"People are fundamentally good. We are made to reach for the stars."

My head was down, scanning the sand for any colorful shells or smooth glass that the tide had tossed onto Port Alfred’s windswept beach—about an hour from Grahamstown.

I saw a boy leaning against the wooden barricade that separates the beach from the parking lot. The boy, about 5 meters away was staring intently in my direction, seemingly watching my every move. A bit intimidated, a bit confused, a bit curious, I walked closer.

“Jason!” said the boy.

It was Lindispho: an Amasango student/Eluxolweni shelter boy who left Grahamstown in December for Christmas—and never returned.

I’ve often wondered what happened to him. I’ve always hoped he was okay, but I’ve never been really all that certain he was okay. Here he was, more than three months later, looking good. Sure, his clothes were worn and dirty, but he didn’t look addled by drugs, and he wasn’t drunk.

Lindispho would approach me each day at Amasango and, with an enormous grin, say “I hate you.” He’d pause for a bit of dramatic suspense—even though I knew what was coming—and then finish: “Because you’re white!”

The thing is, the smile never left his face and, by the time he’d get to the word “white” he was laughing hysterically, and, reaching into hug me, continue with “What’s up my white papa?”

It began that way every morning. I’ve really missed his inappropriate, yet well-meaning, remarks.

But here we were now, not having seen him for three months, not having known what had happened to him, not knowing if he’d still be the same, I walked a bit closer and said “I hate you” holding out my hand to shake his.

A grin formed across his face, then a laugh, then “because you’re white.” He pushed my hand out of the way and reached in to hug me.

I invited Lindispho over to where my three friends were. Lindispho and I chatted for a while about nothing in particular.

Then I asked the question I really wanted to, but didn’t want to ask initially. “You coming back to Grahamstown?”

He put his head down, “After Easter.” I don’t like it when they put their head down. Lindispho, most of the kids actually, can’t lie looking you in the eye. Some of the more hardened ones can. Some of the more hardened ones could probably stick a knife through you , looking at you double over and feel nothing. But many of the kids who haven’t lost everything still can’t look you in the eye and lie. “After Easter” means nothing if it isn’t said with a bit of eye contact. Lindispho’s wasn’t.

I asked him if he’d be willing to show my Swedish friends around the township. I told him I needed his help. These Swedish students were leaving Tuesday and had never seen the township and I thought he’d be perfect. None of that was a lie. He agreed to be our tour guide and we loaded into the car. We drove into the township passed signs like these announcing the expansion of low-income housing.

You know you’re in the township the moment the pavement ends. Crater-size potholes replace the tar; people dressed in third and fourth hand clothes walking everywhere, emaciated dogs wandering the streets shared by goats and cattle. We passed the AIDS clinic, the school, some homes and got to his street.

He looked at me and said “You want to see my house?”

“Do you want to show us your house or would you rather just show us around the township?” I replied.

“I’ll show you my house,” he said.

We parked on the side of a dirt road that has seen better days. I put the gear lock on the shifter, rolled up the windows, told the girls to keep their purses in the trunk, locked the doors, set the alarm.

Lindispho looked on “When you going to realize it’s fine here Jason?” he said with a laugh.

“When you going to come back to school,” I answered.

“I told you, after Easter,” he said, again looking away as he said it.

We walked down a grass path, passed a couple other shacks and arrived to a one-room building that had been pieced together with random pieces of metal.

“Come in,” he said.

The dirt floor was met by cardboard boxes that had been sliced open and put against the walls to cover the holes. The roof had dozens of small holes where the metal had been slit open, Magazines dotted the floor: Cosmopolitan, Newsweek, African Leader. Magazines, I’d discover, he found at the garbage dump. It was Hell-on-Earth. And it was this 15-year-olds home.

We spent the next twenty minutes in the township, before setting off to lunch. I invited Lindisipho to come with us, never thinking for a minute he’d turn down a free meal. He didn’t.

We arrived. We talked. I told him how he needed to come back to school. He said okay. We left. We went back to the township.

I said, “When you coming back to school?”

“After Easter, I promise Jason,” he said looking me straight in the eye.

I looked in the rear view mirror as he walked back into the township, the dust gathering at his feet as he made his way down the dirt road.

I felt defeated. I knew he was going back to that one-room shack from hell.

I felt vindicated. He had looked me in the eye. Maybe he’ll come back. Maybe he will.