The Paradox of South Africa…from Aaron

All good adventures begin with some definitive moment that sets all the events to follow into motion. Entering the Text Alive contest definitely was the beginning. Following through with the essays and the video was the continuation, but there was a moment the morning I woke up in New York City in which I believed I didn’t deserve to be one of the five. I chose to rise to the occasion though, to, as my junior year AP English teacher and Henry David Thoreau said, suck all the marrow out of life and see if I couldn’t learn what the experience had to teach.

I found something incredibly paradoxical about the whole of South Africa and its people. In places like the township we visited in Soweto, one of the poorest places in the area, where I expected to find sorrow, we found hope, joy, vibrance. In the midst of squalor, there was community and love. The youth we spoke with at Ikageng Ministries shared their experiences with us. These young people have endured more than any young person should ever have to. Despite all that, the first thing you will notice about them is the radiance in their eyes, emanating hope, joy, faith, and love that comes from having known true sadness, but choosing to embrace goodness instead.

The Blue Roof Wellness Center, a place so beautiful, so necessary thrives in a place where nothing like it existed before. In the midst of a terrible HIV/AIDS infection zone, there there is now a well of resources, hope, and love for the people that need to come to drink. And if there are people who need to drink that cannot make it to this well, there are people who will carry the life water to them.

At the tree where Operation Bobbi Bear was founded, there was dancing, music, chanting…pure, unbridled passion for all that is good and holy in the world, all that is sacred was protected there.

The paradox is that light sprouts up from within the dark. Somewhere along the line, we began to believe that where darkness lived, the goodness could not go. Where there was poverty, there was nothing we could do about it. Where there were people dying of a disease, there was nothing to be done but quarantine and hope it didn’t affect us. If I’m honest, before I left, this is how I saw the world. There were problems that needed to be addressed, but what could anyone really do about it? What agency does anyone really have to affect change on the scale that it’s needed?

In order to be a good person to the world, for the world, one need only see the necessity, bear the desire, and take the bold step of choosing goodness over anything else. That choice created the paradox. All the people who are involved in this beautiful organization, Mum Carol, Rhona Buckley, Jackie Branfield, Leigh Blake, Alicia Keys have seen the need in the world, in this HIV/AIDS pandemic, and all of them have shown us that positive change is possible, both in the world and in our own lives. It’s fantastic work, really, and the lives of KCA staff have been enriched by it. You can see it. The patients we got to talk to even said they wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for the work of KCA. Beautiful is really the only way to describe it.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in his last speech about having been to the mountaintop and seeing the promised land of equality and justice, peace and brotherhood. I believe we too have been to the mountaintop. We , the 5 “contestants,” have been shown that we can make a difference in the world if we only care enough to do so and have the solidarity to see it through.

So thank you to everyone who was involved with this trip. Words cannot express how profoundly changed I have been, and what a good path I believe this has put me on. Anyone can be a force of good in the world, I see that now. All we need to do is choose.

Peace be with you,
Aaron Tyler “Sizwe” McCoy