Lesotho holiday gifts pave the way to self-sufficiency
When Mamanuel Rampai heard she would receive a free pig for Christmas a few years ago, purchased by an anonymous donor in the US through an aid group's online gift catalogue, she all but dismissed the present.
But the gift, a seven-month-old sow named Pinki, has since made her a role model for other pig farmers in her rural community. "I've learned so much about how to care for them, because they've become a livelihood," Rampai, 43, told IRIN.
Rampai lives in Turupu, one of Lesotho's many remote mountainous villages and used to survive on the occasional sale of a chicken and during periods of drought was dependent on international food aid. Her life mirrored the economic stagnancy of the other 80 families in her village, hard hit by the combined effects of poverty, food insecurity and HIV/AIDS.
