Strangers & Humanity: Lessons from the Street

“None of the work in rigidly fixed modern settings, no matter how noble, matches a discovery of the long-lost stranger one finds on the street. True devotes of the street find themselves searching for the stranger, longing to overcome the barrier that separates us from the countless nameless lives that inundate and encroach upon us physically in the subways and malls, or on the highway.”

~Marc Gopin, Holy War, Holy Peace

A week ago, I was in South Africa with a friend. We needed to get back to Lesotho from a town about an hour and a half across the border, but with no public transport, hitchhiking was the obvious and frankly only choice.  So my friend and I walk from the beautiful town of Clarens to the road and stop to wait. Stylish, empty cars drive by ignoring our waves of desperation. It quickly becomes apparent that, despite our proximity to the Lesotho border, the culture of trust that permeates the Mountain Kingdom is absent here.

Allow me a brief digression to explain what I mean.  Over the past year, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt in Lesotho is how to trust complete strangers. In Thaba Tseka, one of the schools I was in charge of monitoring was beyond cell phone reception, making it impossible to call for any kind of transport when my day was done. When public transport is difficult to come by hitching rides becomes a way of life. I was surprised that the first time I hitched even cars that were too full to take me would stop, ask where I was going, and apologize for not having space. If a car had space, it was expected that they would stop and take anyone who needed a ride. In these situations one quickly learns to trust strangers; the gap between the “self” and the “other” is much closer than the cult of individualism would have us believe.

Returning to my day in South Africa, as nearly empty cars continue to drive by, my friend and I decide to walk towards a nearby township. As we come closer a young man who looks about twenty approaches us. “I’m not a criminal,” is the first thing he tells us, clearly used to mistrust.  “My name is Joseph. I just wanted to find out if there was anything I could do to help.” We explain we want to get to Fouriesburg so that we can take a Kombi (15 seat mini van used for public transport) to the Lesotho border. “I can help you with that,” he smiles.

So we follow Joseph to the top of the road as he tells us bits and pieces of his story; he talks about his life in Johannesburg, returning home when his grandfather passed away, and how he now cares for his grandmother. We wait a while, chatting as cars continue to drive by.

Finally, Joseph is able to flag down a car for us. It’s an old beat up pickup truck with chipped red paint, a cracked windshield, and duct tape on the steering wheel. “You don’t want to get in that do you?” he says, looking skeptically at us and then back at the truck. “Yes we do!” my friend and I say in unison. We hurriedly hand Joseph a few rand for his help (I love it when people see a need and make up their own jobs).  The men sitting in the front of the truck offer us their seats and move to the back. We jump in and introduce ourselves to the driver.

Our driver is Steve.

 “Do you smoke?” Steve asks.  

“No,” we say.

“You mind if I light up?”

“Not a problem.”

Steve rolls down the window and lights his cigarette. “I keep meaning to quit,” he tells us. “But I think you have to really want to quit to quit, you know what I mean?”

As we drive Steve tells us snippets of his life. He sells firewood for a living. He has an eight-year-old daughter. He speaks five languages: Sesotho, Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans and English. We, in turn, tell him about our work in Lesotho and life in Canada.

When we get to Fouriesburg, Steve makes sure we get in the right Kombi. Just before the Kombi leaves, he gives us a big wave.

“All the best on your journey home,” he says.

“You too,” we smile.

***

I have been reflecting all week on this simple exchange; how we stood by the side of the road and none of the fancy cars stopped—too busy to care, too afraid to trust, or perhaps a bit of both.

It was a poor man from a township who stopped to help us find a ride. It was a man selling firewood who offered us a space in his car.

 Why is it that those who have the least are the most willing to share? Why is it that the marginalized are so often willing to greet others with great openness?

That day in South Africa there were ultimately two different attitudes towards the “other” at play:

To the fancy cars we were merely strangers but to Joseph and Steve we were fellow human beings. 

