All That Is Bitter and Sweet (30 page)

We spoke for another half hour, and he nourished me with the fruits of his experience. He talked about spiritual maturation and how sometimes during our growth we have dry periods, or rather spells that feel dry, because we have moved beyond the need for that blissful flood of grace that encouraged and informed us at the beginning of our journey. I instantly apprehended what he was telling me—I had always been so grateful for the grace I could summon and feel growing in my heart when I meditated. But now I saw that those instruments had served to confine and reassure my thoughts until I was mature enough for something more subtle—when I could sit in a rice tent and feel what it was like, and not flee its reality by asking God to blow me away with some on-the-spot transcendence.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, my mentor in spirit and now in the flesh, helped me realize that I didn’t always have to pray with words or thoughts or have that buzz that came with them, because I was praying with my very body, with my presence. I thank him so much for it, and for everything he has given all of us.

On the flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, I closed my eyes and all the sense of Spirit that I did not have at the rice tents and hospice flooded my chest as if a tuning fork had been sounded. It coursed throughout my body, especially my chest, and this time the sense of Spirit was accompanied by colors, something I had heard others describe but had never experienced myself. I was flooded with rainbows of color that I could
feel
. I pictured the plastic on the sidewalk and rained down on it with white light, with majesty, with protection, with purification. I pictured the weak and ill at the hospice, and they glowed with keen, brilliant lights. It was a busy ninety-minute flight, the prayers flying through the African sky faster, higher, and more accurately than any airplane ever could.

The part of this trip that I most looked forward to, outside of our meeting with Archbishop Tutu, was visiting Soweto. I had always elegized Soweto as the seat of the struggle, where angry, righteous Africans fought against persecution by a monstrous minority government. Images from the news, bulletins from Amnesty International, U2 records—I followed it all. To actually go to Soweto was akin to a pilgrimage.

And as with so many other things in life, I was quickly disabused of my romantic fervor. My Soweto was a hotbed of political activism, militant youth, and safe houses for underground freedom fighters—I had entirely overlooked the shantytown dimension and the seemingly intractable poverty, the appalling reality of slum living. Soweto is a city within a city, sprawling beyond the southwestern suburbs of Johannesburg, home to about a million souls. Even after housing segregation officially ended with the fall of the apartheid regime, Soweto’s population remained almost all black. Although there are middle-class neighborhoods and even mansions for the newly rich who choose to live in Soweto for its vibrant sense of community, these stand in stark contrast with the overcrowded cinder-block houses and tin shanties that surround them. The economy of South Africa remains woefully lopsided, and the scourge of AIDS has made it even harder for the poor to enjoy the fruits of freedom.

Our local office arranged a day for me in Soweto to look at some programs and to visit a few people. I love meeting folks in their homes, having a sense of their lives beyond the words we exchange. My first stop was the small, three-room shack of an HIV-positive woman who was struggling to live with the virus. From oppressively crowded streets, we entered through a lean-to kitchen filled with good pots and pans and a vintage stove that would suit a stylish period cottage in America. She was a baker by trade. She told me that if she were well enough to work, she’d love to do catering. The living room and bedroom were crammed with furniture; the floor was covered with dirty, loose linoleum. She told me she had buried two children from HIV-related illnesses and had one remaining daughter. As if on cue, the daughter came bouncing in from school, doing things familiar to kids everywhere: dumping her rucksack, kicking off her shoes, looking for a snack (there was none). Then a chatty neighbor came in, also HIV-positive, and she launched into an animated monologue about her illness and how hard it was to keep healthy in such a filthy environment. Soweto’s infrastructure, never much to start with, was falling apart. She complained that there was only one water tap in the whole neighborhood and one rancid toilet for ten families to share, and how sick it was making them. At first I resented this woman for interrupting and dominating the conversation, but I quickly realized that this was my Soweto after all: poor but informed, sick but informed, neglected but informed. And angry. I listened to their considerable woes and asked what I could do. Even though this was a PSI visit, they most specifically asked me to complain on their behalf to the city about their toilet, which I did.

I struggled to reconcile the disconnect between such smart, eloquent women and their ongoing victimization, but whether women rail against it or remain mute, the problems of HIV, poverty, gender inequality, lack of education, and lack of opportunity remain entrenched.

The traumas of apartheid have been replaced by a new array of social pathologies, including a surge in violent crime and an epidemic of rape. A disturbing survey conducted by Interpol and the local Medical Health Association found that one out of three males admitted to raping at least once, and more than 40 percent admit to being physically violent with an intimate partner. Some researchers posited that South African men were reacting to the emasculation and humiliation of apartheid by taking out their frustrations on the disempowered—women and children. Others blamed the rigid patriarchy that cut across ethnicities and sanctioned rape as an expression of male entitlement and privilege.

