Reality

Now that I am finally settling down I have had a bit more time to reflect on my travels and experiences. I recently started reading my journal from my time in Africa and I found some things that I would like to share. Part of the following is an excerpt from it...

The beginning…Africa. I said in my other blog post that the only way to describe Africa is “real.” I stand by that now more then ever. I had to learn to steel my heart. It sounds harsh but looking back if I hadn’t, everything I played witness to would have broken me. Take for example my daily drive. Imagine a family (mother, grandmother, and four children from ages 2-12) living in what I can’t even call a hut. Their ‘home’ consisted of a rotting kitchen table flopped on its side, a piece of sheet metal as a roof, torn garbage bags as one of the three walls, and an old car door as the last wall. They have to enter on all fours and only the youngest can stand. Six people sleep like this every night, through winters bitter cold and summers overwhelming heat. This is home to them.

Now imagine, if you can, tens of thousands of these homes all crammed together, and on top of each other sometimes, in what is called a Township. There are a few proper buildings scattered in no particular order; some are schools, some are gas stations, others are bars. There are lots of semi truck trailers here as they serve well for grocery stores, barber shops, and mechanics. Some homes are better off but they rarely have proper roofs…it’s usually scrap metal. There are beggars begging their beggar neighbors, children playing on the street amide condoms and needles, thieves stealing from each other, everyone trying to make some kind of living. There are no white people here. This is the Africa we don’t see.

The orphanage that I worked in was smack in the middle of Khalitshya. Any time we had to go for groceries, pick up donations, go out for a night…literally anything, we had to drive through this. Looking out at my surroundings felt surreal; how can so many people, all who have families and life stories, live like this every day.

It made me reflect on my life at home. It is something that I have thought about a lot, trust me, and I have come to the conclusion that it's not how much we do or do not have, what experiences we have, or the people in our lives…it is our perception and attitude towards those things, whether or not we appreciate them, that create our realities.

About the only way I can describe my experience in Africa is to tell you that I had a shift in reality.