Home Far from Home
“Where are you from?” An answer would be a no-brainer; all you have to do is state the country of your birth.
Yet for me, that specific inquiry taps into a memory. A memory that has sculpted me as a person and my view of life. A memory that was born 8,200 miles away from Korea, in a country on the opposite side of this peninsula – home sweet home, South Africa.
Witnessing moments that are not from our typical lives is a privilege, through which one is bestowed with a sense of purpose. During my 8 years of stay in the beautiful country, I had the God-given grace to view the richness of the continent: from its lowest plains of the Kruger Park’s savanna to the highest peak of the Kilimanjaro. Feeling the dynamic wildlife indigenous to the lands through the safari was a moment in which I lived and breathed the Lion King, not to mention the vibrant and diverse cultures of native Africans that were simply encaptivating. The very experience of standing in the middle of Mother Nature’s vastness made me humble enough to understand that not everything was about me, that I was just another small player in a bigger game.
Nevertheless not everything was a work of beauty, it had its beasts as well. I remember all too well the painful moments in which the discriminated were discriminating those based on their colors of skin: another enduring remnant of the Apartheid – an immanent atrocity of a cycle. I myself was mistaken for being Japanese or Chinese most of the time, whatever a problem that was supposed to be; my elementary peers used to pull their eyes sideways and address me as ‘yellow’ vermin. Black or White, it came from all sides. Was my anger immune to such violence? No. But my fury was pointed at a more essential matter, at the racial persecution itself. The excruciating pain ignited a spark and engraved a message within the then 8-year-old me that someone would have to make a stance. Someone would have to say ENOUGH!
Absolute poverty, the most poignant international issue we generally encounter through the media, was literally a couple miles away from where I lived. In a town called Olivienhout bosch, meaning the Cradle of Elephants, I had yet witnessed another scene of turmoil. People lived under tin houses, patched with worn sets of tires and rotten woods that had seen many rainfalls. Children and adults alike wore garments of torn clothes that barely covered their bodies. I, on the other hand, was dressed with the byproducts of capitalism.
However, they didn’t blame or persecute me for such extravagance but embraced me warmly like they would do so for their kin. My parents brought them bottles of Coke and loaves of bread on which they survived weeks. They wished to repay our generosity through cooking one of their most prized and scarce possessions, chicken. I will forever cherish the delight, but more importantly cherish their wealth of heart, the willingness to part with a critical means of survival just to repay a meager act of good. I vowed that day to make a stance. I vowed to say MORE for Africa.
Enough and more. Two simple words that were enough to set ablaze the forges within a single soul who’s devoid of any innate connections to the country. Two simple words that have led me to an idea that was once considered an improbable dream: a United States of Africa. 54 countries sitting at a same table, sharing their food with one another, breaking the shackles of the dividers and coming together under the banner of brotherhood. Fate brought me into that distant land for a purpose. One to realize the notion that despite our differences, we all share an overlooked responsibility. That we are our brothers’ keepers, that we are parents to families no matter their origins.
A unified Africa. Yes, a dream perhaps too grandiose for a single person…a dream that is an impossibility. But as the saying goes, ‘a forest is in an acorn’. I chose to be the voice of the needy, I chose to carry the message for the betterment of not only those in progression, but also in regression. A dream to one day cry the words of a wise man who once shouted union and coexistence, who dreamt of a unified America: there will be no Liberal Africa or a Conservative Africa, there will be the United States of Africa. There will be no Black Africa or a White Africa, there will be the United States of Africa.
Thank you.