Bismarck, North Dakota - News

Bismarck Tribune

By KAREN HERZOGBy KAREN HERZOG

"Nowadays they eat and they do their work very well because they are not hungry." - Memello Khowla, a student at Maletsema Secondary School, village of Liphiring, Lesotho, Africa, in a letter thanking the Bismarck Rotary Club for its funding of a school lunch program.

"After lunch we feel like a cat on hot bricks to get in the class because all in our school ... have eaten." - Student Lethula Ngakana.

His mother says that Christopher Dopson always has been a special, one-in-a-million kid.

Dopson, 24, son of Christine Hogan and Larry Dopson of Bismarck, has been in Africa with the Peace Corps for two years, teaching school in the country of Lesotho.

Christopher Dopson has known what he wanted to do since the age of 10, Hogan said. In fact, she can remember the exact day he decided. It was in 1990, on Hogan's birthday,Feb. 11. Her son was watching cartoons when an announcement came on the television of the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, she said.

"He decided he wanted to be like Nelson Mandela and never changed his mind from then on," she said.

Dopson graduated from St. Mary's High School and attended the University of Southern California, studying international relations. He spent time at the University of Cape Town in an exchange program and also attended a graduate program at the University of Chicago. He learned Swahili and Sesotho, the local language in Lesotho, a country surrounded by the nation of South Africa.

The school Dopson teaches at in Lesotho is in an extremely poor rural district, without electricity or lights, where many students attended school all day without eating, in a nation ravaged by AIDS.

Hogan, a member of the Bismarck Rotary Club, started quite modestly by asking for books to be donated so the children would have a library, said Fay Behm, a Bismarck Rotary Club representative.

Since then, the club, with the support of the District Rotary Board, has funded a project called Gift of Hope in Maletsema School, where Dopson is serving, Behm said. This project has enabled Dopson to help the boys and girls of the school in further ways.

This is the first time the club, started in 1920, has sponsored its own project, Behm said.

Dopson's work has transformed Maletsema School, has given the people hope, Hogan said.

When he arrived, the situation was sad, she said. His school was among the poorest around. Dopson, who was teaching them English, history and social studies, told his mother that in Lesotho a child's job future is bleak unless he or she learns English, and what his 65 students needed were English books, textbooks and dictionaries. Hogan started out by sending boxes of books on her own. Then she thought about asking her Rotary Club to get involved.

She also contacted Konnie Wightman, the Bismarck School District's library coordinator, to see if any books were available.

Wightman and librarians from the school district, as well as the Bismarck Public Library, ended up gathering 50 boxes of high-quality books to donate to Dopson's school. The Bismarck Rotary Club committee provided $2,000 to ship the books to Lesotho at the lowest rate, Hogan said.

These books are a window into a better future, but that's long-term, Hogan thought.

Dopson had told his mother that children would attend school all day without eating, some after walking an hour and a half to get there.

"What good are books if you're starving?" her Rotary committee thought. So she and her son set about starting a noon lunch program for students. After donating $8,000, the Bismarck Rotary Club applied for a matching grant from its district.

More ideas emerged: For a village without electricity, batteries and equipment could make donated solar panels operable. A poultry and egg operation would provide ongoing protein. Buying implements to plant a community garden would allow people to grow their own cabbages and spinach, beans and corn.

A district Rotary matching grant doubled the funds to $16,000, to be used to buy food for the lunch program, buy garden implements and provide start-up for the poultry and egg operation.

Former Bismarck residents Dr. Bill and Margaret Riecke have now gotten their North Carolina Rotary Club involved in the project, Hogan said, proposing to build a girls' dormitory for the village's skills training center, which would allow girls equal access to vocational education.

From acquiring good books to share as a community library, providing school lunches, growing a garden and even providing some community jobs, Dopson's "Nelson Mandela moment" is still reverberating.

Dopson's two-year tour with the Peace Corps ends in December, though he may decide to stay another year, Hogan said.

Looking into the future, Dopson has several hopes, Hogan said: That once the lunch program is established, the school can receive government funding to continue it and that current teachers in the school can assume supervision of the program when Dopson's tour is done. The hopes for the garden and poultry projects are to become self-sustaining, she said. She also hopes that Rotary members can visit Maletsema School and see for themselves what's happened there.

(Reach Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@;bismarcktribune.com.)