Ireland, the 'good country'
A traditional Basotho rondavel home, near Metolong, Lesotho. (Photograph: Thomas Geoghegan, 2010)
This article was written for ‘Good Thinking’, a bespoke printed 48-page magazine I edited and produced as part of the National Lottery pitch on behalf of In the Company of Huskies.
I remember clearly one evening watching BBC News 24 on TV in my comfortable, serviced cottage in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho in southern Africa.
I was witnessing Ireland’s economic crash live on air.
It was 2009, Brian Cowen had resigned, paving the way for a new government and our era of austerity.
Ireland suddenly felt very far away. The mood at home had shifted, and in one of the world’s poorest countries, I could only think to myself, ‘This doesn’t feel like who Ireland is over here’.
My day job was a programme officer working on our Government aid programme. I specialised supporting democracy and local civil society groups as well as working on programmes to provide primary education, health services and food sustainability in remote parts of this mountainous country. Most of my colleagues were from Lesotho, and they helped me get under the skin of this welcoming, beautiful and unique country.
It was clear from day one on the job that Ireland was somehow different to other aid donors there.
Ireland was one of the lads. We talked openly with people, we listened, we spent time understanding people’s challenges, we built genuine relationships, and took care to work out sensible, pragmatic solutions to the problems people faced. Our driving value was partnership and our approach was always to help people and institutions help themselves.
At various forums, meetings and field visits, we were seen as the sensible, empathetic, listening ear while others wouldn’t always be so forgiving. Where the World Bank, the UN and the EU were sticklers for rules and systems, we were sought out as the pragmatic adult in the room.
On field trips, we might sit for hours with remote, rural communities and public service providers, mostly talking about work, the weather, family, farming, ponies and cattle, and it was in those conversations where we learned more about how to make their lives better than any official report could.
Once, I travelled to Maputsoe, a border town in the north-west of the country, to appraise a funding application for an incredible community development. It was spearheaded by the community of Ha Nyenye in partnership with an NGO from Kerry. A great many in this community were experiencing poverty and hardship, food insecurity, with many living with HIV. I met the mums whose husbands worked in South Africa’s mines, the children whose parents had passed away, and community leaders working hard to forge a better future for themselves by, for example, creating new local businesses. I still well up thinking about this powerful experience and still feel proud to have approved the funding and in some small way impacted this small corner of Africa. I still keep in touch with their community leader, Ntate Mankoe, and his daughter who I befriended during my time there, and continue to follow their developments.
It was a fun time, too. On St. Patrick’s day, the Ambassador’s house was thrown open to all the people we had worked with and served, including their family and friends, and for a day and a night, we all ate, drank and danced.
This recollection isn’t about me at all. It’s about those who benefited, and all the little things that go into making Ireland the The Good Country that it is, even in the farthest reaches of the world.
And this is what we do all the time, abroad, yes, and also here at home - with compassion and generosity of spirit, we come together, lend support, and through understanding and imagination, we help make good things happen.