"Lord, your love encompasses the oceans…" I sang, feeling the rumbling waves swallow my words. I rested my back against a palm tree and let the wind brush the tears across my cheeks, not caring if my voice drifted far enough for strangers to hear. All day I had felt anonymous, rejected, or at best invisible. Let me go on acting invisible.
I had come to Durban alone. The city of two and a half million people is perhaps most known for beaches, Indian food, and crime. I rode our motorcycle the whole hair-raising two hour trip down the super highway to the city, then checked into my hostel (actually backpacker is the South African term), only to find I was one of only two females. The rest of the dozen or more visitors were surfers, mostly foreigners, who hovered around the television all night watching surfer movies, surfer contests, and surfer interviews.
I did not come to surf. I w "Lord, your love encompasses the oceans…" I sang, feeling the rumbling waves swallow my words. I rested my back against a palm tree and let the wind brush the tears across my cheeks, not caring if my voice drifted far enough for strangers to hear. All day I had felt anonymous, rejected, or at best invisible. Let me go on acting invisible.
I had come to Durban alone. The city of two and a half million people is perhaps most known for beaches, Indian food, and crime. I rode our motorcycle the whole hair-raising two hour trip down the super highway to the city, then checked into my hostel (actually backpacker is the South African term), only to find I was one of only two females. The rest of the dozen or more visitors were surfers, mostly foreigners, who hovered around the television all night watching surfer movies, surfer contests, and surfer interviews.
I did not come to surf. I was attending a conference two blocks away in the International Convention Centre, a huge state of the art building built to host events like the recent Miss India Worldwide competition and a visits from the likes of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The conference I attended was sponsored by a government funded organization that promoted youth entrepreneurship, and over 300 delegates attended. Weeks before the conference I checked prices on all the accommodation recommended for visitors, and finding the prices fairly shocking to the budget I wanted to hold for our little non-profit, I decided I could handle a backpacker for a couple nights.
Two days before I left, as I rode in a car with a white young woman from the farm down the road from mine, I happened to mention the trip. She gripped the steering wheel tighter and got very quiet. "Chrissy, that's a very dangerous neighborhood." She sounded terrified. A few weeks earlier she had told me a story about a church in Durban that was held up at gun-point only minutes before she arrived to visit. "Let me get you the names of some other places to stay," she insisted.
Maybe it was stubbornness, maybe foolishness, or maybe the Holy Spirit leading, but I decided to stick with the backpacker. I thanked her for her help, and never told her what I decided.
But it wasn't the backpacker full of surfers, rumored to have a brothel on the next floor up, that bothered me, nor the two block walk to the convention center each morning past garages and littered boulevards. It was the loneliness of attending a conference of some 300 people who virtually ignored me.
This must be how it feels to be a minority, I thought as I sat down on the second day of the conference with my loaded plate of buffet food. No one at the table acknowledged my presence, and two women stood up to leave. I had noticed only about five other white people at the whole conference, but I wasn't about to give in and go sit with them.
I made up my mind not to be bothered. Making eye contact with strangers is not a cultural norm here, so I tried chalking it up to my own false expectations. Everywhere I went all that morning I had smiled and greeted people. Most dropped the conversation, but some responded politely enough when I tried to pick their brains on microenterprise and the youth of South Africa. By the end of lunch, I had struck up a conversation with a young Indian man in a beret. As he gathered his things to leave, a black man of about my age wearing a business suit interrupted us.
"So are you one of those people who come here because you think you're going to save us?"
For the next thirty minutes he hammered me with questions. "I don't understand why you Americans come here," he said. "What do you do? Just drive around in your four-wheel drive vehicle and hand out things and feel good about yourself?"
Praying for humility, I offered the best answers I could, falling back on the pieces of my life story that didn't fit his expectations—the year in a Nicaraguan village without electricity or safe drinking water, our participation in a Zulu church. We ended up parting on terms something like friendship. He showed me pictures of his wife and child and told me about his business as a technology consultant. But it was exhausting. And the thought kept haunting me, Is this what everybody else thinks of me, too? A white know-it-all who's got no right to intrude?
Following some reckless impulse, I went for a walk toward the Indian ocean ten blocks from the conference center and my backpacker. I knew the sun would set soon, and my walk led through what my white friend would definitely deem some dangerous blocks. But I wasn't in a mood to care. I carried no money, with only my cheap cell phone in one hand and a set of keys in the other. Lord, I prayed, I just want someone to recognize that we're all just human. I want you to show me you love me. And I want to see how much you love all these people too.
