The Mosaic of Belonging

“On the fifth of December 2013, I awoke to the news that “tata Madiba”—Nelson Mandela—would no longer walk this earth. The already cold and gray Thursday morning in D.C. turned drearier as I carried my sorrow, along with my laptop and lunch, onto the metro train that would take me downtown and to work. The rush-hour train was packed with jacket and woolen hat clad commuters. As we emerged from the underground tunnel and traversed the gray Potomac River, I caught a glimpse of the Washington Memorial impaling the cloudy sky. Hot tears came fast as the loss of tata (grandfather) sunk in. If anyone saw, they did not show it. I was a South African immigrant in mourning. Unseen in a crowd. Might as well have been on an alien planet.

The chasm between where I had come from and where I now lived gaped before me. I grew up in an apartheid segregated neighborhood called Chatsworth, in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal. We lived in small government houses that leaned against each other, where the bathrooms were outside……..”

Entrance to the Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg, South African.