"Time is the wisest counsellor of all." - Pericles

Friends of mine who have blogs occasionally look back and compare how different life is now with how life was 365 days ago.

Last year at this time, I’d been working as an associate producer at News 10NBC a little more than a month. I was still months away from boarding the flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg for trip number two. I hadn’t even comprehended that there would be a trip number three.

I hadn’t yet gotten my full Amasango education—though, I’m convinced that education never stops. As long as you continue to make your way through the gates of the school, there will be a lesson tucked somewhere in the ebb and flow of the day.

I hadn’t yet experienced the boundless spirit and hope these kids have, or the depth of depravity of others. I hadn’t seen yet seen how strong *Samsicelo, and others like him, are. Samsicelo is one student at Amasango who I’ve never once seen get into a fight or clench his fist in aggression. I’ve never seen him swear. I’ve never seen him drunk. I’ve never seen him high. Nor have I heard any other student talk about Samsicelo fighting or swearing with others. At Amasango, that is a noteworthy accomplishment. Last June, Samsicelo’s mother stabbed her own sister to death in a drunken rage. Somehow, he mustered up the strength to attend the SNAP Foundation photo exhibit at Rhodes, 24 hours after his aunt was killed in cold blood and his mother thrown in jail.

I told him earlier in the day that I’d understand completely if he wanted to bow out. He said “no,” and assured me he’d be there. Samsicelo arrived at Eden Grove on the Rhodes campus, with his head held high. He walked around looking at the photos, mingled with guests, and partway through the opening ceremony; the events of the past day must have caught up to him because he began crying uncontrollably. He cried, he fell apart—but he came. He tried. When I see him walk around school today, I remember and have an incredible amount of respect for him for what he did that day last June when he decided to try and not to let his mother’s hopelessness get in his way.

Last year, I still hadn’t witnessed a boy slice another’s back open with a knife over some ice cream and crude remarks.

Last year, I hadn’t witnessed any of this—but it was still a part of my life. I was still writing about it. It would begin something like this: “A Rochester woman is recovering at Strong tonight—she’s lucky to be alive—after being stabbed five times by her boyfriend.”

That job at News 10NBC taught me so much. It taught me how to write—and to write under pressure and for a specific audience. The people I worked for and alongside of, also passed along lessons that have proven to be invaluable.

Despite the fact that I knew my writing would be edited by at least a producer and an executive producer before making it to air, the stories at News 10NBC were so much easier to type out than the stories you often read on this blog. I was so set apart from the misery and the violence from my chair and computer on 191 East Avenue. My facts came to me, neatly typed out, on press releases or from talking to city police on the phone. The raw footage I’d look at, shot by station photographers, would show a lot of crime scene tape, officers scurrying about, numbers on the ground next to crime scene tape, occasionally, we’d even see some grieving family members. It wasn’t pleasant to look at, but I didn’t know the people I was writing about. It made it so much easier. I could write about “The Rochester lawyer who hired a hit man to kill his wife,” in between bites of my lunch. I didn’t know the lawyer’s kids whose lives had been turned upside down as a result of his actions. Or the dozens of other lives he shattered when he wrote the check to the hit man to carry out his wishes.

In Grahamstown, I do. I’m living amongst the people I was writing about at News 10NBC. I spend much of my day around the victims—and perpetrators—of these types of crimes. It’s so much messier now than it was 12 months ago.

The lessons I took with me from the halls of News 10NBC and Amasango have converged. I’ve learned that I need the distance News 10NBC provided. It’s much less painful to pull a sheet from the fax machine and recount the events of a homicide than to see a boy like Samsicelo, still alive, but just as much a victim of his mother’s behavior. Or to watch two people really try and kill one another over something incredibly unimportant.

I can do my part while I’m here, and I will continue to do my part in small ways when I get home. But I need my distance. I need that press release. I don’t want to know the people involved in these heinous crimes. Ignorance, to the shattered lives of crime victims, is bliss.

*name has been changed