Amelia on amazing lessons learned

After 22 hours of traveling and moving from one country to another I’m having trouble processing my emotions and thoughts about my adventure and what the dickens (as Vernon would say) happened to me during these 3 ½ months.

As I was mentally preparing to go home I kept asking myself, who was I before I left the USA and who am I now? These were difficult questions to answer as I was pretty horrible at keeping a journal and once you’ve changed it’s difficult to imagine yourself any other way. As I’m working through this, here’s a list of some of the key take aways I had from my experience in Cape Town:

1. Strengthen relationships by engaging in difficult discussions. One of the biggest learning’s I’ve had here is that it’s possible and productive at times, to talk to people about topics you 100% disagree on. In Cape Town I had hundreds of discussions regarding the social construct of race, patriarchy, homosexuality, religion and America’s influence in globalization. Of all these intense discussions that went on for days at some points, if we were in the States I would be weary of what I say because that might mean losing a friend due to my opinions on a “sensitive topic”. However when discussing these issues in Cape Town, I never lost a friend due to our differences. In fact it only made our relationships stronger as we were able to understand more deeply how we think and what has influenced us to believe what we did.  
2. Natural beauty makes you remember the good in the world. As we are living in complicated times where fear, anger, anxiety, and unjust is spreading throughout the world its easy to forget the good in life. However I think spending time outdoors, hiking Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak and overlooking the beauty that is Cape Town really helped me to remember that the world was created to be beautiful and its our job to keep it that way.
   
                                             
3. Don’t become dependent on technology. Living in a country for 3 months with extremely limited access to wifi was a great experience because it gave me more time to enjoy my surroundings and the people I lived with. Sure it was difficult and frustrating at times but it just made me realize how nice it is to detach from your phone to enjoy the present.
4. Share your snacks. Every day in the office no matter what it was people always shared their snacks and would even buy enough so everyone had some. I found this interesting because this was from South Africans, Sweden’s, Germans, people from everywhere sharing their snacks. That’s something I was always a little greedy about growing up so seeing how happy everyone was to share what they had made me want to share what I had as well.
5. Stop taking what you don’t need. In this world of consumerism it’s easy to get sucked into buying the cutest sandals, nicest dishes, anything you name it. But with all this shopping I think we lose sight of what we really need and it usually isn’t something you can purchase in a store. This is something I am working on as I’ve been an avid fashion lover since I was a child however I’ve learned that the people with the least amount of things seemed to be the happiest.
6. In order to continue personal development, you need self-discipline. This one is probably the clearest to understand yet the most difficult to attain. There are so many distractions and events that bring you back to the drawing board of the person you want to sculpt but in order to become that person you need discipline to fight every obstacle that will get between you and that goal.
7. Volunteer. I truly did underestimate how great volunteering was before coming here. Taking a few hours out of your weekly schedule to do something good for humanity is well worth the time and energy, it’s also a lot of fun!
8. Don’t be skeptical of every stranger you meet. I don’t know if I was taught this or where it came from but I’ve always been skeptical of strangers and was told to be more cautious. However I’m now realizing how ridiculous that notion is. Obviously you shouldn’t tell a stranger your home address and your social security number but there’s no reason you can’t be friendly and willing to engage in conversation just because they’re a stranger. If that was the case, you’ll never meet anybody.
9. Education=opportunities. Education is the key to success. While higher education is great if you have the ability to go I’m talking about basic education because that shapes your ideas and your personality. Higher education serves to question and reform those ideas but it all starts when we’re small and I think that’s something people forget. We don’t put an emphasis on basic education and teaching children about race, their human rights, sex, and other things that fundamentally important and shouldn’t just be discussed as adults.
10. Find love in everything you do. It makes everything easier.

Zoe, Mary, Amelia & Brilliant from Africa Unite

Thank you Cape Town and the wonderful people you’ve brought into my life for teaching me all these things and more. We’ll meet soon again!