The end of Guguletu

Our morning began with a lecture at JL Zwane with Rev. Xapile. I’m just going to pinpoint some main ideas that he mentioned. The first thing was something called narrative therapy, which is taking some experiences more seriously than others. I know I definitely do this by evaluating what things I should be focusing on the most, but I think that do need to sometimes re-evaluate these things. I don’t want to change them, but change the level of seriousness I have with some of them. Sometimes I take things more seriously than I should-like being so concerned about my grades. This causes extra stress that’s sometimes unnecessary and can also cause me to miss out on other opportunities.

He also said that commitment is doing this you promised to do, even if there may be changes. You can’t drop things if they change from when they started. Edwin stressed the same thing- that you shouldn’t make a promise unless you can keep it. The worst crime to commit is breaking a promise because you create a deep wound in the hearts of those involved with that promise. This is also something that I sometimes need to think twice about because I sometimes do say I’ll do one thing and then back out later on. I do feel bad when I do things like this and don’t always take the other person’s feelings into deep consideration at that point. Or I will consider them, but tell myself that they won’t care to make myself feel better. I hope to be a leader who keeps her promises and makes people happy by accomplishing whatever I set my heart to.

One of the things that always kept inspiring me more and more on this trip was people’s faith in God. They have endless amounts of hope and faith. Xapile says that there is no time to say there’s nothing that can be done because you can always do something. God, who creates something out of nothing and also the people around him, inspires him. There are always possibilities for great things to happen, you just need to have faith and not give up. If you can’t see the possibilities, then you can’t reach them. Like said earlier, once the mind is forced to do something, your body follows. You need to know your beliefs, thoughts, hopes, etc. in order to follow through with them and create a difference. Leaders need to believe in themselves! Which is also something that I hope to strengthen- my confidence. Sometimes I don’t always express myself if I don’t feel passionate about a topic because I don’t have total confidence about how I feel about it. I do voice my opinion about things that I do feel strongly about, but can still be pushed back by those who don’t feel the same way. I need to not let those thoughts push my down, but make me stronger and more confident in what I believe.

Noxi (Erika and Emily’s mama) hosted our last dinner. We ate until our stomachs were full and then turned on some tunes (her “White Shit” c.d.) to dance to. The most fun dance was doing the electric slide with everyone in her living room. I love doing those dances with a bunch of people. At the end of the night all of the mamas and us said our good-byes and thanks one by one. I thought I wouldn’t be sad, but I actually did tear up when saying good-bye and giving hugs. Kate was so sweet- she got up and sang Brittney and me a good-bye song saying, “I’m going home.” (I don’t remember the rest). It was really beautiful and sad. The thing that saddens me the most is that I don’t know what will happen to all of these wonderful, kind-hearted people. I hope that God watches over them and makes sure they stay safe and warm. I am so grateful for having such a wonderful mama to stay with during my trip to Guguletu. The only thing that I wish happened was that we would’ve gotten a chance to have more than one deep conversation with Kate and Penny. It was just hard because we were all always tired after dinner so we would just get sent to bed whenever we got home if we didn’t have a dessert to munch on. If we got one free day this past week it would have been a nice way to get to know our families more and learn about their history. But I’m happy with everything and glad that I got to experience the township life. I’m ready to head back and share all of my stories with people back home.