Integrations
Arriving back in the US has been a incredible experience. Each year our trips have been completely eye opening and life changing and this year was no exception. However the difference this year is that we were immersing ourselves in a culture that looks very similar to our own…from our hotel we could wander to the closest Waterfront mall to purchase Gucci handbags and Jimmy Choo shoes… yet each day we were choosing to enter into the intense poverty of the Cape Town Flats and to deeply engage with both the geographic as well as the mental and spiritual apartheid [...]
Apartheid – Up Close and Personal: A Healing Story of Truth, Reconciliation and Forgiveness
I’ve come to love the term ‘healing story’. I first saw it in the beautiful memoir Waking, by Matthew Sanford. Waking recounts Matt’s trauma and transcendence following a tragic automobile accident that killed his father and sister and left him paraplegic. Matt describes healing stories as “stories we have come to believe that shape how we think about the world, ourselves, and our place in it….Healing stories guide us through good and bad times; they come together to create our own personal mythology, the system of beliefs that guide how we interpret our experience.” This is my South Africa healing [...]
Free to Be
As we embark on our final days in Cape Town, I am flooded with gratitude from the lessons I have learned through the history of South Africa. A huge piece of experiencing the crisis in South Africa has been to explore the depths of apartheid. It’s hard to believe that 20 years ago this nation was in the throws of severe segregation and a legal system that oppressed the majority of their citizens. You may be wondering how the nation shifted gears and adopted democracy without causing more turmoil. After the ban of apartheid, South Africans adopted a form of [...]
A Story to Tell
The last week and a half in Cape Town has been a transformative, soul-enhancing experience. I had an expectation that I would land and immediately be overwhelmed by hopelessness, poverty, and grief. Of course, expectations are always shattered by reality. Each of our adventures out into the townships has certainly lent perspective on the immense struggle that apartheid and HIV has created for the black and colored community. I have never seen such obvious separation between whites and blacks, sprawling communities of one to two room shacks housing up to 10 or more people, and lack of what the majority [...]
A Divided Youth
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children….as we set about building a new South Africa, one of our highest priorities must therefore be our children. The vision of a new society that guides us should already be manifest in the steps we take to address the wrong done to our youth and to prepare them for their future.” Nelson Mandela, 1995 As a first time visitor to SA, it would initially seem that the days of Apartheid are far behind, and the future is bright for all of [...]
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