I think I’ve finally realized why the American media machine doesn’t write stories about third world poverty. It’s because, after you write about it once, what else is there to say?
The people I work with are poor. The most defining experience of my trip has been learning about the poor in South Africa. The most important things I’ve learned are how the poor in South Africa, somehow, manage to survive.
Some of the poorest people in the world are in my classroom. Many of them live in shacks. Some of them have parents who are infected with HIV. Some of them are probably infected with HIV and don’t know it. It is quite possible that I won’t be able to visit some of them when I come back because a few may be dead. That’s how widespread the pandemic has become.
AIDS is everywhere. It’s on everyone’s minds. The funeral business in South Africa is booming. It’s one of the most lucrative township businesses. When you drive to the New Brighton township, all you see are ads for funeral services and the different families that own the different companies. Ultra Funerals. Fish and Sons Funerals. Shwarma Brothers Funerals.
The graveyards are overflowing. On the ride to Sapphire Elementary School, which is located in a colored township, we drove past the largest graveyard I’ve ever seen. For a good ten minutes, all I could see were tombstones. They looked like small rocks littering the fields. The land looked looted with rocks.
Funeral services have become stream-lined. Multiple services take place right next to each other. Big buses transport thousands of mourners from the townships to the graveyards, which are often located far away because they require such large plots of land.
Every week, the teachers take off work from Charles Duna Primary School to go to a funeral. Every week, someone knows someone who has died.
A violent flu. Tuberculosis. The names are different, the cause is the same. They are code words for HIV; no-name fever.
I’m not even sure if the government here keeps tabs on who’s infected, and who’s not, who’s died of AIDS, and who’s died from something else. In a country where the health minister still believes folk remedies will cure the virus, and the presidential challenger believes you can wash the AIDS away by taking a shower, it would be foolish to trust the government with providing you with any kind of reliable AIDS data.
But one thing is certain; people are dying like flies. They are dying from diarrhea ten minutes away from five star beach resorts.
Today I was passed a note by one of my students (I must withhold her name). In it, the girl told me that she had enjoyed my acting class immensely. Her mother had recently died of AIDS and her brother was in the hospital because of diarrhea. She told me she thought about killing herself sometimes, but my class brought her hope.
I still don’t know how to respond to her. I feel so overwhelmed. I’ve never thought of myself as having a healer-type quality. Was this girl sure it was me she was supposed to give the note to? Maybe it was the other American Steven.
But I suppose I’m not really addressing the heart of her note, which is a cry for help. I’m going to leave my address with the kids, and encourage them to keep in contact with me. If they get good grades, I’m going to figure out a way to pay for their high school tuitions. If they pass matric (12th grade), we’ll see about college. They’re fucking smarter than most college kids I’ve ever met. They deserve an education that will truly challenge them. They deserve good jobs, too. Good homes, clean drinking water, strong communities. They deserve everything, but most cannot afford to pay 100 rand (15 American dollars) for just one year of high school. Welcome to the violent inequality of post-Apartheid South Africa. Welcome to a real world, modern day, biblical kind of hell.
No comments:
Post a Comment