Aliie on the profound difference between pity and love

Allie, Emily & Savannah
finding the joy of drumming in Langa

After being in Cape Town for just under two weeks I already feel like I am beginning to grow as a person. While every tourist attraction we have visited has been so much fun, they are already forgetful compared to seeing the Townships and meeting such amazing people. After considering what was so special about the day we went on community tours to see a couple of the townships, Katrina and I decided it was the difference between pity and love. Any tourist can drive by and feel pity for a community that, materialistically speaking, has close to nothing. It’s so easy to drive by and feel bad for these people that work hard every day just to survive, but what I have come to realize is that pity is an easy emotion to be had. It’s not difficult to look through the windows of a coach bus as we drive by or even hand food to a person in need quickly on the street.

What’s difficult is walking into a community that any white American is treated like a celebrity when the majority of us, myself included, have not done enough in our lives to deserve that treatment. What’s difficult is realizing that these people, who have nothing, are probably some of the happiest people in the world who are so full of love for everybody. And what’s difficult is realizing they are happier than any person or community in America that I know that has never once wondered if they would be able to eat that night or keep a roof over their family. Seeing that fact has already made me challenge my entire way of thinking, not only in realizing how much I have, but realizing how much American societies don’t have. Many don’t have a sense of community and a bonding love between the people in it, and people that wake up with an exuberance to start the day. I think that it is so valuable to realize what we have instead of what we don’t have, and in looking at life through that lens I can only hope to change my “American” way of mind and see the love that surrounds me everyday and never take it for granted.