Sometimes

I feel so sad about the world. This Christmas, though I want to feel warm and happy, though I want so badly to focus on the good, I can’t help but constantly remember that there are terrible things going on around the world.

In Johannesburg, a 35 year old woman named Takelah Chakamza is able to buy only two things for Christmas for her family. Her family lives in Harare, Zimbabwe and much of the country relies on people like Takelah to live. The economic situation in Zimbabwe is unimaginable. People navigate wheelbarrows full of money through crowded streets to buy a loaf of bread. Sometimes, entire families of five or six carry thousands of bills in whatever they can find, sacks, wheelbarrows, barrels, just to buy a roll of toilet paper. Inflation is going up by massive amounts per year. I don’t remember the number, but we studied it in World Issues and it was astronomical. If you have cash one day, you spend it because it may be worth nothing the next day. If you need something, you get it, because the next day it could be ten times the price. Takelah makes $80 a month working for a family in Johannesburg, and I am so, so sad that all she can send home is cooking oil and corn meal.

I have spent just under $200 on gifts this Christmas. The total cost of presents that people will buy from me will probably average out to be between $500-$1000. I have tried not to spend money. I have told my parents that I wish to make things this Christmas, instead of buying into the commercialism of it all. I really don’t have $200. Between trying to buy food, clothes and save for surgery, $200 is hard to part with. I do not want people to spend $500-$1000 on me. Next year, I will not give my parents an option. I will not ask them if I can make things. I will not seek their permission. Next year, all money will be spent on either buying materials to make things or will be sent to a charity, or even on gifts for kids in this city who won’t otherwise get them. Or perhaps I’ll go see my street friends and buy them stuff. We can make a day of it.