What do you need most?

The other night here in Cape Town, South Africa, I turned to one of the most extraordinary teachers I’ve ever met and asked her a question that had been tickling me for days.

“Your students seem so tight. So bonded to each other and supportive. How did you do that?” 

The teacher is Mimi Nkunzi. Her students attend Isilimela High School in Langa, one of the oldest all-black townships in the country and a place where apartheid-era racial oppression hit early and hard.

Mimi and me, infected with joy.

 had noticed a contrast. The program I’m here to witness brings together students from Isililema with students from Bellville High School, a predominantly white school in a very different part of this deeply segregated city.

The schools’ resourcing couldn’t be more different. Isilimela teachers in graffitied, overcrowded classrooms threw big hugs around us when we gave them simple school supplies we brought from the U.S. — dry erase markers, highlighters, pens. Bellville’s teachers take breaks in an air-conditioned lounge while their students make use of clean hallways, a robust sports complex, and an on-campus coffee shop. 

But that’s not the contrast I was thinking about.

Over the weekend, students from Isilimela and Bellville shared a campsite south of Cape Town with students visiting from Roosevelt High School in Seattle. There, teachers from all three schools led them through a retreat aimed at bringing down the walls between them.   

The Bellville students showed up great as far as teenagers go. But their Isilimela neighbors were on another level. 

They burst into laughter and even song with ease all weekend, and not just with each other. They showed an openness and sense of security that struck the other students, who found conversations with them to be remarkably fluid and engaging, given all their differences. 

Watching their energy course through the camp, I noticed I was surprised to see it. Why am I surprised? I wondered. And also: What is behind this?

Mimi received my question with a nod. I don’t know what answer I expected. But it wasn’t the one I got.

“It’s because they’re poor,” Mimi said. 

Because they’re poor? Did I hear her right? 

“When you’re poor, you lean on each other,” she continued. “You don’t have soap, you borrow soap. You don’t have a sheet, you borrow a sheet. People who have what they need, they don’t turn to each other. You think you’re alone.” 

I blinked. Images of home came to mind. Compared to the rest of the world, most Americans are rich in resources. But are we poor in spirit? 

I thought of the many pockets of disconnection, isolation, and despair. Even when we have so much. Even when we are so many.

You think you’re alone.

“When you think you have everything you need,” I said, speaking slowly to find the right words, “you don’t build the thing you need the most.”

She nodded.  

We never named what that thing was, but we didn’t have to. 

Stay curious, all. And close.