My place in the sun.

South Africa is a vast, diverse, complicated country.  From the sea to the mountains, the desert and savannah, the driest and most humid, the incredible wealth and appalling poverty.  From fun in the sun to crime-ridden.  From the stunningly beautiful vistas to the ghetto-like informal settlements.  South Africa is my home.  I grew up during the apartheid era, hardly realising there was a crisis for our people, because where I grew up was liberal and everyone played together.  When I grew old enough to realise what was going on, I took a stand in my own way and ended up in trouble more than once.  I am not a sit-on-the-fence type of person.  Something is either right or wrong and when human beings are denied their rights, it is wrong.  Our liberation in 1994 was a time when it felt as if people who had been imprisoned in the dark, slowly and with wonderment, walked out into the light hardly daring to breathe!  We could go to pubs and clubs with our friends, all our friends, without reprisal.  Some had a hard time adjusting and some have sadly, never adjusted.  I have had the priviledge of working with every echelon of society during my time on the ambulances.  I have met people living in this country with views about every topic imaginable.  I have been shocked and saddened, elated and empowered.  Still there is hope.  South Africans, no matter who they are, are a breed of people who, despite our torrid history, have a disposition that is unlike any other I have come across in any other country.  We "make a plan."  We come together in time of need and do what we have to do. Now on the eve of an important election, I sit in hope that South Africans make the informed decision to keep our country growing instead of allowing the insidious creep of greed and corruption to take hold more firmly than it has. This trend will ultimately destroy us by plundering our resources until there is nothing left for anyone. We have come so far, let us not backslide now.