Gerard Mathot

The man who shaped my dreams, Drs. Mathot, my mentor and father

Drs Gerard Mathot was born and educated in The Netherlands. After 4 years’ teaching in Ghana, he has worked for Lesotho since 1971. He is a veteran educationist and social activist. He has worked as Mathematics Adviser at the Ministry of Education, as Senior Lecturer at the Science Education Department of the National University of Lesotho (NUL), as an In-service Advisor at the National Teacher Training College and BANFES Project of the Ministry of Education. He has initiated several innovative programs: the Induction Programme for Beginning Teachers at NUL, the Primary In-service Education Programme at the NTTC, the Primary Resource Teachers Programme at the Ministry of Education, and the Isikhuthazikhaba Multigrade Project at the Eastern Cape. He also founded Seliba Sa Boithuto, which supports learners to study on their own, encouraging peer-learning. SSB’s motto is: Give the responsibility for learning back to the learner.

Since his retirement, he has been involved in the establishment and running of the Paballong HIV/AIDS Care Centre, the Family Art and Literacy Centre, Cor’s Trust to provide scholarships to needy secondary school pupils and the Mathematics Contests of the Lesotho Science and Maths Teachers’ Association.

I met Ntate (means Father in Sesotho) Mathot in 1992 during my Mamohau days. I was a newcomer in the Lesotho Teaching Department, and a stranger to Lesotho's life, just arrived from Kenya as a young teacher, yet, I was selected as a mentor by one of my colleagues and thus exposed to a world of learning and teaching from a different perspective. This mentoring was part of Induction Programme, which was a brain child of ntate Mathot. That was a beginning for me to become a teacher!

Ntate Mathot became my teacher, patron, mentor, and a father figure since then. He stood by me during my hard times and supported me to achieve my dreams. He also supervised my study for MPhil that opened an entirely different research world afterwards. We became partners in many educational activities and engaged in various workshops, wrote a book based on the study that we conducted to investigate the needs of RCC schools in Lesotho. Then, we initiated an activity to evaluate the Grade 1 pupils' learning capacity, with the support of iPIPS (www.ipips.org)

Though Ntate Mathot initiated many social activities and organizations, I consider him as a human skill developer, indeed he influenced me and shaped me to be human and to be an educational activist (whatever it may mean). However, that path I chose was not easy at all. Let me narrate one interesting experience.

In 1994 during winter holidays, I was instructed by my headmaster to attend a workshop in Christ The King High School. It was short notice, on a Sunday evening. I had to leave the next day, catching a taxi in the early cold morning in that extreme winter season. I reached the venue by 3 PM, after jumping into various taxis (from Mamohau to Pitseng, to Hlotse, to Maputsoe, to Maseru to Roma, 5 taxis!). I reported to the person in charge of the workshop, and he took me to Ntate Mathot. I did not report to the workshop on time, and therefore cannot be allowed to participate in the workshop, I was told (Ntate Mathot is a perfectionist, till to-date, I am not). I politely explained to him that I am not in a position to travel home on that day, as the taxis are not available at night (even if that might not be the case, I would not risk traveling at night), so the only option is to forcefully stay in his house! A stranger to him, yet he took me to his house in Maseru that became my second home since then. That was the beginning of our journey together. Even in these pandemic days, we share our thoughts to learn how to move on in life, and discussing how to support our young generation.

He recently celebrated his 80th birthday. I wish him many more memorable birthdays to come because many young people still need him as a teacher, a father, and a mentor. I was one of the luckiest to have him closer to me.