Prince Harry greets Mutso as he attends the opening of Sentebale's Mamohato Children's Centre. Photo / Getty Images
Prince Harry greets Mutso as he attends the opening of Sentebale's Mamohato Children's Centre. Photo / Getty Images
Prince Harry has been reunited with an African orphan he befriended 11 years ago.
Mutsu Potsane was just 4 when he first met the prince on the royal's first trip to Lesotho.
According to the Daily Mail the pair were introduced at the Mants'ase Children's Home for orphansnear Mohale's Hoek and were brought together again when the prince opened a new centre for children with HIV this week.
Prince Harry greets Mutso as he attends the opening of Sentebale's Mamohato Children's Centre. Photo / Getty Images
During his 2004 visit Mutsu stuck to the royal like glue and a smitten Harry bought the little boy a pair of blue gumboots.
The pair have kept in contact since, meeting up on Prince Harry's subsequent visits to Lesotho.
Now 14, Mutsu has been part of Harry's Sentebale Scholarship programme and has benefited from residential care and financial grants.
Mutsu Potsane was just 4 when he first met the prince but is now 14. Photo / Getty Images
As Sentebale's NZ$4.5 million Mamohato Children's Centre was opened, Harry movingly described his own experience of bereavement - something many of the children helped by his organisation are living with.
He said the death of his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, in a 1997 car crash, allowed him to empathise with the young orphans he met during his first visit.
Prince Harry greets Mutso as he attends the opening of Sentebale's Mamohato Children's Centre. Photo / Getty Images
The trip inspired him to set up the charity Sentebale with Lesotho's Prince Seeiso to help youngsters in need and other children who had lost one or both parents to AIDS or contracted the disease themselves.
"They were far younger than me, and of course, their situation was a great deal more challenging than my own," Harry said, as he spoke about the orphans to guests gathered at the centre's opening ceremony on Thursday.
"Nonetheless, we shared a similar feeling of loss, having a loved one, in my case a parent, snatched away so suddenly.
Prince Harry dances with children at the opening of Sentebale's Mamohato Children's Centre. Photo / Getty Images
"I, like them, knew there would always be a gaping hole that could never be filled.
"For so many of the children in Lesotho, that situation was compounded by the harsh environment and extreme poverty they faced. At the age of just 8 or 9, taking on the responsibility of caring for brothers and sisters, there was simply no time for being a child any more."
Prince Harry takes a photograph of Prince Seeiso. Photo / Getty Images
He added that from that moment "it wasn't a question of when but how quickly could we put something in place that could help these children."
- AAP with additional reporting from nzherald.co.nz