Lesotho Now & Then: An interview with 'M'e Julia Likhama

'M'e Julia Likhama is a primary school teacher and the Chief's wife. She currently lives with her husband in Thabong II, Thaba Tseka. Over the years, she has seen how the Basotho way of life has been impacted by new technologies, values, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. She kindly agreed to an interview discussing what she has witnessed over the past 62 years.

Julia Likhama and her two granddaughters.

1. When and where were you born?

  I was born and grew up in Ha Mokoto village in the Thaba Tseka district on March 10th, 1952.

 2. What was life like as a child? Was it different from how Basotho children experience childhood today?

 Life was very interesting. We were free…playing with other girls and  sometimes even boys of our age. We would go out into the mountains and play in the streams. What was interesting was that all girls of the same age were sleeping together in one old woman’s house. The grandmothers would take turns looking after us. During that time, the child was for the village not for an individual.

It is quite different now. The children of today... they don’t know each other like we did then. They now sleep in separate homes and are indoors more than we were. They don’t run free in the mountains like we did. Today children do not belong to the village in the way that they used to.

3. What did you like to do for fun as a teenager? What do teenagers do for fun today?

For fun we were doing traditional dances and singing, especially during Christmas. We would sing and compete with girls of other villages.

Today teenagers go around with boys, which was unacceptable when I was growing up.

 4. Tell me about when you got married.

I was 21 years old when I got married. In those days husband and wife would not separate, unlike today.

 5. Today you are both a mother and grandmother.  Have you raised your children and grandchildren differently than you were raised as a child? 

There is a difference because I can’t raise the children of today as I was raised up. They refuse and they ask questions. It’s always Why? The children of today are busy with technology; they are busy with their cell phones! They do not listen or give respect to their elders. As a child I would never ask why. I respected my elders and did what I was told.

6.  It’s been wonderful to hear stories and thoughts from your life.  I now want to focus  specifically on changes you’ve witnessed over the past 62 years and where you think Lesotho is moving in the future.

     Do you think the role of women has changed from when you were a child?

My great-grandfather had 12 wives! Today most people have just one so that’s a big change.  During my childhood women’s work was only in the home. But today we see some women having jobs. That is a positive change I see.

 7. How has HIV/AIDS impacted the community?

We did not know about HIV when I was growing up.  HIV has changed the community because there is so much stigma for those who are HIV positive. AIDS breaks the community. Sometimes even your friends and neighbours would not come to your house or eat your food. There has been some change the past few years; people are becoming more accepting.

8. What do you think Thaba Tseka will be like ten years from now?

There used to be no roads here but today there are some. In ten years there will be even more of this—what can I say—modern life and technology. I think this will change the community a lot and people will be more isolated. This cooperation and peace will disappear. Even now, people share less than they used to.

 9.  What are your hopes for Lesotho’s future? What do you hope it will be like for your grandchildren?

 I want my grandchildren to have a bright future. I want them to be more sophisticated and educated. But I worry that in the future Lesotho will lose Basotho culture because Basotho are copying other people’s cultures. Today Basotho people greet each other on the street whenever they meet. I think by the time my grandchildren grow up greeting each person with respect and kindness won’t be there.

To preserve our culture we need days dedicated to celebrating Basotho culture where community elders demonstrate our culture to the young ones. This way our culture of cooperation and respect can be valued in the future.

International Women's Day 2014: Thoughts from Lesotho's Youth

In honour of International Women’s Day, students in Thaba Tseka met to discuss the challenges women face in Lesotho and their hopes for women's lives in the future. Students wrote their own answers to the following statements:

I need gender equity because…

            and

In the future I hope women in Lesotho will…

Every participant said that they wanted their statements to be shared so that other people would know what it is like to be a woman in Lesotho and what women hope their lives look like in the future.

Here is what young women (and one brave young man) wanted to share with all of you: 

"I need gender equity because..." 

