And I'm off! and hoping to encounter Ubuntu

Today's the day...In two hours I'll be getting checked in at the RDU airport to up to Boston and meet the team - eeee, I'm SO excited! I don't know when I will first get the opportunity for internet, so my family is operating on the "no news is good news" policy and I will communicate when I have the opportunity - full of stories about travel adventures, meeting new friends, and whatever mishaps are bound to occur :)

One of the things that I have come across multiple times in my reading about South Africa is the philosophy/way of thinking/traditional value system that is called ubuntu. Ubuntu is about how one interacts with others and thinks about oneself. It has been sometimes described as the idea that "a person is a person, only through other people." Here are a few blurbs about the philosophy (from a couple names you might recognize...):

"Ubuntu is an African philosophy focusing on people's allegiances and relations with each other. The word has its origin in the Bantu languages of Southern Africa. Ubuntu is seen as a traditional African concept.
A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
~Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"A traveller through our country would stop at a village, and he didn't have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of ubuntu but ubuntu has various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not enrich themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to improve?"
~Nelson Mandela

I love this understanding. As my discussion-based Adolescent Development class can attest to, I am far less individualistic in my thinking than a lot of people in our country, so this idea of a community based on relationships and mutual care is very appealing and beautiful to me. I am interested to see if this will be the heart of the communities that I visit on my trip. I hope that it is. I pray that it is. As Desmond Tutu once said, "We are bound up with God's creation and a solitary human being is the ultimate contradiction."

I hope I find that community there :)

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I'm thrilled my trip is almost underway. I am excited to meet the students and leaders that I will be living and working with for a month, excited to see the ways that we challenge and support and love one another.

Prayers for travel mercies as we gather today and then leave tomorrow would be appreciated! I love you all and will be praying for you as well :)