Finding the Beautiful in the Ugly

I spent all of yesterday hiking through mud and brush in the small village of Mgxobeleni in the Richmond municipality. It is a very rural community-- to get there you had to drive through miles and miles of open farm land... the perfect rows of vegetables backed by the plush green mountains were beautiful. You could see how rich the soil is here, and it is a shame that all the big farms are only owned by white people-- with a nation that is so diverse and so much for the land to offer, it saddens me that others are not benefiting from it. Yet another residual effect of the apartheid.

Anyway, we got to Mgxobeleni early enough that the morning dew was still caught in the spiderwebs and I was happy to take a breath of fresh, mountain air-- a big difference from the pollution that fills my lungs in the city. There was green all around and a certain sense of tranquility here-- no loud honking or pushy vendors, just people living their lives.

But then the American tourist pops in, the one that can't help but to think about all of the awful things before my eyes. As I walked around I saw houses in even worse condition than I had seen before and children with even less resources offered-- before the kids did not have any shoes, but many of these kids didn't even have pants. The women were doing their laundry in the dirty river water and as we interviewed the orphans the stories of deceased parents and runaway fathers were repeated over and over again. It was sad, yes, but it was also nice to hear of the children's hopes to one day become social workers, doctors or professional netball players despite their situations now. I like how the children here can find fun in creating their own toys and running around through fields and climbing trees [this goes for most all the children I have seen in South Africa]-- they don't need a TV or the newest video game in order to be entertained.

I think it is too easy for people from the outside to only see how sad and impoverished these communities are. It is the first thing that we look for-- the ugly, the bad, the things we need to fix. But I really enjoyed my time sloshing through the mud and looking at the fantastic horizon and eating berries off trees. I loved the smell of trees and the absence of noisy cars that pollute the city air. I imagine that being so separated is a problem for them making it difficult to go to stores and get valuable resources that they need-- it causes seclusion. I can see how this can be a problem, but I also value the peace that living in a valley of foresty mountains can bring. Now I will admit that I am still a city girl at heart and would have a tough time living somewhere like this without access to a car, but it was beautiful nonetheless.