"...it is not fair that the man's word is the final word." The young Basotho women in the workshop explained that the husband/father has the final say in the household. 

"...childbirth should not be a death sentence." Lesotho has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. It is one of the few countries in the world where the maternal mortality rate is not decreasing but increasing. 

"...women can make their own decisions." The young women in the workshop expressed that they wanted to be in control of their own lives. 

"...men and women should be equal partners in marriage." 

"...I want my sister to have a happy life."  

"...no woman should be raped." When asked what was the biggest challenge women face in Lesotho every participant except one stated rape. 

"..according to my thinking men should not be the only breadwinners in my country." These students said they had dreams for what they wanted to be and do in the future. They were tired of the "classic" family model. 

"...girls should NEVER be forced to marry their rapist." It's heartbreaking that sometimes when a girl is raped (in the rural areas), she and her rapist appear before the chief and her family is "compensated" for this dishonour through her marriage to the very man who raped her. 

"I hope in the future women will..." 

"...be seen as more than housewives." The young women in the workshop discussed how they wanted to be seen as more than the role society has assigned to them. They want to be taken seriously.

"...be free from fear." 

"...be equal to men." 

"I hope in the future women will not be the only ones caring for children." 

"I hope in the future a woman will be prime minister." 

"We DEMAND that women will not be judged or accused falsely. We DEMAND that leaders respect women's rights." 

A Reflection on Suffering

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” ~Arundhati Roy

**Please note that names, details and locations have been altered 

to protect the privacy of those involved in the story below. **

Relebohile enters the room where I am conducting child sponsorship interviews at her school and looks around nervously.

“It’s okay,” I try to reassure her.  “This is just a conversation where I get to know you better.”

Immediately her stature changes, her face lights up, and she eagerly greets me before sitting down.

She answers each of my questions with that same bright, beautiful smile. She tells me all about her English class, her favourite novel, how much she loves school, and that one day she hopes to be an English teacher.

As the interview comes to a close, I realize Relebohile has more than answered all my questions. I’m about to thank her for her time, but then pause a moment and say, “This is a safe place. Is there anything else you want to tell me?" 

Relebohile looks down for a moment and then back at me.

“Yes Me’ (mother), ” she says. “…I don’t have enough eat.”

I am startled. I struggle for a moment to regain a calm composure and simply say, “What do you mean?”

“We have very little Me’. Sometimes the neighbours give us something…but we are still hungry.”

Relebohile explains her father died four years ago. Being the primary breadwinner, his loss was not only emotionally painful, but made her family incredibly vulnerable. In order to try and provide for the children, Relebohile's mother collects and sells firewood. Relebohile tells me her mother frequently leaves for long stretches of time and she is never sure when her mother will return home.  Essentially, Relebohile and her younger brother live alone.

I struggle to find words, any words. I can’t tell her everything will be okay because it might not be. I can’t tell her things will get better because I can’t know that they will. I can’t even promise that her school fees will be sponsored because we receive so many requests from so many needy families.

“You are very brave,” I finally tell her. “You should be very proud.”

As I leave the school grounds I find that I am grateful for rain. It hides my own tears as I make the long trek home through muddy fields.

She is 15. Just 15. She is but a child, and yet alone she raises her brother. Alone she tries to find enough food to eat. Alone she works to maintain her first class standing at school.  

I am aware her story is not unique. Yet, there was something about her bright smile and excitement about school juxtaposed against the harsh reality of her life at home that was enough to break my heart that day.

The rain is coming down hard now, flooding the narrow dirt path. My clothes are soaked through but I hardly notice as I look out into the vast expanse of open space. I remember a prayer I once heard attributed to Mother Theresa: Lord break my heart so completely the whole world falls in.

The truth is that suffering and injustice should break our hearts. Archbishop Desmond Tutu defines the African philosophy of ubuntu as “a person is a person through other people. It is not ‘I think therefore I am.’ It says rather: ‘I am human because I belong.’ I participate, I share.” He further explains that when one of us suffers, we all suffer.

