Living South Africa

So I have no pictures, boo! I somehow lost my charger and cannot upload or take photos. I'm hoping to change that, but in the meantime, no photo ops. However, I can say, politics is on the tips of the tongues of everyone I meet. It hangs in the silences between sentences, it is on the streets, in the water, in the mist that hangs over Table Mountain (which I climbed,35oo feet, thank you very much) it is South Africa. I see a population disillusioned. So much hope was stirred with the ending of Apartheid, Black hope. But as with all transitions, true change has to start on the street. People have to feel it at the deepest levels of their existence. That has yet to happen. Their has been idealogical change. South Africa is a Democracy. But it is also still a heavily racist and stratified society, bound by the history of aprtheid. The change has yet to hit the everyman. We are awaiting the redistribution of wealth, the educational promises-, the paradise that was post Aparthied South Africa. South Africa is beautiful, colorful, full of diversity and promise, but is not paradise in the least. However the hope lies in the fact that they have opened their history (the Truth and Reconcillation Committee), admitted their wrongdoings and are moving towards a more just society. More than America can say. It is much like Israel Palestine, a people subjugated and oppressed in their own land. Change, however, takes time, takes sometimes more than the people can bear at the moment. In the last we have wrestled with the questions, what is truth, what is reconcilation, can they be obtained? All I know is that they have tried and so much is communicated in the tyring. I am Happy that South Africa has tried.

Africa is EVERYTHING!

-Rukiya