What I Learned From Soweto

On Monday, I went to visit an area of Johannesburg known as Soweto. Soweto, an acronym for South Western Township, has played a very important part of history not just for Johannesburg, but for South Africa as a whole. Countless books and history lessons have been written on the subject, so I will do my best to be brief. Soweto is a township, mostly made up of small shanty towns and shacks. In the not too distant past, very few if any white people would venture there, and even the police often dared not enter. Soweto was a place where many of the black people of Johannesburg lived ( and a lot still do), in conditions that most of you reading this would find appalling. No running water, no plumbing, certainly no AC or heating. What really makes Soweto so important, is that it was one of the epicenters of the fight against apartheid in South Africa. If you don't know what apartheid was, think segregation in the U.S, only much much worse. Google it if you don't believe me. There was a lot of violence and hatred towards the black people of South Africa, and when they fought back, many gave their lives to do so. At the time of apartheid, black people were not allowed to have anything to do with politics, and were forbidden from meeting to discuss any such things. Any meetings that did happen, had to take place in secret. One such place in which these meetings took occurred is the Regina Mundi church. It was here that men like Nelson Mandela and his colleagues met to discuss how they would go about getting their freedom from oppression, and be granted the equal rights that all people deserve. Often times these meetings were broken up with force, and the countless bullet holes in the walls and ceiling of the church serve as vivd reminders of those times. Out of all of this darkness however, came a great amount of light. Not too far from this church, I visited the house where Nelson Mandela lived before being imprisoned. A humble home, it provided shelter to the man who would one day change not only South Africa, but the world. And just down the block, stands the house of another great man, Bishop Desmond Tutu. Both of these men grew up in the darkness and danger of Soweto, and both of these men grew up to become recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. The only place in the world where 2 Nobel Peace recipients lived on the very same street. These few paragraphs don't even begin to do justice to the countless men and women who had to endure the terrible hardships of apartheid and living in Soweto, but hopefully the lessons I learned by visiting there do.
I learned just how lucky I am, and most of you reading this are too, that we are not segregated, beaten, and killed for the color of our skin. That we are free to live and think as we choose, that we can drink the water coming out of our faucets, that we even have faucets in the first place, that we have toilets, and medicine, and all the other things most of us take for granted every day. I give thanks every day for all that I have in my life, and if you don't already, I urge that you let gratitude become a part of your daily routine as well. Soweto reminded me of how important gratitude is, and also how important it is to help those less fortunate than myself.

The other thing that Soweto taught me, is that it's not about where you start, but rather where you finish. My dad has told me this all my life, but Soweto showed it to me in a whole new way. Like a lotus flower that begins life in the dark, dirty mud at the bottom of a lake and grows through the darkness to emerge as a beautiful flower, so too did men like Mandela and Bishop Tutu grow through the darkness and despair of apartheid to change the world with their peace and understanding. With that in mind, be grateful for your dark times and your struggles and know that they are there to help you grow and blossom, just like the mud is for the lotus. Life is precious, freedom is priceless, and gratitude is key, and that my friends, is what I learned from Soweto.