When we are confronted with such suffering, it seems to me that there are three very common human responses. The first is to block it out because we are afraid of what will happen if we truly engage with someone else’s pain. The second response is a kind of cynicism. Why bother when nothing ever seems to change? The third response is to answer the call to act in love. In order to do this, I believe we must be just crazy enough to believe that the small acts of love that take place every day around the world matter. We must dare to hope that suffering can be redeemed and transformed because if Relebohile can dare to believe that her world will change—if she can dare to believe that she will one day attend college and become a teacher—who are we to settle for cynicism?

 Ultimately, to act in love we must be idealistic enough to follow the moral giants who have gone before us; we must walk with those who have had the courage to stand in solidarity with the marginalized, claiming another world is possible. 

A Place to call Home: Adventures at Home Affairs, South Africa

Where a man feels at home, outside of where he's born, is where he's meant to go. 

~ Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa

If the man at South African Home Affairs in Qwaqwa had not decided that he could not process my visa due to the fact that he was “in mourning” and if the South African Home Affairs officer in Paarl had not decided to deny my request (and threatened to put in me in jail) because he (falsely) believed I was border hopping, I would not have found myself on 56 Barrack Street at 5:30 am on a Monday morning.

I was the third person to arrive at Cape Town’s Home Affairs office that morning—a Somali and a Congolese refugee being my two companions. The security guard was intently speaking with the two men and I edged closer to listen.

“Zuma needs to step down,” the guard explains. “He is ruining Mandela’s legacy.”

The Somali and Congolese man are nodding in agreement.

“Did you see them booing him at the funeral?” the guard asks.

“I saw it in the paper,” says the Somali refugee.

“Mmm,” the Congolese man nods along.

“What did you think about Marikana last year?” I can’t resist jumping in.

“Ohhhh that was bad. That would have never happened under Mandela,” the guard says. “You know South African politics?”

“Just a little that I’ve read here and there,” I say. “But if you don’t like Zuma, what kind of leadership would you like to see in South Africa?” 

And before I know it all three men are avidly discussing what needs to be done for South Africa to truly be a rainbow nation and what changes in leadership must take place. I listen, intrigued by the fact that two of the three men are not South African.

“You know a lot about South African politics,” I say to the Somali refugee.

“Well I have to,” he says. “I don’t want to go back to Somalia. Cape Town is an amazing city and South Africa is my home now.”

Home is such a slippery concept, especially in a “globalizing” world. I have often struggled to define what home means and I am struck by his certainty that Cape Town is home, not a resting place until he can return to his motherland.

More people begin to arrive and two lines begin to form – one for those seeking refugee status, and one for the rest of us. I take my spot at the front of the “everything else” line and patiently wait for the doors to open at seven-thirty.

At seven-fifteen a lady yells at me, “Go, go, go!”

“Ma'am, the doors only open at seven-thirty,” I say.

“If you don’t go, I’m going in front of you,” she responds.

Soon there is a whole crowd of people pushing and shoving behind me until a guard stops the crowd and asks them to please wait patiently until seven-thirty.

Seven-thirty comes and it is a mad rush through the doors. Queues, apparently, do not matter. I find myself sprinting to the information desk to get my number, so that my five-thirty start to the day is not wasted in vain.

I sit down, waiting for my number to be called, and an engaged couple, Thembelihle and Anashe from Zimbabwe, sit next me. “Those were quite the lines this morning,” Thembelihle remarks.

“They were….different than how we queue in Canada.”

Thembelihle laughs, “It’s chaos here, but you get used it.”

“I take it you’ve done this before?” I say.

