The Rainbow Nation

During the last six months in South Africa I have had the privilege to travel in seven different provinces, surrounded by locals in buses and kombis. Many times, in my experience, the travel from place to place is one of the most exciting parts of visiting others. What I have seen from taxi and bus windows are life-giving images that I will forever remember. In fact, these moments on the road are ones in which I have felt closest to God while seeing the wonders of South Africa. I keep coming back to the thought that South Africa’s landscape is as diverse as it’s people. As the dry, flat landscape of Kimberley becomes lush hills or an urban city, the language changes, the culture differs, music, food and dance transform. Everyday I am amazed by the diverse colors, sounds, shapes and tastes that create this singular country, South Africa. People are so unique in this country that I have trouble picturing what a South African would look like, what he would sound like, or what his struggles and joys may be. Labeled as the Rainbow Nation, South Africans remain who they are and come together to make something really, truly great.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whom we were able to hear speak at the COP 17 rallies in Durban last November, speaks about African people by saying, “In African language we say ‘a person is a person though other persons.’ I would not know how to be a human being at all except I learned this from other human beings. We are made for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence. We are meant to complement each other. All kinds of things go terribly wrong when we break that fundamental law of our being. Not even the most powerful nation can be completely self-sufficient.”

At home in the States and here in my community in SA, I see things go terribly wrong when we as humans fail to work together. Many social injustices that I see and feel happen because we refuse to take responsibly for what we do and more importantly, we refuse to take responsibly for others. For example, I question everyday about who’s responsible for the street kids I hang out and work with. Who’s responsible for these human beings?

‘I am because we are’ vs. ‘each man for his own’

In four months I will be leaving this country and a lot of worry and grief comes with thinking about that departure. One worry is that in leaving I may lose the deep connection I have with my community and I am concerned about how I may find a way to continue to communicate with the youth I hang out with each day who do not even have a mailing address. In these uncertainties, Tutu’s statement about the importance of our interdependence gives me hope that these ‘networks of relationships’ can certainly span across oceans. Leaving this amazing, colorful, diverse country, which has taught me about the world and myself and challenged my views and beliefs, should not bring me grief, but rather delight in the opportunity to go home an ambassador for my South African family and the children I serve. My community in South Africa has indeed taken responsibility for me, loved me and taken me in. They have upheld the meaning of Ubuntu and what Tutu explained as a ‘fundamental law of our being’. I am because we are. “A person is a person though other persons”.