All Shook Up

The morning of the cultural food day, only one week into training, was also the day we received terrible news. We found out that one of the members of Group 29, Nick, was assaulted.

The story went that Nick was on his way to Rachel’s house to walk her to the kombi pickup point. They both stayed in the location (a product of apartheid, where the black people were forced to live; now where the poor people live), and it happened to be a pay weekend, which means that people had money for alcohol. So chances are, you had some people out at the shebeens (the bars) all night long, and when they were going home, they passed Nick. In their drunken state they decided to try to take his possessions. So a group of about three guys attacked him, one hit him in the face, while the others tried to grab his bag and/or restrain him. Luckily he got away with his belongings and a barely noticeable bruise.

The incident caused me to flash back to the safety and security presentation that we had earlier that week and a PCT’s blog I read with three entries in total, two dealing with robbery and the third about leaving to go home, and I have to admit that I even considered going home… AGAIN. I was terrified walking home for several days after. Even though it didn’t happen to me, the attack still really shook me up, and brought me to a pessimistic, negative place where everyone was a criminal and out to hurt me.

That is absolutely no way to live though, and thankfully I returned to seeing the world, Namibia, Okahandja, through the eyes of brotherhood and friendship. During our two month stay in Okahandja there was only the one criminal incident that happened to our group, yet there were COUNTLESS friendly faces, greetings, smiles, and good people. If I would have let one event, one small group’s twisted actions, cloud my perspective or alter my path or close me off to others, I would have missed out on a lot of great things. We can’t always control what happens to us, but we can choose how we allow events to affect us and how we view the world. The biggest crime would have been to allow those men to rob me of the priceless experiences that I have had, to allow them to affect who I am at the core. Nick’s belongings could easily be replaced, but a part of me could not.

So I make a choice…I choose to live in a reality where criminals are powerless to truly hurt me, they can take away my possessions, even hurt my body, but I won’t allow them to damage my soul, the essence of who I am. I choose to live in a remarkably wonderful world instead of a horrible one, a world where people are goodhearted and care about each other. I choose to live among brothers and sisters instead of strangers and enemies, where people help one another. I choose to only experience good, and therefore every experience can be used as an opportunity for learning and growth (and how can that ever be bad). And I choose to smile at the world…and pretty much all of the time I find it smiling right back at me.