“Oh many times,” Thembelihle responds, “working visas, student vsias, visitor visas.” He proceeds to tell me their story:

Thembelihle and Anashe fell in love in Zimbabwe when they were just eighteen. However, there were few economic opportunities, and Thembelihle was too poor to pay for Anashe’s lobola. Looking for a better life, Thembelihle moved to Cape Town in search of work. He started out as a janitor working double shifts to make money, but he knew that to really secure a future for Anashe and himself he needed to go to school.

“I had never used a computer before, but I knew that technology was a growing sector,” Thembelihle explains. “I decided that I must go to school to learn about technology. I remember going to an Internet café for the first time to try and see how the Internet worked. It was a disaster,” he recalls. “But I continued to go and slowly but surely I began to figure it out.”

With the help of friends he had made in the city Thembelihle was able to gather funds to attend school. Every other spare rand went towards calling Anashe back in Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, Anashe patiently waited for her love, trusting that one day they would be together.

Fast-forward six years later and Thembelihle has permanent residence in Cape Town. Anashe was at Home Affairs to extend her visitor visa.

“This is the last time I’ll be getting a visitor visa,” she smiles.

Thembelihle has raised enough money for the lobola, which means that Thembelihle and Anashe will be getting married this spring and Anashe will finally be able to live in Cape Town permanently.

“You don’t want to live in Zimbabwe?” I ask.

“We will always go back to visit family in Zimbabwe,” Thembelihle says. “But Cape Town is where we can see ourselves building a life, raising kids, and growing old together. It’s a place we can make home.”

For the second time that morning, I am struck by the language of home.

My number is called, and after a good half hour of explaining my work in Lesotho, why I have come to South Africa, and assuring them that I am really and truly not border hopping, I am finally granted my visa.

As I leave, I find out that Anashe has also been awarded an extended visitor visa. “It’s always a nightmare coming down here, but it’s so worth it to be able to stay,” she beems.

“It really is, isn’t it,” I say. “This truly is an amazing place.”

This past fall I was reading Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa and there was a line that hit me:

Where a man feels at home, outside of where he's born, is where he's meant to go.

It is easy to see why Cape Town is a place so many want to call home. For the Congolese and Somali refugees, Cape Town offers a safe haven. For the Zimbabwean couple, Cape Town represents economic opportunity and a place where they can build a future for their family. For myself, it has been a much-needed resting place.

Of course, it is not with out its shortcomings: Mandela’s vision for a rainbow nation is still very much a work in progress. Even if you have enough wealth to buy security, crime is still a problem. More superficially, there are a few too many people who look like they stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad.

Yet, there is something magical about this place. Maybe it’s the way the fog rolls over the top of Table Mountain on misty mornings, or perhaps it’s the dramatic landscape of Cape Point, the waves at Muizenburg and quaint coffee shops in Kalk Bay. Maybe this city’s magic resides in the rich history of the land or in the sincere hospitality of South Africans. Whatever it is, there’s something here that makes people from around the world not only want to stay but to claim this place as home….even if it does mean dealing with the chaos of Home Affairs.  

Photo Diary: Leadership Camp 2013

This past December, 121 youth came to Leadership Camp at our center in Hlotse, Leribe. Youth learnt about HIV/AIDS, Gender Stereotypes, Sexual Abuse, Alcohol and Drugs, and Self-Esteem. In between sessions we had time for sports, games, talent shows, and singing (my life literally became a musical).

It was powerful to watch youth transform over the course of camp—to watch shy kids break out of their shells, witness new friendships being formed, and read campers' pledges for how they will show leadership in their communities at home over the coming year.

Below are a few photos that capture Shine Bright Leadership Camp 2013: 

Team building activities.

Camper speaks during a Life Skills session.

At evening talent shows youth showed off their dancing, singing and acting skills. 

Soccer time. 

HIV/AIDS awareness march.

Camp was full of dancing & singing from morning 'till night.

A tearful goodbye between new friends. 

This photo admittedly has nothing to do with Leadership Camp. I just thought these grandmothers were sweet.