I watched Zulu women carrying their groceries home, their wide ankles beneath pinafore dresses identical to those of my Zulu friends in the countryside, the same scarves around their heads. Yes, I did love these people. But why was it so difficult to show? Why did I feel so unloved? Was my presence in South Africa just interfering, pretending that I could do a job they could do well enough on their own? Would they all be better off if I just went back to my race and my country?
Ten minutes later I stood on the shore, leaning against the palm tree and singing. "Lord, your love is wider than the sea…" I tried to imagine myself like a tiny speck of sand tumbling in those waves, as if all the ocean were God and his love and power. The sun dropped below the horizon and I knew I should hurry home. Maybe those waves of a vast love were best answer I would get. Already it was dark as I chugged up the last two blocks to the backpacker, past an empty lot drenched in shadows.
Behind me I heard the voices of two young men. They were deep in conversation, a curious mix of street Zulu and English that sounded something like a heated philosophical debate. Whiffs of their daka (marijuana) drifted around my face. I kept my eyes on the pavement and my pace steady but quick, trying to hide my growing fear. Suddenly I felt the arm of one man brush against mine. In a flash one man was on each side of me.
And then they were in front of me, striding on without a so much as pause in their conversation. But just as they reached a sidewalk square ahead of me, one man spun around and faced me. He took the cigarette butt out of his mouth and said, "Sister, I just want you to know, we're human beings too. God loves us, and God loves you, and we love you too."
Then he turned back around and sped on, back into conversation with his friend. My jaw just about fell off my face. One man swept his hand to the ground mid-stride, grabbed a cigarette butt from the dirt, and in one smooth motion lit it from his friend's and squeezed it between his teeth.
One block later, I reached my hostel. As I stepped up the curb in front of the door, the men stopped again. "We just want you to know," one man said, "we were watching out for you." In a surreal conversation, one young man went on to tell me how they live on the street. "See this scar," he said, pointing to a stripe across his nose. "I got this sleeping just over there. I woke up with knife on my face and somebody stealing my shoes. He got the shoes, too." They talked, not waiting for my response, though I wouldn't have known what to say anyway. Before we parted I stammered out a thank you.
"Sister, it's nothing. We're not asking for money. We just want one thing," the guy with the scarred nose leaned forward, resting an arm on his friend's shoulder. "We want you to remember, when you're waking up in your warm bed and going about your day doing whatever you feel like doing, just remember us. We're here on the street."
I went upstairs and flopped down on the top bunk in my tiny backpacker cubicle, grabbed a pen and paper, and scribbled down everything I could remember from the day.
Had I heard that man correctly? Were his words not the exact answer to my prayer? "We're human beings too, and God loves us, and God loves you, and we love you too." What kind of bizarre impulse made that young man say that?
I remembered them when I woke the next day and walked to my conference, feeling our Creator still watching over their shoulders and mine. I remembered them as I rode my motorcycle home to my family and my own double bed. I remembered them as I returned to the daily grind of recruiting young people to stay in school and start businesses in their rural homelands instead of fleeing to cities. I remember them now as I write this, sleeping on the street, losing their shoes, feeling knife wounds across their young daka-smoking angel faces.
as attending a conference two blocks away in the International Convention Centre, a huge state of the art building built to host events like the recent Miss India Worldwide competition and a visits from the likes of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The conference I attended was sponsored by a government funded organization that promoted youth entrepreneurship, and over 300 delegates attended. Weeks before the conference I checked prices on all the accommodation recommended for visitors, and finding the prices fairly shocking to the budget I wanted to hold for our little non-profit, I decided I could handle a backpacker for a couple nights.
Two days before I left, as I rode in a car with a white young woman from the farm down the road from mine, I happened to mention the trip. She gripped the steering wheel tighter and got very quiet. "Chrissy, that's a very dangerous neighborhood." She sounded terrified. A few weeks earlier she had told me a story about a church in Durban that was held up at gun-point only minutes before she arrived to visit. "Let me get you the names of some other places to stay," she insisted.
Maybe it was stubbornness, maybe foolishness, or maybe the Holy Spirit leading, but I decided to stick with the backpacker. I thanked her for her help, and never told her what I decided.
But it wasn't the backpacker full of surfers, rumored to have a brothel on the next floor up, that bothered me, nor the two block walk to the convention center each morning past garages and littered boulevards. It was the loneliness of attending a conference of some 300 people who virtually ignored me.
This must be how it feels to be a minority, I thought as I sat down on the second day of the conference with my loaded plate of buffet food. No one at the table acknowledged my presence, and two women stood up to leave. I had noticed only about five other white people at the whole conference, but I wasn't about to give in and go sit with them.
