“The world is meant to be enjoyed. Do the right thing. Do it in the right direction.”
That’s what my Uber driver says to me.
I ask him if Joburg has changed since he’s been living here.
He grew up hours away where he had five “uncles” he only learned later were not actual relatives. They had been strangers who wondered into his village. “But we believed a stranger was more important than ourselves or our family.” The strangers were treated so well they became family.
“Now,” he says, “the values are more Western. Every man for himself.”
Born in 1983, he remembers apartheid and calls it the worst thing people ever did to one another.
“The worst,” he says, with graveled resonance.
“Did you choose the color of your skin?” He asks.
“I did not,” I say.
“Did you choose the language you speak?”
“I did not.”
“Did you choose where you were born?”
“I did not.”
“No one does. And that’s why we must take care of each other.”
“The world,” he repeats, “is meant to be enjoyed.”