Witness: A visit to the townships of South Africa

As we drove into the township if Khalatashanta, it was an eerie feeling. Looking across what seemed to be miles and miles of little shacks no bigger than a small bedroom all butted up against one another in row, after row after row. These small compartments were made of materials that people could find such things as siding twine. As we drove through, we saw goat heads being cooked on the side of the road and communal bathrooms for all of the people in the township to use. We saw children running around everywhere. Some where rolling around old tires while others sat and talked to one another. The power lines that ran through the small city had stream after stream of cable coming down to each little shack, dangerous of course, but the only way to have electricity reach these tiny homes.
Of course coming from white suburbia in the states, to me this place seemed like a hell hole. I could only imagine what it must be like at night, roaming around in utter darkness. However I had to admit that this is not my world, my time and that to have what I and many others do back in the states is not the end all. In fact, despite the hardships that ravish this community, the utter poverty and threat of AIDS and disease and inadequate health care, we found a supreme optimism that you don’t find in many places.
We had the opportunity to meet with some amazing children. Some spoke broken English, but for the most part, our communication was based on gestures. I handed out massive amounts of Disney stickers and of course the kids put it right on their forehead. I’m not sure they knew who Mickey Mouse was, and I’m not sure I would want them to know at this point. These kids were just like any other kids. I kept comparing my interactions with them to the thousands of children I’ve interacted with working in the parks, and to me there was no difference. They were children with these beaming smiles and big brown eyes. They all laughed and paraded around with their newly found trinkets on. There were the ones who were shy, and the others who were bold enough to come right up and smile at you, laugh at you or strike up a conversation with you, just like other kids in the states. All of them wanted to have their pictures taken…I would make them pose and make funny faces so they could then see in the viewfinder their own faces. It was what made them happy, something so small and seemingly insignificant. There was one young child there name Luu-yo-lo, awesome kid who spoke a bit of English. He was an awesome kid, shy, but smart and someone who reminded me of the potential these kids could have if they were given the chance. These weren’t your every day hellions, just average, ordinary day kids. They couldn’t be more than 9 or 10 and they were born into a system that will keep them down for a good part of their life.
You see, the apartheid is over in South Africa, but the poverty is not. The disparities in class are obvious and to think for one moment that things are getting better is laughable at best. In many instances they are improving but when you visit the township, you see that they are not. These people still live in shacks, still have to work every day just to eat, and still are so confined to this tiny space with so little opportunity. As you look to these children, so full of hope and joy, and then look to their parents you see disparity here too. You see the exhaustion and weight upon these people to provide and secure for both themselves and their children the basic necessities of life. You see inevitably the loss of hope in their eyes and the recognition that they may never have what the people on the other side of town have.
I think the difference between the children and the parents is that the children have no idea what the rest of the world looks like. For the most part, the only thing they know about the outside world is what we as “tourists” bring in with us. They haven’t had to experience the direct acts of discrimination that their parents have faced, and the only thing they know is what they have been raised in.
For those of us coming in from the outside world, we cannot help but weep, for we know not just what these people could have materialy, but that we as a world have turned a blind eye. We have the resources available for these people and have ignored their humanity. The years of denial and damnation of this country and its continenet have not gone away institutionally and to think that the country has moved on from its troubles is far fetched and almost insane.
And yet as you look through these children’s eyes and you think about tomorrow, one cannot help but imagine the possibilities. When you meet someone like Luu-yo-lo who has all the potential in the world to become someone great, you wonder what he could be and all of those kids could be if they were given the chance to succeed, to do something great with their lives.
So in the end I walked away from the township realizing to the fullest capacity what I had known for years about the deplorable living conditions that exist here. But what I recognized more in this visit was the enormous potential for human beings to overcome and to live with optimism and hope that tomorrow could be a better day.

