Prince Harry on his connection to Lesotho’s children
There is one child in particular that Harry has struck up a close relationship with over the last decade – Mutsu Potsane – a 14-year-old who first met the prince when he was just four.
The new facility will allow Sentebale to scale up its Mamohato camps – a residential project that provides psychological, social and practical support to children struggling to cope with being HIV positive.
Prince Harry at Mamohato Children’s Centre.
He continued: “I, like them, knew there would always be a gaping hole that could never be filled”.
During the trip in 2004, Prince Harry met many vulnerable children, but Mutsu seemed to take a shine to the roya, l clinging to the Prince who showed him so much kindness.
Prince Harry dances with children at the opening of Sentebale’s Mamohato Children’s Centre.
The centre has been funded and built in just three years by the charity Sentebale, which Harry co-founded with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho after falling in love with the country and its people when he first visited during his gap year at the age of 19.
Britain’s Press Association said Harry opened the Mamohato Children’s Centre on Thursday, along with Lesotho’s Prince Seeiso.
Harry and Seeiso toured the sprawling centre, based outside the capital Maseru, ahead of the official opening by the nation’s monarch King Letsie III.
Harry was joined by the British High Commissioner to Lesotho, Judith Macgregor, and he discussed possible hats he could wear against the heat: “I was thinking what kind of hat one could get away with”.
An African teenager had an emotional reunion with his life-long friend Prince Harry and praised the prince’s charitable work in his home country.
He said: “I’m very comfortable with Harry and Harry is very comfortable with me”.
Harry’s nanny, who left a request for mourners at her funeral to donate to Sentebale, is remembered with a plaque that reads: ‘The Welcome Centre: In loving memory of Olga Powell’.
“He said to me, I’ve grown up”.
Yesterday, 10 years later, they opened a pounds 2?million centre catering for disabled and disadvantaged children, principally those living with HIV.
Speaking to Sky News about his own mother and the legacy of Princess Diana, Prince Seeiso said: “I’m hoping that they are quietly laughing or quietly smiling that we’ve come this far”.
Asked how he had been Harry said: ‘Busy!’
Harry and Potsane have kept in touch over the years.
Other highlights of Harry’s tour will include playing in the Sentebale Royal Salute Polo Cup, in Cape Town, to raise funds for Sentebale; a meeting with Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu; along with a succession of engagements to emphasize social problems facing young people in South Africa and endeavors to aimed at addressing them.