boy’s every thought and insight before he makes his decision ready for us when we go back tomorrow.”

As it happened, the discussions lasted several days. Sir Geoffrey noticed that Lucky was joined by the other two ugly ducklings who often conferred one with another. From time to time, young girls would bring cool drinks and biscuits into the room, this was always a signal for the chief to sit with the ugly trio and quietly talk about the proposals tabled.

“I never call them ugly or weak” said Lee one evening as they were on the drive back to the hotel, “It focuses on their negative, I call them learned.”

The proposal to make this area the focal centre of a large cooperative protected agricultural endeavour was harder to bring to reality than anyone imagined.

A group of just less than twenty chiefs came together for several meetings, shouting and chattering among themselves, they sent – via Lee – proposal after proposal to London where Sir Geoffrey and the aid organization he represented, were based.

As the group became disheartened by the rejection of each proposal, so the chiefs dropped out, one by one. Still there was no unity until the meeting the brute dropped out.

Lee called him “The Brute” because, on the only occasion when she had come out to watch the annual Basotho Mountain Pony Cross Country Race, she had seen this large man forcing a small horse to carry him up a steep rocky hill more quickly than seemed possible. The poor animal struggled and strained, eyes bulging, teeth bared, its feet slipping and sliding on the looses stones, covered in sweat with – “The Brute” – stuck firmly on its back beating it with a hard thick stick and shouting incredibly rude words to the world at large.

Lee left her vantage point and never went back.

Today’s meeting had reached agreement among eleven chiefs. They had altered the proposal considerably. Lee was the recording secretary and had it all on her lap-top. Her happiness as she hummed along with the music playing on her radio was born of the fact that the trio of learned had signed their little piece of paper. It said simply, “We believe this version of the proposal with this group of chiefs has a reasonable chance of success. We will do what we can to help them.” - - All three signed. This was the first time they had all agreed to sign this little slip of paper. Lee would later fax it to London.

Lee knew this was a tremendously important day. She knew that the European aid agencies were assembled at the annual meeting when they put forward the proposals they felt deserved funding from the European Union.

Sir Geoffrey talked eloquently about Lesotho and the Puthaditshulo Project. He did so only because, during the lunch break, he and his confidential secretary; a Persian-American lady of plump stature and bright lively eyes, conferred over the SMS messages which preceded the latest proposal emailed from Lee; His SMS read “The learned are now united” hers said; “One little candle burns brightly in this most dark corner.”