One day someone is going to surprise you. They are going to enthrall you and engulf you and take a piece of you with them that you never knew you had, and never planned on giving up. My someone wasn’t a person. It wasn’t even a couple people. It was every teacher and child that touched my life. It was every experience, joy, and sadness I experienced on my journey in South Africa.
I lived in South Africa when I was thirteen years old for eight months of my life. My Dad had been granted a sabbatical and naturally as a naive middle schooler I was furious. I don’t know if you remember what you were like in middle school (we all try and block it out), but I was a brat. I didn’t understand the opportunity that was being given to me. All I cared about was that I was missing out and leaving my friends behind.
Change came during those eight months. Growth was there, but lacking. Just in recent years the disappointment settled. So young, so unknowing, so trusting. I needed another chance to discover what I was meant to find the first time in South Africa, and I got one.
Five astounding, breathtaking, heartbreaking weeks I spent this summer in Johannesburg, South Africa. I worked first at a school for disabled children and after a home and school for burn victims. Beautiful Tamara, my dear friend, opened my heart to rich culture and the love for people I had just met. The children opened my eyes to tragedy. Conflicting emotions, endless prayers, fear, responsibility and pain for these children ruled my life. But they saved me.
The sweet children, full of wisdom, taught me how little I hold close the necessities that are a privilege to them. Impoverished, suffering children who have nothing, but manage to love so much. Innocent only for now. Hospital visits, medication, desperation is all they know. Haunted with fear, and desperate for hope. Teachers in poverty, investing all they have to enable these children to accept who they are. My heart aches for them. Aches for the scorn and judgments they will endure because their burns make them unrecognizable.
Articulating a heartache isn’t easy to do. The amount that I miss South Africa will never dwindle, my longing will never cease. I find myself aimlessly searching every day for meaning around me. People completely stripped of judgments and hate and selfishness are rare to find, but those are the people who consumed me and guided me in South Africa.
No one will ever understand my experience, and I don’t expect them to. The extraordinary marvel about traveling is that the experience is yours to cherish and yours to hold close to your heart. People will ask you about you trip, but don’t really care to listen. That’s okay. One day they will.
Every now and then I take a glimpse into my old life. How little I knew and how much I understand now. They say traveling is the only thing you can buy that makes you richer. I now have a rich heart, rich hope, rich love for the culture, rich friendships, and the rich desire to share my new perception of the world.
P.S.: I held a lion cub!