Night

5 am and we're hurtling through the streets of Soweto. Brush fires blaze in the background as shadowy figures huddle around them for warmth, thick blankets wrapped tightly around thicker waists, infants rocked to sleep on their backs. Bitter whiskey runs freely between young men patrolling the streets with bats; barely old enough to shave, they are marching with an uneasy certainty. Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" blasts from our radio. I open the car window as Francois lights another cigarette, and the wind is deafening.

'Princess' is a squatter camp rocking on the edge of chaos; it is a place of cramped shacks, raw sewage, and bullets. I wear an over sized bulletproof vest over my jacket, aware that its frayed belly is more for show than any real protection. Francois offers me a hand as we pass over a rickety bridge haplessly built on an open sewer; I do not need it, it is not the first time that I have passed through nightmares. Quietly, we make our way to a tiny shack, barely the size of a western bathroom, nestled in the heart of the camp. There is no crowd, only a small girl standing outside, lost in a dark blue blanket; a fat officer with faraway eyes idles restlessly nearby. We walk inside. There is a woman sitting on a bed. She is young and frail with high cheekbones and slightly sunken eyes; she clutches a bottle of milk and doesn't look at us. Her three month old daughter is lovingly wrapped in a blanket beside her, tiny coarse curls matted against her forehead. She wears a tiny pink hat that nearly covers her eyes, startlingly long eyelashes peeking out. We stay only briefly. We don't talk to the mother. As we leave, we ask the officer to translate for us. "Please tell her that the baby is dead", we say. We file a report and leave, drive away, faster and faster in the darkness. Far in the distance, beyond the dry hills and isolated roads, Soweto is burning.

I have written a lot about God in this past year, generally to reflect on his absence. The problem of evil haunts me: how could a benevolent God allow the horrors I see all around me? Perhaps worse, how could he blind so much of the world to the suffering that is so obvious it shakes me to the core, keeps me awake at night? There is so much pain, and for what reason? For a long time I have not believed in God. Rabbi Hillel said that most people live their lives in an easy darkness, unaware of their blindness. A few, however, are tormented by lightning: occasional flashes of realization that light up the earth and shake them from complacency. My experience this year has been one long lightning storm; sometimes it is a nightmare that I cannot wake up from, but other times I'm glad, because I am no longer sleeping.

I suppose that it would have been easy for God to make people good, to always make the right choices and create a happy world. But instead of goodness, God gave us an even greater gift: he gave us freedom. Uniquely, we have the ability to analyze and reflect, thereby making genuine choices. Those decisions will not always be right or just, and humanity as a whole has suffered for it. Greed, hatred, bigamy, ignorance... they plague us as a people, and yet most of the time we continue to walk in darkness, blissfully unaware of the evil we have allowed ourselves. But God in his wisdom has in fact given us two gifts: Free will, and Insight. I believe in God because I have seen the lightning; I have felt the truth and am blessed with the ability and opportunity to bring change, however small. It is a challenge that we all must answer, each in our own way. My time in India and Africa has been illuminating... I am coming home with enough thoughts to write without stopping until the end of my days. There is so much to see, to do, to experience and to change that it is nearly overwhelming... I take deep breaths and continue on, small steps and one at a time.

Thank you to everyone I have worked with - all of the amazing people and organizations that have made this year possible. You have enriched my life beyond belief, and I hope that in the years to come I prove worthy of the opportunities you have granted me. I have two more weeks in South Africa, mostly on holiday, but I will continue to write. After all, there is so much more to say. I am sitting here now, listening to the familiar Metallica tune that blasted on the radio a few nights ago in the paramedic response car. The deafening instruments do not drown out the original inspiration, Jon Dunne's 16th century poem in which he famously wrote that "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."