100

         100

I sat in the airport hotel lobby, rubbing my tired eyes.  Spending the past two months looking through glasses with a slightly off prescription was beginning to wear on my retinas.  But you try wrestling a thirty-pound adult male Vervet monkey, with three-inch fangs, whose only life philosophy is, “if I can get my hands on it, it’s mine.”  Spidery fingers flashed through the fence of his enclosure and my vision went fuzzy.  I was able to make out my monkey friend snap my purple glasses in two, pop out a lens, and chew off one nose pad.  With nothing to do to change the situation, I stood outside the three-monkey enclosure cursing at my enemy, hoping maybe the language barrier would break, the missing link linked, and he would hand my glasses back to me with an apology.  I had eventually gotten used to these new glasses, at least enough to see through them, but I don’t think they were very good for my eyes. 

My tall hiker’s backpack leaned against my left side and my large suitcase, suitable for family of three, sat on my right.  I was going over my itinerary for my trek home: Johannesburg, London, DC, Albuquerque, Taos.  My time in southern Africa was almost at an end.  Volunteering finished, people and animals hugged and kissed goodbye, adventuring fulfilled, I was ready to go home.  I felt ready to go back to real life.  Africa was easy.  It’s the States that are difficult.

I was spending my time waiting for my flight wondering if I had actually changed, if people would look at me and say, “Wow, you look different!  Happier, calmer, tanner.”  I had, after all, told everyone at home that I was ready to get back to real life.  I had come to Africa to get away completely, from the depression, confusion, self-consciousness, anxiety.  And then I had an ‘ah-ha’ moment where I realized that I was going to be okay and I was ready to go back, and lastly that I should go back.  That last one was not well thought out, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.  And now that the flight was quite literally hanging somewhere over my head, leaving didn’t seem at all like a good decision anymore.  Rifling through my wallet to take my mind of my departure, I came across a folded bus ticket from the very start of my ventures, from the Pretoria Bus Station to Tzaneen, South Africa, the town with the almost-got-it glasses boutique.

I found my way to the bus station in Pretoria, a small town an hour north of Johannesburg, via taxi cab.  I was catching my bus connection to Tzaneen and the Vervet Monkey Foundation, the first animal sanctuary where I had signed up to volunteer.  Vervet monkeys are widely considered pests and thus treated as such, poisoned, trapped, shot, neglected.  The VMF is a rescue and rehabilitation facility whose ultimate goal is to release their monkeys onto safe, foundation owned land where troops of these spectacle thieves, while increasing general education about these glasses-craving creatures.  I rolled my large suitcase down a residential block and into the bus depot and found a bench.  As a blonde, white girl with suitcases bigger than herself, I’m sure I blended in very well. 

         A few people walked past me as I waited.  I was looking forward to the long ride.  I wanted to write and absorb the land for a while, really take it in.  Truthfully, I was nervous and figured a five-hour bus ride might give me time to calm down, or at least take a nap.  For a long section of the bus ride I was eavesdropping on a pair of women who were talking about working at an animal sanctuary, trying to figure out if we were going to the same place.  But the long bus ride was still an hour away.  A tall, very thin, white woman, dressed in torn and ragged clothing, walked up to my bench and looked at me.

         Her hair was matted to her skull, unwashed, and greasy to the point that any natural color was lost.  Her shoes were barely more than paper-thin.  She wore a dress with a faded floral pattern, hidden behind stains and dirt, with a white, wool sweater with a haze of gray.  Her face was dried and engraved by the sun.  I could see that her smile lines were not as prevalent as the deep lines around the corners her mouth and across her forehead.

Oh dear. 

New place, a wallet full of 100 rand bills with a fresh receipt from the exchange booth, a poor woman about to ask for help, and me with no understanding of the local currency. 

         “Can you help, please?”  She spoke in broken phrases in a heavy Afrikaans accent, a nifty combination of German, Dutch, and local African.  “I have children.  I need bread.  Please?”  She pleaded with me, hands open, face up in front of her.  The lines of her palms were carved deep in her skin and filled with dirt.  Her whole body was worn, giving her the appearance of being much older than she really was.

         Several thoughts ran through my head at that moment. 

One: How much exactly is 100 rand? 

Two:  Should I give her any money?

Three: Where the hell is my bus?

I decided to err on the side of caution and not give the poor stranger 100 rand, about 10 dollars I was to find out later.  I was torn, but I made a decision based on the bottle side of poverty I was used to in the States.  So lastly, four: how do you explain to a destitute Afrikaans woman, pleading for help, that you can’t give her any because you don’t want to give her too much?  The answer is, you lie.

“I’m sorry,” I told her, shrugging my shoulders, hands plaintive, “I can’t.  I just got here and I don’t have any money yet.”  I am a terrible person.

“Please,” she begged harder.  “Some money for bread.” 

“I am so very sorry but I have none.”

She gave up, nodded at me, smiled, and walked away, head held high, looking for the next kind person. 

“Why did you not give her any money?”  A small, round, black woman carrying a brimming paper grocery bag approached me as the white woman walked away. 

“Sorry?”

“Why you not give her any money?”

         My lie returned.  Why was I defending myself to this stranger, I wondered.  Why does she even care?

         “But she is white.”  The African woman looked at me with only questions, no sarcasm.  To her, this made all the difference in the world.  I stammered a mumbled version of my fib and she too, finally, albeit begrudgingly, walked away. 

         Back at the airport hotel with the dizzying glasses, I folded and stuffed away the bus ticket amongst the other odd bits of memories I was saving for later.  I examined my bills and change to see what I had remaining and “needed” to spend before I left the country.

         Having fully picked through my carry-on luggage, wasting time before my flight rediscovering the items that had fallen into the depths of my purse, I put everything away.  I still had a few hours before they would let me through security and had exhausted my supply of things to look at and/or through.  So I pulled out my mystery crime thriller and settled in. 

         “Excuse me, this is for you.”  I looked up from my paperback to see a humbly dressed black woman holding out a US one hundred dollar bill, Ben Franklin and all.  She wore a shin-length, dark blue pleated skirt, and a white-collared, button-down shirt.  She carried a Bible in her left hand, clutching it tightly to her chest.  Pushing her hand closer towards me, she smiled.  Her nails were neatly trimmed and her hands clean.

         “No, no, no, I couldn’t possibly accept this.  I’m fine thank you.”

         “It is a gift.”

         “I cannot take your money.”

         “But this is not from me.  It is from God. Take it.”

         I started to protest more but she quickly interrupted me, throwing up her hand with the money.  The Bible never left her chest.  “It is a gift from God.  God told me that this was for you.  It is from God.”  I reached out my hand slowly, unsure of what else to do, and she grabbed my hand, placed the folded bill in my palm and closed my hand, wrapping my fingers around the bill. 

         “Thank you.”

         “Don’t thank me.  Thank God.”  With one last smile, she turned and walked back to her seat on the other side of the lobby. 

Speechless.  I was completely speechless.  I kept looking around to see if anyone was watching, any cameras or witnesses. 

Someone has to have seen that, right? 

But, I was alone. 

I looked at the bill with utter bewilderment.  I smiled, shaking my head as I put it in my wallet next to the bus ticket. 

I do not believe in God.  Sometimes I would like to.  But having said this, something kept me from spending that hundred until well after a year of being back in the States.  I kept it tucked away with my bus ticket and glasses receipt and remaining rand.  Whether from God or not, the sentiment of the woman remained the same.  She exhibited pure kindness and giving towards a complete stranger; something I had been unable to do.