01-31-2011

I went for a long run through the village on Saturday evening.

On one of the dirt paths far from the tar road, two older men were walking together.

As I made to rush by them, muttering a hasty San'bonan', one men called to me..."Give me money!"

This is nothing new, or unexpected. The village is nestled on the edge of the Kosi Bay lake system - a vibrant, diverse ecosystem culminating in endless expanse of undeveloped shoreline. There are a lot of tourists who pass through.

I paused to say, "Sorry baba, I'm a volunteer at Sizaminqubeko. Anginawo imali, I'm broke."

What he did next has affected me so much that I haven't stopped thinking about it in two days.

He offered his hand to shake and lowered his head, and said "Ah wena utisha uRyan [you are Teacher Ryan], 'fundisa 'bantwana bami [you teach my children]. Ang'thath imali [I will not take your money]."

Bucket bathing, pit latrines, fighting prehistoric insects, no running water and complaining about the heat twelve times a day. Going through the motions, lacking creature comforts because it's what the locals do, it all makes for some decent sentimentality that maybe I'll look back on and laugh about.

But these alone do not a villager make.

I'm coming to think that over time you are offered relatively few honest glimpses of clarity - when you realize that the people who live around you are not pictures from an article on the evolving globalized economies of the third world in Time, and the reed roofs are not props for glossed up shots used in African game reserve advertisements selling Exoticism. They're neighbors, friends, family. And as often as the days come when you feel you are sharing the honest humanity of the world's hyper rich in distant and shimmering, high definition broadcast America, so also do the days come when the village quietly shares its own humanity with you.

Like that old man.

I think that, right there, was when I actually became part of this village.

-Ryan