Bricks of the Past

There are some things here that are so forgein, so alien to me. Like walls with barbed wire, or red dirt. But then, there are the things that are so oddly farmiliar, like Hannah Montana on the Disney channel, or "I Kissed a Girl" playing on the radio. I visited the major universtiy here yesterday. It was lovely, just beautiful. But there are things about this country that strumming strange tunes in me. Parts are so farmiliar, the college students and the people bustling about in the shopping centers. But there is something deeper, something not known, and not well understood by me. It lingers in the breezes, within the red soil, and on the faces of almost everyone you meet. It is an awareness of reality. An awareness of real pain, of real joy, of real suffering, and of real triumph.

I toured the Johannasberg court yesterday. It's a lovely building, but unlike our political buildings in Victoria, BC, with all their splendor and pristine setting, this building was set next to and old prision. I prison that cause measurless pain to thousands of people. A prison that shut Winnie Mandela, and Ghandi behind it's bars. And the court itself is built on the site of the previous court, the court that caused so much hardship and sent so many men and women to eat, sleep, and weep within a cement world.

The people of South Africa do not hide their past. They do not stoop their heads and sweep the tears under a rug. They are aware of the reality of it.
The walls of the courtroom are brick... old brick... the very same bricks that built the previous courthouse.



South Africa is using the suffering of her past, to create the triumph of her future.