Role Models

Personal notes:
1) In less than a month, my girlfriend Kathryn will be gracing SA with her glorious presence!
2) This weekend my sister and I plan to grace Addo Elephant Park with our presence.
3) I won the Western Province Open... see comment on previous post for scores.

anyway...

You must be the change you wish to see in the World- Mahatma Ghandi

I've decided to be a role model. Not because I'm a terrific human being, which I am not. Nor because I think everyone else should be like me. Just because I can't do a whole lot else. I have discovered that I am unable to save Africa. (I know, I was suprised as well.) Nor am I able to do a huge amount of good while I am here. I like to think the repairs we instituted will help out one school , the motley group of prisoners take my words to heart and the kids I coach will stop getting pinned in a quarter nelson. However, with only 1 month left in my work, I'm not here nearly long enough to start any large-scale humanitarian project and I don't have enough faith to evangelize. So I've decided to be a role model, hoping desperately that when I leave Africa the good (but not the bad) parts of my character and knowledge and goals remain behind, transferred to a larger number of people with the ability to make a lasting difference.

My sister and I have decided that many of South Africa's problems can be traced back to a harmful attitude: South Africans want to live a Western life style of materialism, sexual freedom and wealth, without following the "western" strategies of safe sex, years of education and long hours of work. (Yes, this is a massive over-generalization... and also to blame are the already rich whites, who don't want to share with their former subjects.)

Inefficiency, slopiness and corner-cutting are absolutely rampant (see most of the posts on this blog.) You'll have to ask me for specific stories in person, they are many and fill us with "permafrustration". I'll only share one... a senior member of a humanitarian association recently asked me what country I was from, then proceeded to tell me in detail that a) the Canadian flag is hideous, pointless and stupid and b) I am a racist. He didn't stop until I snapped and threatened to hit him... who does that? Who goes out of their way to piss off people trying to make a difference for free? I wish this were an isolated story but it's merely the strangest one.

As a "real" westerner, I- we- can be role models by mere nature of our upbringing. The thought of my modelling order, work ethic, time management, organization or efficiency would be downright comical in Canada (I bet my parents are laughing as they read this.) In South Africa, I can. In SA I can be shocked about racist comments, question the need to bring a gun to a bar fight, tell students that a 60% fail rate is NOT normal for high school, and that the crime is the worst on FRIGGIN' EARTH and should never, ever be accepted as normal. It's hard, really it is, to convey the attitudes of apathy and ineffectiveness that one encounters here. It is, perhaps, impossible to convey them without sounding like an arrogant prick; if so, I appologize. However, after much thought, I have decided what South Africa needs is not so much my "life skills" teaching, or even my money, as my willingness to paint a school of my own initaitive, my desire to question why a car must only take R30 at once, my ability to befriend people of all races, my need to argue that volunteers need to be treated well so more of them will come. (This is a real problem; both missions and the places they work at, schools and prisons and churches, don't know how to handle help.) More importantly, SA needs full time South Africans to do those things more often.

On a more philosophical/religous note, shouldn't we all be role models? Certainly, all of us who call ourselves Christians- "like Christ"- should be. Imagine, for a moment, if all of us made the following pledge: I will inspire others to improve our world by my example. I wish I myself could honestly say that. The Apostle Paul asks us to "imitate us as I imitate Christ!" Wouldn't it be cool to be able to say that?

Each of us is good at something. My personal talent at the moment seems to be complaining. But who is to say that God, in His wisdom, did not place me among people who frustrate me- who could be doing so much MORE good if they did things more efficiently- for that very purpose? Perhaps God can use me to help others do their work better, to provide alternate viewpoints and to suggest ways of changing procedures? Perhaps this is my calling.

I started my post on a pretty cocky note ("I've decided to be a role model") precicely because I thought it might raise some eyebrows. But the more I think about it, the more I wish that all of us would say that. Our world is a hell of a mess (not just South Africa) and not-giving-a-crap is a major reason why. I know; I don't usually give a crap either. Perhaps that has to change. Perhaps I need to start to care; not once in a while, when I get to go to an exotic country to try to help out, but all the time. Few of us are going to be Ghandi or Mother Theresa or Nelson Mandela, though it doesn't hurt to try. All of us, though, can try to do something- can try to do a lot- to help improve our world. And if we were all role models, if we all tried to model "caring", I have to believe that even if our own efforts were futile, the ripple effect could lead to something big.

Role modelling is, after all (for Christians, and probably other religouns too) one of our core spiritual disciplines. Jesus calls us the "Light of the world"; the Kingdom of God is within us and is shown through us, apparently. We are the hands of Christ. God (and I'm not sure why, because we suck at it) has chosen us to be his hands. When Christ was on Earth, his hands healed. His hands comforted. His hands worked. His hands were tirelessly involved in the helping of, and the eventual sacrifice for, his fellow human beings. Why can't I be more like that? Christian living is- should be- so much more than avoiding drugs and sex and the f-word. We should- we must- be the change we wish to see in the world.

This post would not be complete without listing a few of my role models, people who have, and are, working their rear ends off to improve the lives of others. They are, in many ways, my inspiration. Many are Christians, many are South Africans, and all of them do amazing things...

They include a group of coaches putting together the largest wrestling club in the country to offer low-income students a chance at sucess; a businessman who finances the project, helps out his athletes financially and gives me a place to stay for free; my co-workers at the YMCA, willing to forgo a higher salary and put up with danger and hassle to help others; my uncle who gave up a lucrative medical practice to work amongst the poor and lobby the government for better AIDS care; my grandfather, who gave up a lucrative building contracting business to evangelize the Zulus in the hills of Natal; my parents, who support their kids financially and emotionally even when we leave them and do stupid, dangerous things; my sister, the most ethical person I know, who runs a project to feed a homeless shelter while studying medicine, and finally my girlfriend Kathryn, a constant source of support and encouragement even when we are far apart. You guys ARE the light of the world. May there be many more like you.