Friday 19 October 2012

The weight of the world

A day of pain.
Weight on one's shoulders.
Wobbly to stand.
Tough not to fall when the wind starts challenging how much storm you can put up with.
The air feels a bit sticky and heavy to breathe.
Surrounded by poverty, drugs and injustice.
The echo of the loneliness leaves the eardrums bloody.
The smell of the tears of the people corroding both heart and mind.
The vision of a neverending struggle like a thick grey fog, closing in from every direction.
Make it stop hurting!
The dark temptation of just letting go. Give in. Give up.
Void.

Friday in Langa.
Around lunch time at the center.
The rain was pouring down as if this were its last chance to wet the earth.

A long staff meeting had just taken place.
A really good one.
At Fridays lunch always follows. One of those together-lunches. Bonding through food.
A circle of lunch-eating PPG employees.
A team of friends.
Smiles, more grins and chattering.
Hopes and ideas for the improvement of the future of the little ones.
A better life.
Beliefs. Dreams. Fight. Action.

In that moment the load was lifted.
Gone.
Just like that.
That instant could not fit heaviness and despair.

The weight of the world.
Its ponderousness was overcome by a lunch in a township somewhere in Africa.

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