Basotho ba Ngola: An Interview with Moluoane, a Literary Arts Organization
By Matlhabeli Molaoli
I got to sit down with Lerato Mensah-Aborampah for an exclusive interview about the literary arts organization she founded and directs, Moluoane. Born in Leribe and based in Maseru, Lerato is a multihyphenate, all-round artist of literature and music. Her writing has been featured on Readers Cafe Africa and is part of an anthology of short stories, Likheleke tsa Puo (2016). As a singer-songwriter, she released her first single, ‘a little ache’ two years ago. In college, she had a stint in the student-run newspaper and performed with the theatre ensemble, POC Ole Theater. Lerato has also worked as a behavior technician at Fraser, a Mineapolis-based provider of care and education for children on the autism spectrum. In the next year, she will pursue a Masters in Communication Disorders (towards a Speech and Language Therapy qualification) in Massachusetts, USA.
Lerato’s resume is as broad as it is impressive, and she brings an array of professional and creative experience to her leadership of Moluoane. Of the many things I admire about her, Moluoane illustrates the core of Lerato’s commitment to literary arts, to Lesotho, and to Basotho artists. Lerato’s fierce and critical optimism about the future of art and artists in Lesotho is commendable — she insists on dreaming of a better tomorrow and chooses to join hands with those trying to make it happen today.
In our conversation, Lerato shares her hopes for the work Moluoane could do, and teases the launch of an exciting project that catalogues contemporary Basotho writers. It’s a long read but I hope you stick around because Lerato discusses several important points towards the end of our chat, including the privileged, critical position that the diaspora can play in nurturing Lesotho’s art scene, and Moluoane ethos of collaboration. I hope you enjoy this condensed version of our chat, edited for clarity and concision.
Tell me a bit about Moluoane. What do you hope will happen through it?
Moluoane started as Young Basotho Writers. I am a writer and I’ve always loved writing. I’ve written for as long as I can remember and when I was in high school I had a community of other young writers in Lesotho on Facebook, back when it was hip and happening. So that’s when Young Basotho Writers as a Facebook page was created in 2014. It was really meaningful and I met lots of other writers through that page because it was mainly about writing resources, tips and events, and just building a community of writers in and of Lesotho.
Moluoane is a natural next step in the evolution of Young Basotho Writers because over time, I realized that there was a gap that needed to be filled that we had started to address but not in its entirety. A lot of people would send direct messages to the page, asking “ke ngotse buka, ha ke tsebe na ke hatisa kae” kapa “how do I become an author?” For me, that spoke to a need for Young Basotho Writers to begin to shift its mission to be more intentional about making resources for writers more knowable, findable, and accessible to people.
Fast-forward a decade later, one of the first ways we do that is through what I feel like is the biggest project so far: the writers directory. As a writer and someone who is curious about Lesotho’s literature scene, I saw a number of people announcing that they’d published books but in other conversations I was having offline, people were like “esale re tseba ka bo-Bophelo ba Lillo le Thomas Mofolo, na Basotho ba ngola?” So it didn’t seem that people knew about the most recent books that had been published. There was that gap between where Lesotho’s literature scene is versus what people know of it. So the online directory came about to say, what if we had a corner of the internet e tla ba pokello ea libuka tse ngotsoeng ke Basotho? In essence, that collection is a resource that makes knowledge about books by Basotho authors more findable, more organized, more accessible to people.
Those three things are important to highlight: organization, so that the information is readily organized for the public; accessibility to this information and visibility so it is easy to find. Those are the main objectives of the authors’ directory as a debut tool to the community of writers and readers.
About the authors directory, what sort of connections are you hoping to make with it?
I hope this tool will be used by a range of people. Really, anyone who is curious about literature in Lesotho, and I’d be curious to see who else uses it. The immediate audience is writers and readers, of course. It is for every Mosotho (and of course, anyone beyond Lesotho because we want our work to be read widely) who wants to find information about existing books, and for writers, because this is a platform for them to catalogue their books.
From there, the tool will be helpful to people who have their foot in the literature scene in any way. That could be publishers because they need to know what books have been published and maybe want to identify a niche they want to tap into. Researchers could use it, too. They could use it to find out what poetry has looked like in Lesotho over time, or ask specific socioeconomic questions like Basotho ba ngola joang ka bofutsana kapa ho ba mme?
I feel so strongly about this page being widely used, I really want people to know about it. I hope that people use it to find information alongside other resources like the State Library. I want it to be a tool that’s active and dynamic; for writers to know that they can create and update their profiles on the page themselves. It’s a tool for finding information in the sense that you could easily search by genre, but it’s also a dynamic archive.
I could see people that want to write also being inspired by the directory because now you have an idea of what’s possible. I would hope high schoolers would also use it because ho neng re bala bo-ntate mang-mang ba makhooa?
Yes! High school and secondary students, too! I hope it can also be used as an educational tool and a resource they can refer to. And absolutely, it’s a tool for inspiring writers because it’s built on a culture of writing, and encouraging a culture of writing amongst established writers, and especially aspiring writers as well who don’t know that Basotho are writing and they can do it too! It’s not only ntate Thomas Mofolo and ‘m’e Matseliso E. Lesupi who set the scene. I want this directory to highlight more recent, contemporary writers.
Are there other arts/literary organizations you take inspiration from?
