|
|
|
|
|
|
What is normal in your life?
The house I grew up in and in which my mother still lives, has the sort of fireplace that appears on Christmas cards. …. Big and wide with a beam over the top and takes a yule log that can burn all day. The wood to burn is kept under two inglenook seats either side. My father would fill these up once or twice a week by wheeling a wheelbarrow full of logs in through the front door and across the sitting room. It never once occurred to me that wheeling a big muddy rusty wheelbarrow through the house was anything other than perfectly normal. (in case you wonder, the current carpet is over 30 years old and still going strong and yes we still wheel the barrow through.) Only when I was older and watched my friends aghast faces did it occur to me that it was a different way of doing things.
Are there things in your life that you think are normal, but other people find extraordinary?
I ask you this because we have just returned from South Africa, a beautiful wonderful country with vast differences between the rich and the poor. The vast out of town townships where people live in huts more like condemned garden sheds than houses cheek by jowl with their neighbours are an appalling and thought provoking sight, though there were signs of newly built toilet and washing facilities.
One of the hotels we stayed in was managed and staffed entirely by black Africans, chosen and most excellently trained by the young white South African owner as a deliberate attempt to press forward the new united country. One of the articulate young managers had been a fairly militant member of ANC youth. He had grown up in one of these townships. Surrounded by the four star comfort of the hotel by day we asked him how he felt about the difference between the rich and poor. It was he who told us not to pity the people in the townships. The life was normal to them, it was the only life they knew and for many it was a life they liked. He had decided that the life of the 'have not' was not for him and was quite prepared to work long hours and to train hard and was earning himself a nice house. However he was keen to point out that this did not mean he was ashamed of his roots. He said that there was a lot to enjoy in the camaraderie of the townships. In the new South Africa they had the choice to work their way out of them if they wished.
this is not to say that there is not a need to narrow the wealth divide, and to encourage more projects like that hotel.
|
|
|
|
