South African Transcendence

It was early Sunday morning outside the diamond mining town of Kimberley South Africa that I realized, for the first time since arriving, something so obvious that I was genuinely taken aback. I was not a black South African. I did not live through Apartheid. I was a white, middle-class American. How could I have become so deluded? I’d like to think that it was because I saw people for what they were rather than for the color of their skin. But upon further reflection the reason had a lot to do with the preconceived notions that I had brought with me.

I had travelled to South Africa to train with an elite group of marathoners who, like me, were running the New York City marathon later that fall. I had hoped by testing myself beyond the self-imposed limitations of my ability that I would be able break those bonds and inch closer to a truer picture of myself and what I could become.

Earlier that morning, myself and four other athletes began the day’s 25 mile run from Kimberley to Barkly-Wes. We began at a pedestrian pace, letting our muscles warm up in the early morning chill of a South African spring. In the far distance, baboons crossed the road like a mirage. Smoke rose from shanty towns. Couple the harsh yet beautiful landscape with a horizon that seemingly extends to infinity, and Bush country has all the makings for a transcendent experience. And it happened, albeit not the way I had imagined.

After the grueling run we took my fellow athletes home. And it was then that my delusion was broken. They lived in shanties, not I. I had selfishly wanted to take from them only the attributes that fit my mythologized view rather than what they had to offer as genuine people. I had so wanted to be like my teammates that in my mind I had become like them. I had confounded poverty and oppression for the ideal. While it is important to see the world through another’s eyes it is equally important to let them see it through yours—without the dust of nostalgic longing.