Treat people as you wish to be treated.

South Africa really is a melting pot of cultures.

Due to ongoing strife in countries north of us , there more than a few people that have come to South Africa to seek their fortunes . They would slot in somewhere between immigrants and refugees as the jobs that they fill in South Africa are usually not the best, are mostly blue collar. Yet many are well qualified and are hard workers.

This would be like Gracia, a security guard at the local waste disposal facility who is Angolan with a Portuguese mother and a French father. The only thing bigger than his big physical form is his even bigger smile. So I have got to know him over the last year and as a result if I have anything which still has value, I offer it to him before either disposing or selling it. 

So it came to pass that I had an up-cycled leather single seater chair which I offered to him. As he could not leave his post he asked his friend Titus, a Malawian , to come and help with the loading and offloading of this chair. Titus is a man-mountain. He picked up the chair from the back in a really awkward position and by sheer muscle-force, clamped his arms on the chair and lifted it up and out the house and into the back of my van. While we were driving we got to talking about Malawi , as I have two friends from there. 

Then he asked me " So where are you from? "  , "South Africa"  I answered.

"It can't be " he retorted and I questioned why he said that.

And this was the learning point. He said "Because you don't talk to me or treat me like the South Africans do".

I was dumbstruck and tried not to show it. Having grown up in Malawi he would not have been exposed to the discord of racism to the level we have had it in South Africa. His first real experience would have been when he moved here and that would have been post 1994, the year of our democratic elections. By that time I would have thought that people had savvied up to the fact that racism is not cool. Yet here he was, telling me 25 years into our democracy, that in actual fact, I was treating him as a fellow human and this was not his ongoing experience in the current South Africa.   

That saddens me. As much as it is a compliment that I see him as a fellow traveller on this journey called life, and that the values I present are those instilled by my late father, I find it crazy that so many  perpetuate the racist past. And I got to thinking why that is , and I believe it is largely due to what you are taught by your parents.  It also stems from irresponsible media that push their own narrative. And these two create a cocktail that prevents people from interacting  , to experience and learn about other cultures.

There are three topics which are always a great source of breaking down barriers and these are food, music and sport. And my experience from many travels has shown to me time and time again that when one finds a common cord in one or more of those you have found a brother or sister, regardless of colour.

So open your minds to the possibilities, you might be robbing yourself of learning something new.