I am only a messenger. I carry within me a storybook of tattered yet indestructible pages. This summer in Lesotho and Ethiopia with SOS Children’s Villages, I was entrusted with stories and images of strength and leadership that are not my own but deserve to be carried forward. I cannot relay all of them here as there are so many, but I can share a few that I will never forget.
For William, a 20-year-old carpentry student in Lesotho’s northern highland city of Leribe, crossing a mountain to get home was routine. After one particularly long day after class, we gave him a ride to the nearest road to his house. I was slightly confused because there were no structures or anything resembling homes for as far as my eyes could see. He pointed out to the horizon with a smile and casually said, “See that mountain in the distance? I live on the other side.” Slinging his backpack across one shoulder, he exited the car and continued the additional forty-five-minute trek on foot with stealthy assurance. This is an image now permanently etched into my mind. It is a picture of quiet strength and resilience, a life carried forward with an endurance that makes no complaints and demands no recognition.
The small landlocked nation of Lesotho, tucked high in the Maloti mountains of southern Africa, nicknamed the Kingdom in the Sky, embodies that paradox. Even here, where isolation feels absolute, global forces cut deep. When the United States imposed heavy tariffs on Lesotho, shockwaves rippled throughout Lesotho’s garment industry, the country’s largest employer; factories across small towns like Leribe shuttered, leaving tens of thousands without work. Watching William disappear into the horizon, I saw that his walk, steady and uncomplaining, mirrored the path of a nation asked to endure more than it should.
I met William through the SOS Children’s Villages Lesotho Youth Empowerment and Entrepreneurship Training (YEET) Project, where youth who were unable to complete high school receive free training in carpentry, cosmetology, and food art. My role was to conduct interviews to get stories. But from the beginning, I understood that these stories were not mine. I was a guest who was warmly invited to sit, listen, and witness the journeys of others. On paper, the courses appeared simply as practical training. But listening to the students turned them into something else entirely. A young girl’s eyes sparkled with excitement as she told me about her passion for food art. She shared how after she lost her father, the lack of funds forced her to stop her schooling, yet she was able to continue her learning through the YEET program. Her dream now is to open a restaurant. Another student in cosmetology described how the training injected newfound purpose into his life, pulling him out of long, empty days spent at home with only a bleak future in sight. These were stories of reclamation, of opportunity transformed into hope.
I experienced some of my happiest moments in Lesotho. During the YEET school's Cultural Day, students wrapped us in Basotho blankets, the national dress. A student stepped forward to pin my blanket, and the hall burst into cheers. We watched the students’ dances that wove together traditional stick-fighting routines with Afrobeats and amapiano, the old and the new sharing the same rhythm. When students later swarmed me to teach me the popular Magumba TikTok dance, I found myself laughing so hard, I was barely able to stay upright.
In Ethiopia, I encountered a different but equally powerful understanding of leadership and resilience. At another SOS Children’s Villages in Hawassa, where kids are grouped with foster ' SOS mothers,' staff explained that children spend the summers hand-making crafts, selling what they can and donating the proceeds. This allowed them to also give back to others, instead of only always being the recipients of charity. That reframing taught me something profound about dignity. It is not something granted from outside, but something practiced daily from within, even by those who have barely anything themselves.
In Addis Ababa, I met Amanuel, a computer engineering graduate who had returned to agriculture to found Ayat Honey during the pandemic. With support from SOS Children’s Villages’ Sustainable Training for Employment Promotion (STEP) Project–an initiative that equips young entrepreneurs with business training, financial literacy, and market linkages–he turned a few beehives into a thriving enterprise. Today, his company partners with local farmers to produce local honey along with innovative honey-based beverages called Birz, and contributes to strengthening Ethiopia’s role in the global honey supply chain. Sitting across from him as he described his dream of turning Ethiopia into a global honey exporter, it was difficult not to be enthralled with his passion and vision for the future. He was not just building a personal livelihood; he was imagining a different future for his country and daring others to imagine it with him. His ambition was its own form of leadership, the kind of contagious enthusiasm that expands the horizon of possibility for everyone else.
Yet, in Lesotho and Ethiopia, the happy faces of resilience and generosity live alongside a darkness of extreme poverty and hardship. I saw first-hand what happens when leadership fails: corruption eroding trust, mismanagement suffocating opportunity, integrity subsumed by self-interest. Those failures are not abstract principles; they live in the voices of its students, the frustrations of its families, the impoverishment of its communities.
In Lesotho, school classrooms often have 85 students per teacher. And once a child turns twelve, schools start charging tuition fees, an oft-insurmountable barrier to continuing education beyond elementary school. The tragedy of corruption struck me the most. At a visit to Katse Dam, officials demanded money before letting us take photos, claiming the receipt machine was broken. And while Lesotho exports its pristine mountain water to neighbouring South Africa and Botswana, local Basotho families rely mainly on bottled water imports because the government diverts clean water away from its own people in exchange for money. How could a country rich in water, famous for its snowcapped mountains and lush highland springs, leave its own citizens lacking the opportunity to drink the very water that gushes beneath their feet? That contradiction showed me how corruption and mismanagement can turn any abundance into scarcity.
The lessons I learned also reached me in ways I had not expected. My Asian American identity carried unexpected weight in Lesotho, where its history with Chinese investors and traders has left complicated legacies. Many Basotho described Chinese businesspeople as aloof or exploitative; this perception sometimes preceded me and shaped how others viewed me, although alternatively they would often classify me as white, or lehoa. Reconciling these moments with the immense generosity I otherwise received taught me a deeper humility. Leadership is not just about uplifting others’ voices but also about sitting with discomfort and listening even when it unsettles you.
What I carry most vividly, though, is the kindness I witnessed and received everywhere I went. In Lower Moyeni in Quthing, Lesotho, a girl who had recently lost both parents told us she wished we had met earlier so she could have invited us for karaoke and lasagna. She offered to connect us with friends in Cape Town, even as she admitted she could not afford the meal in front of her. I remember sitting there, unable to speak for a moment, overwhelmed by the contradiction of her vulnerability and her openness.
Before this summer, I thought of leadership as decisiveness, visibility, and command. What I encountered was quieter yet more powerful: William climbing mountains to get home; a girl envisioning a brighter future through food art; children in Hawassa giving away what little material possessions they had; Amanuel daring to take Ethiopia’s honey to a global level. These were not lessons I cleverly uncovered. These were gifts of wisdom gently handed to me, and they have altered me in ways I cannot fully put into words.
When I close my eyes, I still see William walking into the horizon, backpack slung over his shoulder. The image lingers with me because it captures something essential about leadership: endurance and tenacity. Leadership consists of ordinary acts that sustain hope despite sometimes insurmountable challenges. From Lesotho’s mountains to Ethiopia’s markets, I saw seeds of possibilities planted that may not bloom in my lifetime. But they will bloom eventually. And in that certainty, I find both my humility and my hope for a brighter tomorrow.
I know I have carried only fragments home with me of my time in Africa. All the incredible people I met this summer are still walking their paths, planting their seeds, and building their futures. My role is not to claim their narratives as mine, but to carry them forward and to amplify what they have taught me: that leadership lives in quiet endurance, in acts of generosity, and in ambitions that dare entire nations to dream. I am only a messenger and my storybook holds many more stories waiting to be told.