Letter from Lesotho Deaglá n de BréadúnIt's high summer in Lesotho and the Yuletide anthems are belting out on the hotel's public address system. In the space of half-an- hour, I am urged to have myself a merry little Christmas, warned that Santa Claus is coming to town and informed by a singer whose voice I don't recognise that he will, after all, be home for Christmas.
Bing Crosby is there too, but he can dream as much as he wants about a white Christmas, it ain't gonna happen in Lesotho. As in neighbouring South Africa, this is the equivalent of mid-July back home and schoolchildren have started their long summer vacation. Although I said "neigh- bouring" South Africa, "surround- ing" might be more appropriate.
This mountain kingdom is bordered on all sides by its larger neighbour. Their historical relationship is not unlike the one between Ireland and Britain, only more so. As Lesotho's Minister for Education, Ken Tsekoa, put it to me, his country is "in the belly" of South Africa. "When the giant rolls, whatever little animal is around that giant shatters."
Happily he's not talking about today but harking back to the era when the apartheid system of racial discrimination was entrenched in South Africa.
Inevitably, Lesotho became a haven for leading members of the African National Congress which now governs South Africa. Mr Tsekoa recalls how, in 1982 and 1984, helicopter gunships of the apartheid regime loomed out of the sky with lethal intent. In one such attack, some 20 people were killed, including 14 locals.
But not every white man took a malign attitude towards this landlocked country with a population of two million people, where half the population lives below the poverty line.
In his autobiography, All in a Life, Dr Garret FitzGerald describes how, as Minister for Foreign Affairs, he secured agreement from the Fine Gael- Labour coalition in November 1973 for a significant increase over a five-year period in Irish aid to the Third World.
This was only weeks after the Yom Kippur war between Israel and Egypt which brought on the oil crisis of that time. Money was tight but nevertheless the increase was approved at Cabinet by the vote of a single unnamed minister who said: "If we're Christians at all, we must agree to this."
It's an evocative story in the light of the current controversy over the shortfall in Irish development aid and failure to meet the United Nations target.
Eight months after that cabinet meeting, in July 1974, FitzGerald recalls how he was flying back from an international conference in Jamaica and found himself sitting beside two Africans. They turned out to be a minister and permanent secretary from the Lesotho government.
He mentioned that Ireland was establishing a new bilateral aid programme. Some months later, Lesotho representatives arrived in Dublin to take up the offer and there has been a steady flow of Irish aid ever since: for the last 12 months alone, the budget was €11.4 million.
Ireland is big in Lesotho and it's hard to think of any other country where five members of the cabinet would turn out for a lunch in honour of a visiting junior minister from Ireland.
The Minister of State for Development Co-operation, Conor Lenihan, quipped that when his late father, Brian, was a minister under Charles Haughey, it would have greatly concerned the Taoiseach in those conspiratorial times if five of his ministers were meeting without himself being present.
One of the beneficiaries of the Irish bilateral aid programme is the secondary school at Senoko- ase. Set amid the Drakensberg Mountains, I am told that this is "the highest-altitude district in the southern hemisphere". The quickest way to get there is by helicopter, flying over some breathtaking mountain scenery.
The community is en fete for the opening of a new school dormitory and to meet the visitors from Ireland. Although it is summer vacation, choirs of boys and girls have assembled in their uniforms to sing songs of welcome. Mothers, fathers, little brothers and sisters are also on hand for an occasion that will be talked about probably for years.
The new dormitory is for girls and has been built with funds from Development Co-operation Ireland, the aid division of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Several people told me that many of the girls attending the local secondary had to walk long distances to school. Along the way, they were liable to be abducted and raped. They are then claimed as wives and cannot return to their families.
Now the new dorm means they can come to school and stay overnight. It's a major develop- ment for this remote African community and for the rights of women and young people in general. Would that more of our tax contributions were going to such a worthy cause.
The Irish Consul General in Lesotho is Bill Nolan, an eloquent Kerry man who oversees our aid programme and maintains relations with the country's government. Lesotho is beset by many problems, not least of which is HIV/AIDS where the adult prevalence rate is over 30 per cent.
Probably most Irish people would have difficulty finding the place on the map, which is rather a pity. It's not every day we get to play a more enlightened version of Santa Claus.