Thoughts on Beauty

For the same reason a rose among a surrounding of thorns is all the more elegant, I believe children in the destitute setting of a township are the most stunningly beautiful people on the planet.

Though they are surrounded by every type of need, every sort of desperation, and every variant of pain, the children of tin shacks and meager inheritance smile, laugh, and adore all the more, inspiring me to marvel at their seemingly paradoxical majesty. In the presence of their mothers' lamenting gazes and their grandmothers' defeated brows, township children wield eyes that, though indeed beautiful in themselves, seem to convert all the pity and lamentation that someone may feel into pure love and affection. These diamonds in the rough prevent their surroundings from spiraling into darkness as they defiantly exude the light of innocence, beckoning the hopeless to rely on their hope to continue onwards.

These thoughts came to me as I sat in the drafty and sparsely decorated home of a woman who lives in Red Hill, an "informal settlement" (read: township) where All Nations operates. Her friend's baby sat next to me, donning a bright pink and green hat with matching shoes, happily gurgling and smiling a toothless smile. The topic at hand was the woman's financial inability to travel to the Eastern Cape to visit her ailing mother, but almost everyone in the room was wearing a smile as the baby effortfully attempted to craft meaningful words. It was an amazing experience, and I could not stop thinking about how defiant, how stubborn the presence of such pure beauty was given the environment. I had seen photos, like we all have, of adorable African children, but in reality, when observed in their actual situation, these children are not just cute. They are jaw dropping displays of the most breathtaking splendor. They are warriors of light in a world of aggressive darkness that seems to break on every border.

My Christianne-led exploration of Red Hill included other experiences, like talking with a group of slightly drunk men, playing with soup-kitchen assisted teens, and experiencing the meaning of my desk job firsthand, but the impact of the beauty in such darkness is what sticks out to me the most. It's the type of beauty that allows someone to transcend all that may be weighing them down; to find the strength to give life another chance; to hope in what has not come in years. This is a beauty that is not enhanced by equally stunning surroundings, but rather it's a beauty that is only fully appreciated when juxtaposed with what ugliness it manages to survive in the face of. It's beauty that doesn't quickly fade from the mind.

I look forward to seeing one of the townships again, and I'm grateful to Christianne for taking me around her usual stomping ground. Now that I have seen and met the people that All Nations was designed to serve, I better understand why it is that people like Floyd have sacrificed so much to benefit these individuals.

My day was full of other activities, like cleaning and organizing Africa House and eating a fantastic meal with Toukam, but it is this outing that was most blog-worthy to me. I hope I did it justice with these feeble words I craft.