Chapter One Letting Go “This is Soweto,” my local guide Duma said in his heavy accent. Coming to a stop on a two-lane road not far from center-city Johannesburg, he turned the car around and said, “Soweto is an important place in the history of South Africa and Apartheid.” I looked and saw that the side of the street we were facing was pure filth. The houses—and I use that term loosely—lining the dirt alleyways were nothing more than sheets of tin propped up to form walls. Bricks held the makeshift roofs of wooden boards, or more tin, in place. Duma explained that in Soweto on June 16, 1976, some fifteen thousand black schoolchildren gathered to protest a government ruling which instituted that half of all classes in secondary schools must be taught in Afrikaans, the language of their oppressor. Police confronted the schoolchildren and without warning opened fire, killing a thirteen-year-old boy named Hector Pietersen and many others. The uprising sparked by these killings claimed another thousand lives over the following eighteen months, making Soweto a historical site for South Africa and a street marker on South Africa’s road of racial struggles. I was ashamed to admit these were struggles about which I knew little. I was familiar with Apartheid and knew that Nelson Mandela had fought that battle, but I had no understanding of what it meant beyond segregation. Having been raised and spent most of my life in the southern United States, I knew about racial segregation and had witnessed racism time and time again, so I failed to see the importance of this particular place. In my workaholic, self-centered world, I never found the time to keep up with world news. Only if an international event made the front page of every newspaper, or was the headline on the CNN airport news television, or was the topic of every conversation, would I know about it, and only then. So there in the car on the filthy streets of Soweto, South Africa, I was the typical tourist, looking but not really seeing—or at least not understanding its depth and importance—the place in front of me. At Duma’s instruction, I got out of the car. A scruffy looking black man came over, who was introduced as Eric. Duma explained that Eric lived in the township and was going to give me the walking portion of the tour. “Walking portion of the tour?” I asked. “I don’t think I signed up for the walking tour.” Back in the States I had been warned time and time again about the overwhelming amount of crime in South Africa. Soweto looked like just the place to get a first-hand view of it. I had no desire to get any closer. I wanted to leave. But I didn’t. Instead I politely shook Eric’s hand and began following him through the township of Soweto. As I did, I found it difficult to listen to his well-rehearsed speech. My attention was fully devoted to the tin shacks, barely ten-feet square, lining the dirt alleyways. Only a few of them had real doors; most merely had another scrap of something pulled over the opening to serve as a door. I was stunned by the living conditions of these people. As I walked, disgusted at my surroundings, I noticed kids laughing and playing. People spoke politely as I passed. They sat on buckets and stood talking in small groups on the corner of a trash-cluttered alleyway intersection, not unlike the wives of my golf course community back home. The disheveled people of Soweto were behaving so normally, I was thrown off balance. What I found so hard to comprehend was that this was their normal. Living in this filthy place was their daily existence. Walking among them in my REI fleece and Bjorn walking shoes, I must have looked so clean, so white, so the tourist. Soweto has approximately seven thousand residents and only ninety communal toilets, Eric told me. I had three toilets in my home just for me. To make matters worse, they had only five taps of running water in the entire community. I had five taps in one bathroom, and these people had only five in their whole neighborhood to serve seven thousand residents! Suddenly I felt like a spoiled-rotten American, almost ashamed of my luxurious home and the many things I took for granted that were completely foreign to the residents of Soweto. My heart swam in a sea of guilt for reasons I could not yet begin to understand. Eric continued with his speech, saying that with the end of Apartheid, the new government was promising the people decent housing. They had smiles on their faces and were happy because they had their families, freedom from Apartheid, and hope, he told me. I never imagined hope to be such a gift. But hope was not merely a gift here; it was what kept these people going from day to day. My understanding of what I was witnessing was growing, and as it did tears welled in my eyes. I felt compelled to do something for the beautiful children. At the suggestion of Eric, I purchased the last bag of oranges at a makeshift market to distribute to the kids. When I appeared with the bag of oranges the children, dressed in a dusty rainbow of ragged clothing, lined up politely to receive one. I couldn’t believe their excitement could be over receiving a single orange, but some were so thrilled they were literally jumping with joy. I was stunned to tears by their delight in receiving my offering. Reality set in heavily, though, when I got towards the bottom of the bag and noticed kids counting the number of oranges left and comparing that to the number of children in front of them. The frown when a young boy realized he wouldn’t get an orange took me over the edge. I cried uncontrollably from behind my sunglasses. This was my first day in Africa and already I was moved to tears. These were the first of many tears I would shed in Africa over the coming months and years, tears both of joy and of sadness.