Ubuntu.

Art: Hayem Abdelbaky, Untitled, 2017, Cairo

Ubuntu: a South African phrase roughly translated to mean "I am because You are."

Living Ubuntu: the knowledge that your humanity is bound up in mine. The 'other' becomes my brother, my sister, our child, our mother. We all sit at the same table.

A collectivistic community can teach those of us who were raised in an individualistic culture what it means to live Ubuntu. It's one of the beautiful things about South Africa. Built into the culture is a sense of collective identity. Conversations about race and violence, suffering and hope are happening at levels that I've not heard in the US yet. And they happen around tea and biscuits.

Writer Sarah Southern wrote in her substack about being a peacemaker and engaging with the pain of each other:

Proximity does not necessarily increase compassion or decrease dehumanization. It’s not enough to live next to people who look and live and think differently. Some tables are not safe places. Some conversations are not productive. It’s impossible to debate a person into kindness. But as much as it depends on me, I can endeavor to be a peacemaker, breaching conflict with tomato pie and sourdough loaves. Not because this isn’t serious. Not because food is an all-encompassing remedy. But because I was once wrong and hungry and someone, many someones, offered kindness and sustenance as I found my way out of it.

May we all offer a place of safe conversation, a place of sustenance and compassion that invites transformation from within.

Read Sarah's post here: https://open.substack.com/pub/sarahsouthern/p/being-peacemakers?r=294dxz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email