An estimated 500,000 rapes occur in every year in this country of 42 million (although only about 70,000 are reported). Forty percent of those assaults are committed against children under eighteen, an intolerable number that has been increasing at an alarming rate. Part of the upsurge is credited with a superstition, perpetuated by
sangomas
, or witch doctors, that men can cleanse themselves of HIV/AIDS by violating children. The only hopeful news to emerge from this sickening scenario is that grassroots groups have been organizing to counter the violence. POWA, People Opposing Women Abuse, provides legal and support services for women survivors of violence and victims of rape and domestic abuse, and the One in Nine Campaign (named for the number of rapes that are reported) advocates for the enforcement of laws against rape and gender violence. Also, various UN agencies are sponsoring “One-Stop Centres” across South Africa to offer a wide array of services to women and children who have suffered abuse and violence, including comfort and medical treatment, counseling, legal services, and crisis accommodation. They also support programs aimed at the perpetrators of violence.

Our next stop was a small, tired yard where a decrepit, hand-painted double-decker bus was parked to one side. A hand pump for water was in the center, and around it were a few small tin outbuildings. In one of them I was amazed to discover about thirty calm, wide-eyed babies sitting in an orderly row on the floor. All were AIDS orphans; some were HIV-positive, some were not. The children were subdued because many didn’t feel well, and it was terribly hot. The program here was an extremely modest foster care scheme run by a local woman. It had little, if any, funding. Neighbors and churches donated food, but some days the kids did without. They spread the kids around to locals who could handle them, and a child might not stay in the same house two nights in a row.

Seconds after walking in, Papa Jack, Kate, and I had babies to look after. It struck us how each child was placid, unperturbed about being approached and held by strangers, and in fact they reached up trustingly, undoubtedly because they were passed around so much. Papa Jack ended up with a big toddler in his arms, who was sound asleep in minutes.

“Hey, I can put anyone out,” he said proudly. He held him the entire time.

It was touching to see how nurturing the older children were to the younger. One could only hope that they didn’t end up caregivers with total responsibility for them, as so many orphans did. This contributed to the horrible cycle of cross-generational and transactional sex, when the young girls trying to feed themselves and babies had sex with older men for food and supplies and were then of course at major risk for HIV. Insist on a condom? No power to. Abstain? If you abstain, you and the little ones starve.

After their dinner of rice and pap—cornmeal mush—with gravy, the children became a little more active. I stayed for a long while, working my way through the babies until I got to Nonno, whose name meant “Lucky.” I decided to talk a walk with Nonno in my arms to a cinder-block building where I heard singing. It apparently served as a church on Wednesdays for a few adults who came to worship and be fed a snack. There was white bread, peanut butter, and juice. I sat on the floor next to a large woman who passed her sandwich to my baby, who serenely ate it on top of his rice and pap. I took off his sweaty shirt, and he cooperated perfectly, holding out one arm and then the other, and it occurred to me that he needed water. I was not supplementing his care that afternoon: I
was
his caregiver. He was, in fact, dehydrated, and I stayed in church with the praise and dancing filling my eyes with tears, sitting on the floor and giving sips of water to my boy until he was rehydrated. After a while, a reluctant Papa Jack came over and said everyone was waiting for me. I panicked. I couldn’t set him down. I was beside myself. After we sang “Amazing Grace,” I waved another woman over to me. I prayed with her, and that helped me do the impossible: pull myself together so I could come to grips with walking away from my sweet little Nonno and all the other children I would leave behind.

On a busy road with rough tables set up to sell sundry goods, one of our audio-video mobile units was doing its thing. The market was flooded with adults making their daily visit to pick up what provisions they might be able to afford for the evening meal. The market was also busy with kids who had been let out of school, perfect timing for some edutainment. “Fats,” our peer educator, entertained the shifting crowd with music that carried the message of the ABCs of prevention. I floated around, trying to stop counting the malnourished kids (identifiable by the rust color of their hair), and kept it more upbeat, chatting up shy (or were they defiant?) young men about safe sex. One too-cool young man explained that the goat-skin-and-hair bracelet on his wrist was worn to ensure his ancestors’ protection. I handed him an antirape flyer.

As Fats was winding down, his fellow peer educators started dancing in the street. I began to make my way toward them, then decided instead to ask some small girls to dance with me in a cooler spot under some stairs. A party broke out among us, and we added more girls, then boys, all of them grabbing to be the one holding hands with me. I led, then they led, and soon the shy ones couldn’t stand being left out and joined in, too, becoming the most animated dancers. I couldn’t count how many times I fell in love, how many times I said, “You are so beautiful,” how many times I said, “You are so smart,” how many times I said pleadingly to Papa Jack, “Just five more minutes!” But, as all things do, it came to an end, and I left Soweto perhaps the filthiest I’ve ever been, covered in dirt, snot, rice and gravy, slobber, my own sweat, and the sweet, tangy sweat of scores of children I hope help make Soweto a better place someday.