Day Two: Kindness

Right now I am in a Bnb in Queenstown, listening to The Whitest Boy Alive, drinking wine out of a tall glass and eating lukewarm tuna salad out of a lunch-box with a spoon. It's cold and loneliness keeps on trying to creep up on me. But to be completely honest, I haven't felt this content in a really, really long time.

Today was not as adventurous as yesterday but it was still awesome in it's own way. I had two interviews, one with a Grey de Villiers in Adelaide and another with the Robinson's in Tarkastad. These people not only allowed me into their homes, offered me coffee and a bed for the night (which I had to decline due to Journ 4 applications which needed to be completed...argh), but they showed me a kindness that moved me to tears.

They had no obligation to help me out in any way but they did. They did more than just help me. They restored my faith in humanity; in this country. I don't even know how to explain it but I am truly touched by how nice people can be. Maybe it is because I struggle to be nice; both to strangers and to the ones I love. I am impatient and insecure and this leads me to shut people out and it is just not fair. And I think this is one of the reasons I am on this trip: so that I can learn that being nice doesn't hurt. Caring won't make me any less of a person or whatever other bullshit excuse I have in mind.

I don't have much to tell you except that there really are good people out there, and if we were all just a little nicer the world would be a better place.

Grey de Villiers, former Genetics lecturer at the University of Fort Hare in his home at 

31 Market Street, Adelaide, Eastern Cape. 2013.

Gwyneth and John Robinson outside their home on 11 Southey Road, Tarkastad, 

Eastern Cape. 2013