How can you describe a moment in time that changes your life?
How about an hour in time, or a few days? Does that make it easier to put into words? Or how about writing a realization, gathered over a short time? Can you even tell someone, over the phone or instant messaging them, what it’s like to be a completely different person than you were when you left only a few weeks before?
When speaking with my parents on the final day docked in South Africa, I ran into this problem. I wanted them to understand me, to feel the same I did, to cry like I cried—but they didn’t. They didn’t even show much emotion other than to be proud when I told them how I’d managed to climb Table Mountain and swim with the Great White Sharks. But then again, how do you explain to someone something that you can’t even explain yourself? I can’t even tell my diary how much emotion I felt while speaking with our colored cab driver, listening to him tell of how he had been beaten and gassed and discriminated against, only to learn to love the people who did it to him in the end. I can’t write about how the kids in the townships had hope written in their eyes, a glimmer that we rarely see even in our own privileged children. I can’t say how I personally felt while I watched the land disappear on the horizon, knowing that if I ever returned to this place which changed my life, it won’t be for years and years.
Coming into port was like something out of a dream. In the freezing pre-sunrise air of the Atlantic I stood with my friends watching as these mountains, the likes of which I have never seen in my life, grew larger and larger with all the colors in the universe dancing behind them. We had been told numerous times that Africa is where all of us originated from, but for the first time I understood what was being said. My first thoughts were that if every single person died in this world, I knew that the sun would keep rising just like that and everything would be alright. Even just seeing the horizon was comforting in a way that can only be described as a homecoming of sorts—although I am by no means a world traveler, I can say with blunt honesty that the sunrise over the mountains in Cape Town was the single most beautiful and comforting sunrise in the entire world. I pity the fact that only six ships a year carrying passengers experience coming into this city in the manner that we did; the few thousand that have the experience we were lucky enough to have are too few and far between.
Tearing my gaze from the skyline for a moment, the next evident thing were the hundreds of tiny boats near us, all fishing in the early morning light. Unlike Brazil, in which the people would point and stare as they spoke in rapid Portuguese behind our backs, the people on the boats began to wave and cheer. Like I had been conditioned to do in the prior port and my experience living out of the country this summer I began to think of these people as mocking; prepared to begin calling us all ‘Bush-lovers’ and ‘American scum’ as soon as the ship moved past. As we went through the preparations to enter the country, I mentally prepared myself for more of these attacks. Moving out into the new yet old land a few hours later with a township tour group, I braced myself.
What I experienced over the next week, however, shattered my vain illusions. As a craft seller from Kenya told us when we stopped for an hour to speak with him after closing, how can they mock us for things that they are working to overcome themselves? How can they insult us for discrimination and racism when they only just ended it and are working to reverse the lasting effects? Sure, none of them care for Bush or the war in Iraq. But unlike in Brazil and Spain, they knew that the citizens were not Bush. They realized that we were just as unhappy with the situation as a whole, but change does not come quickly. He told us how they loved Americans in South Africa because the few that they got were the ones who wanted to venture out of their comfort zone, not indulge their luxuries. We were accepting of the differences and willing to lend a hand, not afraid to venture into a country many have left for dead.
Why else would the children in the townships, born into a world in which their parents were discriminated against and thrown aside, hug us and follow us as though we were movie stars? Why else would families stop on the side of the road to wave and talk with us, despite their other engagements? Why else would we feel so comfortable and so at home in a place that is like nothing we had ever seen before? I’ll be the first to admit that I had never felt as relaxed as I did in the townships. After all the warnings not to venture into them I had been expecting something reminiscent of Bronx or Harlem, not a community of people who lived in such poverty yet never had a smile leave their faces?
Later in the week, I joined in with some people who I met heading down to Boulder Beach. We hailed a cab and loaded in, not sure how long the drive was or if our driver would be kind enough to show us the sights as many others did. At first he put on a DVD of reggae music, swaying gently to the rhythm. It was only when we passed a small colored neighborhood that he turned it off and asked what we knew about South Africa. Feeling on the spot we explained what we had learned in Global Studies, citing the Archbishop’s words. What happened next caught all of our attentions—he scoffed. He told us about how, although what Father Tutu had done was admirable, he didn’t understand what it was like to live as a colored person in this day and age. Over the hour drive he took detours, pointing out to us where he had lost his friends to gunfire, been beaten near death by the police and been tear gassed while in class. He told us how he had lost forty of his fifty classmates and friends to the struggle before apartheid ended, how he had been beaten for entering white areas and how he had not been able to hold a job other than a sign holder on the hot pavement.
As one of the members of our group was black (by our standards—he was surprised to learn that he would be considered colored for his stringy hair in South Africa), the driver was shocked to see how we interacted. We told him how at home we had friends who were black that we consistently went out with, and how one of the girls even had a black boyfriend. He laughed and told us that we would be dead, without question or thought, if we were in South Africa behaving in this manner, even today. His passion for teaching us about the truth was evident by his slamming on the wheel and yelling at times, making us feel lost and selfish for having homes and safety.
There was a bumper sticker that I saw on my last day in South Africa on a beaten car heading into ‘Kill Me Quick Town’, or Lavender Hills. ‘For Everything, Give Thanks’, it read. For me this was the most inspiring moment of the entire stay. Despite having nothing at all, these people were happy to simply be free. It doesn’t matter to them if they have the newest videogame or the latest issue of Cosmo. It doesn’t matter if they have a mansion or a boat or a convertible. To them, freedom is the greatest gift of all.
That is how I will tell my friends and family about this journey. Not by my own words, but by those of a peeling sticker in the back of a forgotten car.
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