Nothing to Lose

Nothing to Lose

My goodness, I recently wrote a blog with this same title about the attitudes of young people and HIV and AIDS. This time, it is the theme of a play is about a tormented train driver who killed a woman and her baby when the woman threw herself in front of his train. The drama is based on a true event in Cape Town. The play, "The Train Driver" is written by world famous South Africa playwright Athol Fugard and it was my privilege to sit next to him when I went to see this show. Already I had seen two of his plays including the Tony Award winning, Sizwe Banzi that dramatized the pain and sometimes the dilemmas caused because of the apartheid pass laws. Because he is genius talent, Fugard tells the story from the point of view of the white train driver. He says he abandoned the effort to get inside the head and heart of the woman after much effort and focused on the train driver. His train driver is haunted by the eyes of the dead woman he killed and unable to ignore his pain at what she had done to his life, he set off to find her and the play revolves around the conversation he has with the grave digger in the cemetery for people like the dead woman who are "the nameless ones." I sat enthralled at the inner dialogue he has, with the grave digger as the backdrop. Eventually he moves from cursing the woman who had so changed his life, to understanding why she did what she did. He says to her in the cemetery, "I don't know what it is like to live without hope, because you did, didn't you, that is why you did what you did, because you didn't believe anymore good things was going to happen to you and your baby." The world of the train driver is so different to those of the people whose shacks his train alternately transports and then rushes by every day. I often tell people that there are many South Africas. While that is true to some extent in other parts of the world, here, to me, it is even more pronounced and there are communities that live completely outside the world of the other, to the detriment of all. I so appreciate the arts and culture here that tackle the

chasm that exists culturally and economically between those who have and the poorest of the poor and am so thankful to work alongside ministries that are about hope. Our work here in South Africa is about hope-to women who live with HIV and AIDS, and I have known of some who were close to taking their lives. Now we are , for Christians, in the season of all seasons that bring hope, Easter! I love this time of the year and what it means to me and those without hope.