Lesotho expedition returns
Cadets return home from a life-changing expedition
Sixty specially selected teenage cadets from all over the UK have returned from South Africa after a life-changing expedition, during which they volunteered with Prince Harry’s charity, Sentebale, supporting orphans and vulnerable children in Lesotho.
The expedition took place between July 26 and August 18 2010 and started with an acclimatisation and environmental awareness phase in South Africa. The cadets then deployed into Lesotho where they met HRH Prince Seeiso, who co-founded Sentebale with Prince Harry, before going on to join their projects.
On arrival at one of the projects in Semonkong, the team were greeted by 90 children who had refused to go to bed, singing and cheering them in. The cadets’ work there entailed repairing roofs, repainting dormitories and tilling gardens, but as soon as the daily work was done the young Lesotho children insisted on football games and skipping championships. The altitude effect meant the locals had the upper hand over the cadets, despite being only 10 years old.
A spokesman for one Sentebale-supported project, Touching Tiny Lives, said: “The cadets’ presence here was yet another benefit of TTL’s great partnership with Sentebale. The cadets put their muscles to work tilling the gardens and digging trenches that they eventually filled with tyres. Everything looks great. The cadets also donated lots of clothes and toys and took time out to get to know the babies in the safe home, who ate up the attention. The cadets have definitely left their mark on the TTL campus, just as I’m sure the babies here have left their mark on the cadets. In that sense I think we all benefited – just as planned.
While in Africa the cadets also undertook the longest commercial abseil in the world, enjoyed some time on safari and visited historic military sites such as the 1879 Zulu War battlefield sites at Rorke’s Drift and Isandlwana, as well as the Boer War site of Spion Kop.
A former cadet himself, Prince Harry was patron of the expedition, and paid a surprise visit to the cadets during their final training session in the UK at Easter. He told them: “You will really enjoy it; it will be a hell of an adventure.“Once you have met the children of Lesotho your lives will be very, very different because you will have an understanding you never thought you would of the way people have to live out there.” He added that they would enjoy “a bit of hard labour, a bit of digging, a bit of baby cradling for the girls and maybe the boys”.
The Prince launched the charity in 2006 with his friend Prince Seeiso of Lesotho to help children and young people orphaned as a result of HIV and AIDS. Each cadet gained their place by passing a gruelling selection course last July and had to raise £1,000 as their own contribution towards the cost of the trip. A spokesman for the Cadet150 said: “The aim of this ambitious expedition was to provide a challenging environment in which cadets were able to develop their leadership, teamwork, self-reliance and interpersonal skills in situations outside their normal experience. “In working with local children in a very deprived and underdeveloped country, they have clearly gained a broader experience of life and an understanding of different societies and cultures.”