The Loft is a cool literary arts non-profit in Minnesota that I got to engage with and attend some of their events. The range of their programming and the audiences they cater to is awesome because they have classes for children and adults. There’s also Hugo House, also in the US. They’re also a literary arts non-profit and Moluoane will definitely learn from their model. They have memberships, classes, mentorship programs, seminars, quite a range of things. I’ve learnt that non-profit models need to sustain ourselves. When I look at other non-profits that are also art organizations, they have memberships that offer access to different things. Those can be advice, master classes, seminars or writing residencies. Those are the kinds of resources I’d love to see for Moluoane.
I’m happy I came home so I could pick this project back up after it had been stagnant for a while. Now when I go abroad again for my masters this year, I’m going to be so intentional about making community where I am because that could connect Basotho writers with so many other people and events. Imagine if The Loft is hosting a conference and Moluoane could sponsor two Basotho to attend the conference in Minnesota!
I think that Basotho in the diaspora are in a privileged position to facilitate transcontinental, transnational engagement and collaboration that, in our case, could broaden the literary community in Lesotho.
I mean collaborations that are meaningful for communities abroad and for Basotho in Lesotho. Not in a savior-complex kind of way, but in a way that recognizes that Basotho in Lesotho have rich insights that could feed their collaborators abroad, as opposed to a one-way “donation” model. Eseng hore hobane ke Amerika, ke nna ea nang le matla a ho thusa Basotho ba hae. Actually, it’s both ways because Basotho in Lesotho have so much insight and innovation that could benefit other people in the world.
I love that so much! I think it removes the pressure on Moluoane to provide all the resources but you’re tapping into other networks. Maybe you don’t have the capacity to run classes and conferences, but you can tap into where those are already happening. Connecting people to resources is important because Basotho who live in the diaspora might want to do more but most of us are living paycheck to paycheck. We’re not as rich or glamorous as people may think. So, connecting people to resources is a valuable thing to do, even if you can’t send money back home.
Exactly! When I was creating the mission statement I wanted it to reflect that Moluoane creates resources but also compiles and connects resources that are already available. I wanted Moluoane to be a middle-man and facilitator as much as it creates new resources. “Kopano ke matla” is really an ethos for us. I know that people are already doing work and operating in a similar world to ours. Like, Ba re e ne re has been active since 2011. These people have been at work! I think it’s ridiculous to try to do things alone as a new organization, especially if you’re mission-driven.
Rather, think of your mission in the bigger context of what’s around and you’ll see that people have already been doing this work. How can you work with them towards a bigger goal so that your visions can feed into that community?
Speaking of other organizations I look up to, Ba re e ne re has been in the game for a while, and I really hope they bring back the literature festival! I also love Newtoro Books and their mobile library, and The Hub in Morija for arts in general and empowering young people. Selemela as well! I also think of Thabo Marebole’s annual Mora-Mobu Poetry Sessions which is a very successful event that brings together artists and poets.
What’s the journey been like so far? Who have you partnered with?
The authors directory would not have been possible without the Lynn and Mary Steen fellowship from my alma mater, St. Olaf College. It’s a grant for independent research that gives students the opportunity to pursue broad questions so I was able to do this literary arts project under digital humanities scholarship. The fellowship helped me fund the web development because building a website from scratch is very expensive. It also gave me the funding to come home to do the research, including meeting up with authors.
For now, apart from the directory, there hasn’t been programming that requires a lot of money. Other programming like the conversations with publishers series requires less funding (besides data, for which I’m paying out of pocket). It’s helpful to start even before we have a secure source of income. The next foreseeable cost is registering Moluoane as a non-profit organization before I go back to school.
How can people support you?
The directory is launching soon, please follow our Facebook (Moluaone) and Instagram pages (@moluoanelso) to get the latest updates! You can also reach out at ybwlso@gmail.com if you have questions or would like to collaborate. For now, please engage with our social media and spread the word about the authors directory.
Why the name Moluoane?
I love moluoane (weeping willow) trees! They’re so beautiful! They look like magical, mythical trees that capture the vibe of people who love to create and imagine. The image of reading a book under a weeping willow is quite romantical – Anne of Green Gables approved! I also learnt that moluoane trees are considered pioneer species. That is, if an ecosystem has been disrupted by a fire, for example, they’re usually the first to spring up afterward. I feel like that’s the vibe of writers and people that create. They’re making something out of nothing and making space for something else to grow for themselves and other people.
Any other things you’d like us to include?
Basotho ba ngola. I wanted to end with this acknowledgment of the fact that people are writing and putting out work.
I think that’s how a writing community grows because when work is being put out, that inspires a forward drive for even improving its quality and filling gaps. So, I want people to know that Basotho ba ngola. As more Basotho write and more Basotho read, that’s how the richness of Lesotho’s literature scene grows and that’s how it becomes more diverse.
There’s this quote, and I think there’s some truth to it: “If you want to know about a country, read its writers” because they are documenting life in that country. Reading local writers helps you get to know the immediate consciousness of the community as a whole. Like, Basotho write a lot of self-help books. Why is this so? What does it say about Basotho readers, because they read self-help too?
The grand vision for Moluoane is seeing a very rich, very diverse literary landscape for Lesotho. And with that in mind, I hope that all the programming, and the tools that we’re creating contribute to that ideal. Ho ngoloe haholo, ho ngoloe ka mokhoa o fapaneng, ka mokhoa o nonneng. I hope that Moluoane fosters a growing, rich culture of reading, of thought, and of imagination.