1st Place Winner: Maile Gove

Do You Have a Son?

Do you have a son?
The question was innocent; she knew no better.

I had been in Africa for nearly three days, but had spent little time outside the comfort of a westernized world. I had even entered Khayelitisha, a poverty-stricken township outside of Cape Town, inside a shiny, new tour bus. I stepped out into the dirt feeling the weight of difference that these people knew so well. Despite the heat, unbearable on my exposed shoulders, chills traced my spine as I surveyed my surroundings and, finally, understood how very much my possessions meant to me.

Our group assembled and began to walk, then all at once, multiplied. My colleagues and I arrived in a group of fifteen, and soon, with a child on every back, holding every hand, we were fifty. As in every healthy community, Khayelitisha is thriving with youth. The girl with whom my fingers were laced was eight years old. As we walked together, in closer proximity than customary to me – even in regard to some friends at home – she made certain to leave no moment silent. She, not yet fluent in English, and I, by no means a master of Xhosa; we busied ourselves singing songs, and attempting to learn one another's names.

Together, we passed one shack after another. --At this point I feel it would be pertinent to address the political correctness of the word shack. -- To give an image of the homes in Khayelitisha, one must imagine the average bathroom, four door sedan, or even a large kennel at the pound. Incredibly small spaces, even these three examples have something the shack I wish to describe does not: a floor. The homes of Khayelitisha have scrap metal walls, the kind that are less than a centimeter thick, the kind that absorb enough heat to produce serious burns when touched on a very hot day, the kind that rust in the rain. The image should be growing clearer now. Very few of these homes have a window, even fewer have a hinged door. These houses are equipped with no electricity, are afforded no running water. On top of all of this, each accommodates a family. The word for a home like this is nothing less than "shack."

An hour has passed and the intensity of the sun increased. Heat could be seen rising, thick, from every house. I asked her about her friends, about her parents. She pointed out which dogs belonged to whom, which child to which mother. We continued on and caught a moment of comfortable silence before she began to ask me about myself. I shared what I could about my life, my culture, attempting to offer a sufficient answer to each inquiry. What does my school look like, what sports do I play, do I have a son? And there it was; a question I had anything but expected, laid in front of me so plainly. It was a question I had never been asked. And suddenly my oncoming adulthood struck me with a blow that made my eyes roll back in my head. I'm still a kid like you, I have no son.

I have undergone no coming of age ceremony. I passed through 13 with no Torah, fifteen with no waltz. Shocked though I was then to hear my small friend's question, I left with a flood of understanding. No one deserves to live like this. I spent hours washing windows to get to that dirt road where I met that little girl. I spent the remainder of my time in Africa taking in as much as I could, and documenting every second of it. A firm believer that knowledge is power, I returned home ready to spread the knowledge I found abroad, and offer it to others to help create a stronger force for change. Though part of a generation often stereotyped as apathetic, I will make a difference.