Let’s keep on caring

One of the many features Facebook has to offer is the many videos (and I mean thousands) that can be seen; from funnies, to more serious, educational and heartwarming.

But you also find the heart-wrenching type of videos where eyewitnesses prefer to look the other way, offer no assistance when an animal or person is assaulted, or when animals are abused. People would rather take a video than come to the rescue.

One of the most powerful videos I have seen so far is of a little boy sitting in class. The bell rings for break and he opens his empty lunchbox. He looks around and sees the variety of food and snacks his friends have.

He silently puts his hand up and asks for a bathroom break. You can literally see the despondency on his face. He drinks some water and stares out of the window, clearly not wanting to go back to class.

Up to this point, the video suggests to me that this is not the first time the boy has had to go to school with an empty lunchbox.

He goes back to class and as he lifts his lunchbox off the table to put it away, he feels something inside. When he opens it, he finds that his classmates have all given something from their lunchboxes to him. He slowly looks around the room and notices his mates who shared their food with him. They either smile back, wink at him or pretend they don’t know anything.

The whole video is done in silence, expect for background music, and ends with one single sentence: “Take care of each other”.

He wasn’t ridiculed for not having lunch, he wasn’t bullied in any way, he is merely a product of circumstances beyond his control.

This is the kind of community that I believe I work in. People still care about others. I know I am generalising a bit, but the majority of people in Roodepoort still care.

Since it is Mandela Day, or should I rather say ‘month’, let’s reach beyond that. Let’s always care and help others and never forget that circumstances can change in a heartbeat and you can never know when you will be on the receiving end.

Until next week, stay warm and take care of one another.