I made up my mind not to be bothered. Making eye contact with strangers is not a cultural norm here, so I tried chalking it up to my own false expectations. Everywhere I went all that morning I had smiled and greeted people. Most dropped the conversation, but some responded politely enough when I tried to pick their brains on microenterprise and the youth of South Africa. By the end of lunch, I had struck up a conversation with a young Indian man in a beret. As he gathered his things to leave, a black man of about my age wearing a business suit interrupted us.
"So are you one of those people who come here because you think you're going to save us?"
For the next thirty minutes he hammered me with questions. "I don't understand why you Americans come here," he said. "What do you do? Just drive around in your four-wheel drive vehicle and hand out things and feel good about yourself?"
Praying for humility, I offered the best answers I could, falling back on the pieces of my life story that didn't fit his expectations—the year in a Nicaraguan village without electricity or safe drinking water, our participation in a Zulu church. We ended up parting on terms something like friendship. He showed me pictures of his wife and child and told me about his business as a technology consultant. But it was exhausting. And the thought kept haunting me, Is this what everybody else thinks of me, too? A white know-it-all who's got no right to intrude?
Following some reckless impulse, I went for a walk toward the Indian ocean ten blocks from the conference center and my backpacker. I knew the sun would set soon, and my walk led through what my white friend would definitely deem some dangerous blocks. But I wasn't in a mood to care. I carried no money, with only my cheap cell phone in one hand and a set of keys in the other. Lord, I prayed, I just want someone to recognize that we're all just human. I want you to show me you love me. And I want to see how much you love all these people too.
I watched Zulu women carrying their groceries home, their wide ankles beneath pinafore dresses identical to those of my Zulu friends in the countryside, the same scarves around their heads. Yes, I did love these people. But why was it so difficult to show? Why did I feel so unloved? Was my presence in South Africa just interfering, pretending that I could do a job they could do well enough on their own? Would they all be better off if I just went back to my race and my country?
Ten minutes later I stood on the shore, leaning against the palm tree and singing. "Lord, your love is wider than the sea…" I tried to imagine myself like a tiny speck of sand tumbling in those waves, as if all the ocean were God and his love and power. The sun dropped below the horizon and I knew I should hurry home. Maybe those waves of a vast love were best answer I would get. Already it was dark as I chugged up the last two blocks to the backpacker, past an empty lot drenched in shadows.
Behind me I heard the voices of two young men. They were deep in conversation, a curious mix of street Zulu and English that sounded something like a heated philosophical debate. Whiffs of their daka (marijuana) drifted around my face. I kept my eyes on the pavement and my pace steady but quick, trying to hide my growing fear. Suddenly I felt the arm of one man brush against mine. In a flash one man was on each side of me.
And then they were in front of me, striding on without a so much as pause in their conversation. But just as they reached a sidewalk square ahead of me, one man spun around and faced me. He took the cigarette butt out of his mouth and said, "Sister, I just want you to know, we're human beings too. God loves us, and God loves you, and we love you too."
Then he turned back around and sped on, back into conversation with his friend. My jaw just about fell off my face. One man swept his hand to the ground mid-stride, grabbed a cigarette butt from the dirt, and in one smooth motion lit it from his friend's and squeezed it between his teeth.
One block later, I reached my hostel. As I stepped up the curb in front of the door, the men stopped again. "We just want you to know," one man said, "we were watching out for you." In a surreal conversation, one young man went on to tell me how they live on the street. "See this scar," he said, pointing to a stripe across his nose. "I got this sleeping just over there. I woke up with knife on my face and somebody stealing my shoes. He got the shoes, too." They talked, not waiting for my response, though I wouldn't have known what to say anyway. Before we parted I stammered out a thank you.
"Sister, it's nothing. We're not asking for money. We just want one thing," the guy with the scarred nose leaned forward, resting an arm on his friend's shoulder. "We want you to remember, when you're waking up in your warm bed and going about your day doing whatever you feel like doing, just remember us. We're here on the street."
I went upstairs and flopped down on the top bunk in my tiny backpacker cubicle, grabbed a pen and paper, and scribbled down everything I could remember from the day.
Had I heard that man correctly? Were his words not the exact answer to my prayer? "We're human beings too, and God loves us, and God loves you, and we love you too." What kind of bizarre impulse made that young man say that?
I remembered them when I woke the next day and walked to my conference, feeling our Creator still watching over their shoulders and mine. I remembered them as I rode my motorcycle home to my family and my own double bed. I remembered them as I returned to the daily grind of recruiting young people to stay in school and start businesses in their rural homelands instead of fleeing to cities. I remember them now as I write this, sleeping on the street, losing their shoes, feeling knife wounds across their young daka-smoking angel faces.
- Christine Jeske, www.jeskelife.org
