PORT TOWNSEND — The East Jefferson County branch of Habitat for Humanity was visited by the Habitat for Humanity director for the nation of Lesotho, a program that is partially funded by donations from Jefferson County.
According to Jamie Maciejewski, the director of Habitat for Humanity of East Jefferson County, all Habitat for Humanity offices in the United States are expected to partner with Habitat for Humanity programs in other countries.
The East Jefferson County branch partnered with the county of Lesotho more than three years ago and a small portion of donations raised locally goes to a Lesotho program to build homes for vulnerable populations — specifically orphaned children.
“I just wanted to come here and thank them for their work in helping these children,” said Mathabo Makuta, the director of Habitat for Humanity in Lesotho, who arrived Friday.
Makuta has been traveling the U.S., meeting the other organizations that have partnered with her program in Lesotho. She left Port Townsend on Sunday and headed to visit a Habitat office in New Jersey before flying back to Lesotho.
Lesotho is a tiny kingdom, surrounded entirely by the nation of South Africa.
According to Makuta, Lesotho is only slightly bigger than the state of Maryland and it does not produce much, which has lead to high unemployment rates, food insecurity and extreme poverty.
Makuta said more than 30 percent of people in Lesotho live off only $1 per day.
Lesotho also has the second highest prevalence of HIV and AIDS in Africa, according to Makuta. According to a United Nations report from 2015, roughly 22.7 percent of the population have HIV and 18,000 people died from AIDS- related illness in 2015.
This has left thousands of children without a parent and they are often left to fend for themselves or taken in by an older relative.
Last year Maciejewski traveled to Lesotho to see the work Habitat was doing for these children.
“We met this woman, who was over 70, raising six of her great-grandchildren,” Maciejewski said.
The family lived in a mud hut, which kept cracking, making it a difficult place to safely house the family. According to Maciejewski, Habitat helped the family build a two-bedroom cinder-block home.
“You could tell it had changed their lives,” Maciejewski said.
According to Maciejewski, the home would be passed down to the children in the event of their great-grandmother’s death — giving them permanent safe housing.
Said Makuta: “All I can say is that Lesotho, like many countries, especially in Africa, are in need of people who can help those vulnerable populations.”
The Habitat for Humanity in east Jefferson County also partners with Habitat for Humanity programs in Ethiopia and Nepal. It also has donated funds to programs dealing with disaster relief in such places as Haiti.
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Jefferson County Editor/
