My whole life I have been living in middle
to upper class areas, from pre-school up to high school and college, I have
worked in an upper class area known as Rivonia, Sandton, probably the richest
part of South-Africa. I have never really seen poverty, maybe a small town or
two outside of where I lived, with poor people living in shacks struggling, but
it did not really bother me. It felt kind of normal, because everybody can’t be
rich, who’s going to be the person cleaning my house, standing at till points
swiping my items through the scanner when I buy it, or fuel up my car at a
petrol station, right? They have to live somewhere, and in my mind, that was
their area, seem normal for me.
I never in my live had the chance to go
into one of these areas, always been told that it is dangerous, and we should
not try to enter it, they will steel everything from you, and maybe kidnap you,
or murder you etc. So here was this idea within my mind about these people, the
people living in poverty, the people we allow inside our homes to clean it, or
to take care of our gardens. The people who struggle to survive. The people I
don’t want to help because of this idea.
So, the idea of helping them never came up
in my mind, and so it did not really bother me. It’s not me who’s trapped in
that situation/poverty, I was not the one to be born into that world, I am here
and this is my life which I have to make a success of, as should they with
their lives... as a gardener, sure.
Until about 2-3 months ago, when I arrived in
PMB, away from Gauteng which is known as the heart of our economy/country,
where here in PMB all you can see is poverty, almost all that you see are
shacks and little houses filled with massive families, struggling to survive, which
still didn’t bother me as much because I thought of it as the same concept,
until about 2 days ago, when I started to explore more in depth of what is
going on, and see how they really lived.
This was not planned, it just kind of
happened with my new business partners, we had to infiltrate new schools to
sell our software to, and the more we explored into this territory, the more I
realised that it had no end. These neighbourhoods are unbelievably big, the amounts
of people are uncountable, schools are stacked with learners, and buildings are
falling and breaking apart. The toilets in these schools look like shit, no
other words to explain, and for a school of about 400 kids, there is only one
male and one female bathroom, to be shared among them all.
These people live in real poverty; they go
to school for free, where the school has to provide the kids with lunch because
the parents can’t afford to give them food/money. Some of these schools can’t
even provide this lunch, meaning about 400 kids or more starve every day just
to attend school, and this is only in one school (a small schools). There are
about 4-6 school in this area alone, 3 would be in the same area in this
neighbourhood next to each other, whereas another 3 schools will be a kilometer
or 2 away, all with 400-800 kids in, probably starving, with my partner at the
end of the day telling me how far they have to walk each afternoon, some go as
far as 15km, because they can’t afford a taxi ride of just R6.
As the days progressed with me experiencing
the poverty, driving through these areas that I was told never to enter, I realised
one thing, my whole life I have been living a luxurious life, never have to
worry about where I am going to find food or water, or a place to sleep, or
thinking will I be safe tonight? I don’t know what that is, I have never
experienced it and so I realised that this way of thinking I have, is not
acceptable.
The reaction within my mind was kind of
weird, it was like an image within my mind that clashed with reality as I saw
it, telling me this is not real, this should not be real, wtf are we doing to
our fellow human beings? No one deserves to live a life like this where they can
barely survive.
Change is needed.
Get
a move on, for more info on memories and thoughts, visit: http://lite.desteniiprocess.com
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