there is no easy walk to freedom anywhere

In 1985 I was a sophomore in high school. I had a new friend, a junior, who had recently moved to our small town from somewhere in South Africa. I thought this move was both exotic and odd. (Why leave a country with elephants and giraffes and lions for a small town with only acres of corn and a Target? (This was before the Target closed, you see.) It didn't make sense.) She had a cool accent, but only when she talked, not when she sang. She mentioned Apartheid, which I had HEARD of, and knew it was something like what happened in the South before the Civil Rights Movement. South Africans couldn't participate in the Olympics because of Apartheid, and some people were in jail because of it, which didn't seem fair, but that was about as far as my knowledge stretched.

In 1990 I was a sophomore in college. I was starting to pay a bit more attention to world events, but was still primarily hung up on my own hang ups. A group of people on campus had set up a tent city protesting the Persian Gulf War. I wasn't sure what I thought about this war or our involvement in it. I'd also heard that South Africa freed Nelson Mandela after 27 1/2 years in prison and began dissembling Apartheid. This seemed a good thing. South Africans could participate in the Olympics again, so that was nice.

In 1994 I was newly married, had just finished my Masters, and had my first real job. Just as I was meant to be starting a career in helping others, I was beginning to understand just how much I didn't understand about the world, about people. The OJ Simpson trial was all the news that year, but there were also reports from Africa. Devastation in Rwanda. Hope in South Africa, who had held its first interracial elections and elected a black president, Nelson Mandela. Who then proceeded to name the white former president, de Klerk, as deputy president. I wondered if this would ever happen in the United States, if we would ever elect a black president, if our government could ever work together across racial and party lines.

In 2010 we began talking about adopting a child from Lesotho, a landlocked country surrounded by South Africa. I read that the Basotho had escaped the horrors of Apartheid because of British rule until 1966, when they gained their independence. But I wondered about this because I also read that many Basotho migrated to South Africa for jobs and schooling, where they would have been subject to the same rules and restrictions. I read Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom and Mpho M'astepo Nthunya's Singing Away the Hunger. I thought about people who are willing to undergo imprisonment and brutality on the strengths of their convictions, and the devastatingly difficult lives of the people for whom they are convicted.

In 2012 we traveled to Lesotho to adopt our son and then to Johannesburg to process the US visa requirements. We had been warned about the crime in Johannesburg. We had been warned about the racism we might encounter traveling with a black son. We didn't experience any of that. We were greeted warmly everywhere we went, both by black and by white South Africans. (Except for one elderly woman who sniffed disapprovingly when we let Palamang choose where to sit. Old biddy.) Our black tour guide to the Lion Park easily accepted our six year old boy as a part of our family, talked about his own seven year old son, shared some of the difficulties South Africa faced but also the hope South Africa had for the future thanks to a man who brought the country together when our guide was just a boy - Nelson Rolihlahla Madiba Mandela. Tata! Father.

We weren't able to visit the Apartheid Museum or Soweto or any of the other places made famous by Mandela, but his influence, his legacy, was everywhere we went, everywhere we looked, in everyone we met.

Today reports are varied as to Mandela's health. He is in the hospital in Johannesburg, in critical condition, and thousands upon thousands rally and pray and remember this leader who not only brought freedom and forgiveness to his own country, but changed the face of the world. This may be Mandela's final battle, but one for which he has prepared his entire life. In his own words: "There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires."

Go in peace, Tata.