Into Africa

A dream come true…

… It’s about 4am on the morning we are supposed to arrive in South Africa and I cannot sleep. I’m so incredibly excited to be visiting Africa, to the point where I am beginning to feel tears form in the back of my eyes. It is just an incredible feeling to know that in less then 3 or four hours, we will be arriving in a place that I have wanted to visit my entire life. I’m not just excited about the chance to go on a Safari to see the wild animals and to have the opportunity to go on a “real” wildlife safari. No, believe it or not I am so in shock and thanksgiving that I will finally be able to see with my own eyes the things that I have only heard about or read in news stories. To see this place that has had to go through so much, where Nelson Mandela had been imprisoned for close to 27 years of his life. The place where my new friend, Desmond Tutu finally found freedom and where there was so much oppression and pain and suffering. To a continent overcome with poverty and tragic conditions that no human being should have to undergo. The racism, the hatred, the hurt that has happened here, and the pain and suffering that still goes on each and every day here. From the genocide in Darfur, to the exploitation in Sierra Lion, to the small societies that suffer through things like female circumcisions, to river blindness, to AIDS, the child soldiers who are abducted from their small towns and forced to commit atrocious acts of violence in the name of rebel fighting, to the million and one other things that happen in this place. Believe it or not, I’m so excited to be here, to see but only some of this with my own eyes, but not for the reasons one would believe.
Believe it or not, I’m happy to be here, because at least in South Africa, for some reason, they seemed to have started off on the right track. They seemed to have done something right. Maybe it was the Truth and reconciliation process, maybe it was the freeing of Nelson Mandela. Maybe it was the solidarity that was created by the many oppressed people that had to live under Apartheid conditions, maybe even visiting the very place where Gandhi had resisted to obey the pass laws that inspired him to lead a movement that freed an entire nation.
More than anything however, it is the fact I am visiting a place not full of devastation and disaster, but a place of hope. Especially south Africa, who had gone through so much, and yet seemed to have come out in a way that is prosperous and forgiving. That people here seem to have been able to go on with their lives, to continue living together after such tremendous strife and grievances. That in this place I am about to go, in the air was this amazing amount of forgiveness, of moving forward and of seeing one another for who they are. The amazing things that have taken place in South Africa are astonishing. The idea of freedom that is so new to so many in South Africa who had never had it before. People, who in my very own lifetime, once were forced to obey laws that pertained to the color of their skin, people who now decades later can say they are truly free. I feel so blessed and honored to be here, but more importantly I feel so humbled by the experience of South Africans to have been able to come together and to live under the now peaceful conditions they do. I’m so excited to see with my own eyes, not the strife and suffering, but rather the true human potential that exists not only in this nation, but this continent. I’m so utterly amazed at the though of stepping off of this ship and seeing with my very own eyes a place that is both haunting and mesmerizing at the same time.
I think not only of the current conditions of Africa, but the historical context that has left this continent shattered and broken. I think of the horrible economic strife the people of this land have had to face. The colonizing and conquering that took the lives of so many, and in my eyes, the worst atrocity being the export of human trafficking through slavery in the Americas and all over the world. I think to myself, I am literally taking the same passage into Africa that millions upon millions of Africans were forced to take out of Africa to lives where they were beaten and persecuted in so many ways. There is a wind blowing in the room right now, an eerie noise of the wind creeping through a tiny crack in the window, and I can’t help but sense and feel reverence for those millions of people who either died or lost their freedom due to the Atlantic slave trade. I can’t help but feel such a personal connection to them, as being my fellow human beings, fellow lovers of the stars.
So in this moment I feel so honored and blessed to be able to have this opportunity to see such a place that has such horrors but also, so much potential, to see with my own eyes this place that I have dreamed about since I was a small boy. The idea of simply stepping onto the ground in South Africa just is so amazing to me and I can’t believe that I have such an opportunity to experience such a thing. I am so thankful to be here, knowing that there are truly millions upon millions of people around the world who I know would love to be doing the things I am doing today. People who might not have access to come here, whether that be financial or transportation or even knowledge, or age. Anything and everything, something I am so blessed to do.


All in all, I am in tears, because it is so beautiful and so touching and so enveloping to know that I am here, in this place and to be able to see with my own eyes this fascinating place.