Moliehi Sekese

Today, Moliehi Sekese visited our school. She is a teacher from Lesotho, a little country in southern Africa. She is the Educator's Choice award winner 2009 for the Microsoft Innovative Education Forum. She won this award for her school project about indigenous plants. The impressing part is that her school in Lesotho, Mamoeketsi Government Primary School, had no electricity while they did this project.

She began the school project by having her students borrow cell phones from family. The students were supposed to go home and ask their parents about indigenous plants, and then they would write their findings in a text message and send them to Moliehi. She told us that the students were very excited about using cell phones for the first time, and that she received text messages until midnight. Since their school had no internet access, they went to an internet cafe in town to blog about what they had found out. Moliehi told us that her school has only two computers, and with no electricity at school she had to charge them at home every day. They continued their project by going to the biggest botanical garden in Lesotho. They filmed how to grow plants and then they made their own botanical garden near their school.

Moliehi's school has over 700 students, and only two laptops to share. Despite the fact that they have only two laptops and no internet access, Moliehi does the best she can. Her country is one of the poorest countries in the world, and she believes that education will make a difference. Most of the children in her school are very poor; they come to school with no shoes, torn clothes and even hungry. And even when the classrooms are very cold in the wintertime, the students show up. They show up because they know that education is almost necessary. Education is how Lesotho can develop.

The last thing Moliehi said when she was talking to our class was that we should feel lucky. We are lucky because we have so much technology available, and we have no excuse not to get educated. We have no other worries than getting up in the morning and go to school. The children in Lesotho, on the other hand, have a lot of worries every day. Moliehi's strength and guts are very admirable and I think she is doing a wonderful job. The inspiring teacher is trying to make the best out of their situation, by using the little technology they have access to for all it's worth.