Me, Don't Fail Me Now

“It so happens that idealism enough for anyone is not made of perfumed pink clouds. It is the law! It is the U.S. Constitution.” – Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

For the first time in my brief post-undergraduate career, I have gotten a job – admittedly a non-paying position – without having to bullshit. I simply found the organization through some good people and just told the truth. By all forms of measurement, I have zero experience with the work I am about to begin – outside of high school phone-a-thons and few other ephemeral activities, I have no fundraising experience; I have never worked in or around an orphanage; and I have only one and with great regret changed the diaper (and that was for my niece whom I love, though a little less after the experience). And yet, I am stuck here for six months having promised the highly capable and extremely admirable “Mama” of the Ubuhle Babantwana Care Center in the township of Mfuleni, a formidable yet instantly endearing woman named Pumla Gigi, that I am here to be her support as we work together to establish a sustainable home for children.

With zero sentimentality and a mind flooded with anxiety for the possibility that I will prove entirely incompetent in this task, I know that my idealism will have to serve me loyally during these coming months. Hope I don’t screw it up.

I Arrive in Cape Town

I have now spent a full two days in Cape Town, South Africa. Upon arriving, after a long day’s journey into the South African sunset, my one checked bag deciding to take the scenic route and catch up with me later, I had managed (even though I had been bumped onto a later flight from Johannesburg) to catch the last embers of dusk fade behind Table Mountain. I have never been to Africa before and the sight was as portentous as any I could have hoped for. I was tired, vicariously smelly from the man I had sat next to on the 15 hour leg from Washington D.C., and I had no distinct idea what the next six months would entail. I still don’t, but the peripheries are beginning to show signs of focus.

I now am the first “Project Liaison” for the newly established non-profit organization, CHOSA (short for Children of South Africa). After one has worn the same clothes for 72 hours, one’s humility has surfaced and taken form – a sort of exoskeleton of open-minded and smelly shame. And after today, having spent 10 hours touring three of CHOSA’s orphanages and visiting four nearby townships (poor communities of blacks and coloreds (not of the outdated American vernacular, but those of dark skin and mixed heritage) created during the mid-twentieth Century when these races were exiled from the city), I would not have wanted to be dressed in any other exoskeleton.

I have witnessed poverty when traveling to Thailand, China, and the Ukraine. Most of it troubling, some disheartening, but few have awakened such a sense of pathos. This was mainly due to the children that welcomed me literally with open arms. At our first stop (I was led around magnanimously by one of the founders of CHOSA) I opened the door to our 1990 Toyota and no sooner was the can of juice in my hand snatched by a little boy and two of his companions climbed into the car on top of my lap. Of course, having been wearing the same underwear for three days who was I to rob the boy of his new drink? Within minutes my arms were filled with two little boys, no older than 6 or 7, each treating me like the best climbing tree they had just found. They pretty much had me at hello.