Everything Is a Process

Each day I am in South Africa it becomes more apparent to me what and just how much I take for granted in the United States.  There are SO MANY tiny things we take for granted  in the U.S that people here struggle for and wait for on a daily basis.  For example, today, simply getting my campus password to work had taken me six hours, because there is not just one main person you go see to straighten things out, and there is not just one main, simple office for everything.  They send you from building to building, place to place until you work hard enough to figure it out.  I waited in line today for nearly three hours just to get my student I.D card, because, compared to the U.S or St. Cloud State, there are fifteen people paid to take students pictures and hand out card in a matter of minutes.  Here, there is one man, in a tiny little office, who has to help EVERYONE.  Everything here is a process.  Just to fax something to the U.S today, I had to go get my student card, put money on it, print it off at a campus computer, then go to the post office to fax it, and I started that process at 11am this morning, and im STILL not done.  I have always taken for granted the ease of everything back home.  How easy it is to sign up and register for classes, how easy it is to fax a simple document, where as here those things dont come easy.  You are forced to realize that not all systems are as advanced as the United States and you are forced to learn REALLY FAST that not everything goes your way.  Patients, patients, patients!
Something else that I think is often taken for granted compared to here is education.  While waiting in line for my student I.D card today, I was talking to a women who was South African, and she said she was still working towards what would be equal to a high school degree in the United States.  She was probably five years older than me.  As we were talking, she told me about how she was from one of the townships outside Port Elizabeth, and her mother worked extremely hard her entire life, settled for living in a shack and saved every Rand she could for her entire life just to send her to school.  Literally, every amount of money this womans mom made, went to pay for an education for her.  At this point she got emotional, and said her mother had passed before she would see her graduate, but her life long dream came true because she had gotten the opportunity to attend school.
Its probably hard to understand from reading, but talking to people who have these stories changes your life. I think back on all of the things I have been able to do in my lifetime, and how many things I not only take fore granted but EXPECT to have.  Graduating high school is no longer a big deal in America.  Going to college is not thought of as a privilege, or a luxury, but something that "just everybody does."  Not here.  She explained to me that here, it is a HUGE deal just to go to ANY schooling, even primary school.  If you have education, with your own money in South Africa, you have a luxury and you are extremely privileged.  Makes you think, really long and hard about how much you really have, and how lucky you are.  I think the people her will teach me more than any class ever will and I know for damn certain my education will be something I could never take for granted again.