The Gift of Dependence

Barbed wire around the play grounds, spiked fences in front of every house. The picture of an average street with all its barred windows and barbed wire belies the warm hospitality inside each home. With all of its extremes in wealth, education levels, and privilege, Cape Town isn’t always the safest place to be in. Since coming here I’ve learned a new set of rules for everyday life:

1. Always be home before dark
2. Don’t use your cellphone in public (thieves will mug you for the sim card)
3. While driving, keep all bags at your feet (to prevent people breaking the windows to steal a purse aka a “smash and grab”)
4. Don’t go anywhere alone:

I never realized what a privilege safety was until I could no longer take it for granted. When’s the last time you felt the need to check behind you every few minutes while walking to the mall or had to consider the time of nightfall into your plans? :

Adjustment wasn’t easy. I value my independence so much that being kept inside for safety’s sake was incredibly frustrating. Not being able to go places alone was also a huge blow. I’m the girl who travelled through 7 countries alone and hiked up 12 mountains in a day on my own. Independence is a huge part of what makes me me.

It took about a month before I became comfortable with asking for help. As Americans, we’re taught to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and look out for number one. Asking for help is something we dislike doing. It’s uncomfortable for us to say that we need someone else.

While I grew up with this mindset, I never knew on what I was missing out on in the beauty of saying I can’t make it on my own. But in being forced to ask for help I was given incredible opportunities to connect with people here in ways that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. In asking for car rides we are given a unique chance to talk deeper than just in passing. When friends walk with me to get groceries they share their stories of their pasts and memories of the neighborhoods we walk though. Carpooling to school every morning has introduced me to my next door neighbor’s family and made me an adopted member from seeing them so often. :
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Dependence is a gift I never thought I’d value. In all reality, it was a Lesson I Never Wanted to Learn. Now, I treasure the relationships and conversations that dependence on my community has created. Through dependence, I’m learning how to truly live out Ubuntu, the South African philosophy of “I am because we are.”