Got back from South Africa two days ago and my thoughts haven't quieted since.
I feel like a different person in a few huge ways; not that I felt like this when I was there, but more when I came back and was all of a sudden culture shocked. Dr. Segall talked about it, but I thought I'd be adaptable enough, thought I'd be used to sliding from extreme poverty to 5 star hotels easily by now. No. El Salvador, the year in Central America. That didn't really prepare me for coming home after this. I sort of attribute this to being too young then.
I was enrolled in an SAT class this week while I was gone. You make it sound like it's so important, all so so important. But is getting accepted into all those mind-numbingly elitist universities you're talking about really going to do anything? Is pursuing a BA, a graduate degree, in medicine or some kind of politics or law or whatever the fuck else you want me to study, is that really going to make any sort of difference in the world? No. I guess what I have to now with my life is what matters, what I do with that degree. I don't want to spend all that money on stupid university when a lot people in Mfuleni can't even count that high. You tell me how much the shower doors cost. They cost more than people who I experienced this summer, happy, beautiful people, have ever heard of, let alone dreamt of having. Why do you spend so much on trivial shit when there is so much ELSE out there? Not even money. I, however small and insignificant, gave Nothemba and her son a house. I made a difference in her life, ripple-affected the rest of the townships. Those six families all gained a HOME in less than two weeks. Most of us who have had homes and maybe a cushion. Contrast that to the townships. Tin sheds, always leaking, maybe with a door if they're lucky, maybe one for each family if they're well-off in township terms. Often two or more families to one shack, generations of the apartheid-worn and the kids who only heard but did not experience the full-blown. It's still there, apartheid. It's considered over, but it's nowhere near to being cured.
Shit happened while I was gone, but it doesn't concern me, it's none of my business, I honestly can't bring myself to rip my mind off of this, how so very insignificant it all seems. Not that any of it IS insignificant but it's drowned out in my mind right now. There's so much more in the world than myself, than Lower Queen Anne, than the hundreds of dollars spent on Bumbershoot, than the hundreds of dollars spent on cameras and shoes and bags and art, than the music than the drugs, than the cars and jewelry and computers and drinks and plane rides, than the gasoline and the oil and the wars and the politics. It's all a whirlwind people get caught up in; if they project a certain image, if their consumer whore itch gets scratched or not, if they have more than enough to feed themselves and maybe a state or two in India (mind you, they throw it away when they've had their fill). I'll be the first to admit I get caught up in it too. I get caught up in images and money. But. I don't want to.
I don't need it, I don't WANT IT.
I'm done.
Goddamn, I'm done.
Love.
