Julian confronts the harsh realities that are also South Africa

I’ve recently realized that my blog posts have really just included the exciting things that there are to do in South Africa. Between safaris, endless hiking trails and a great nightlife I’ve found it easy to be having the time of my life here. But the fact remains that my experience here has been pretty bipolar. Along with this country’s beautiful sights, people and culture comes immense poverty. Aids plagues 5.6 million people here and millions live in townships, many where informal settlements is the normal type of housing.  The South African government may have legally ended discrimination towards non-whites after the apartheid, but not much has been done to give people who suffered from past oppression economic equal opportunities.

It’s hard to make money when you have none. Maybe I’m qualified for several jobs after high school, but how can I get to the jobs I’m qualified for without a car or money for public transport? Maybe I’m constitutionally given the right to an equal education, but how can I get one if my school can’t afford books or computers? The poor can’t move up when they have nothing to start with.

I’ve talked to friends about horror stories that they’ve heard or seen at their internships. Starving babies, parents who have access to ARV’s (HIV medicine) but don’t bother to give them to their children who need them, high incidents of rape and beatings; they’re everyday realities in this country’s townships. The only difference between the people involved in these stories and you and I is the disparity in our wealth. During my time here in South Africa I’ve come to realize how poverty is a crime. I never really knew how important the basic needs of adequate shelter, food and water are. It’s easy to say “yea, you can’t live without it,” like I did before, but I’ve found that it’ll make you a different person if you don’t have the basics covered. My mom would go to the end of the world for my siblings, but how could she if she was starving to death? It’s not a question of her love or how much she cares; it’s about what she can do. I don’t know exactly what it is that makes parents stop caring for their children, but I can clearly see that poverty is closely correlated with it.