It’s hard to put all of my thoughts and experiences from my 3-week experience in Cape Town into words. No amount is going to be able to precisely replicate how amazing and meaningful my time spent in this community has been to me.
A specific moment that has stayed with me from the trip, and will remain a cherished memory for the rest of my life, is from our last day volunteering in Langa. A staff member from an ECD expressed their gratitude for our time spent working with the kids, “how lucky they are to have met us,” and that “we had taught them so much.” I left that conversation feeling immense pride, that we had made a real difference in the community that would hopefully impact these kids in the many years to come. That conversation in return also made me consider how incredibly lucky we are to have met them. Putting it simply, meeting the children in Langa has changed my life. Each child I encountered taught me something different. Peter taught me humility, Olo and Lebo taught me patience, Williams taught me kindness, and that’s just to name a few. These groups of kids are the most intelligent, passionate, and talented children I have ever been around. I will strive every day to be half as good of a person as these kids are.
This experience has left me with an eternal sense of gratitude and love for the people in Langa. I left the community with an amount of lessons learned in 3 weeks to last a lifetime. I will forever be in debt to this community for how much it impacted my life and I plan to stay involved in its development any way I can. I look forward to the day I return to Langa and hopefully encounter more of its wonderful people. There is not enough gratefulness in the world to express how much I feel for Langa and this experience.
Enkosi Kakhulu Langa. Thank you very much.