Tekowa cannot comprehend human hatred

THE MORE I KNOW THE LESS I UNDERSTAND

So for the first week of April we all went to Johannesburg. During that week we packed a lot in. The thing that I can’t shake or forget was the Apartheid Museum. The museum did a really good job of showing how carefully crafted the system of apartheid was and how it permeated the minds and consciousness of the people of South Africa. What the museum really did was make things very real to me. There was one section of the museum with three screens, all playing footage of riots during the anti-apartheid movement and it was war. It was really heartbreaking to see so much anger, frustration, sadness, and hatred erupt and to know that what I was watching happened in my lifetime. I can’t even imagine living in that kind of environment, essentially in a war zone. I feel very lucky that that’s never been my experience or reality. In another section of the museum there was a military tank, the same kind that was used in the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 and I can’t explain how it felt to stand next to that. We were also all allowed to walk into it, and I felt overwhelmingly sick and sad sitting in the same seats where someone else had sat not too long ago and shot at civilians… mothers, children, fathers, sisters, brothers etc. I couldn’t stay inside for long and walked away asking myself “what have we done? What have we created?” I don’t understand how we (as a human race) CHOOSE to foster and promote such hatred. We put so much time and energy into finding new ways to oppress each other and kill each other and for what? All because we have this perverted idea that some must prosper off of the suffering of others. I left the museum with a better understanding of history but less understanding of human nature. It seems the more that I know the less I understand.