I was not writing because even though I had the experience ongoing daily, when I blog it really has to be something gushing out of the deepest part of me, something that speaks, because it has to speak to me before it speaks to someone else.

In my short biography, I found it necessary to mention that one of my dreams was to write a book about friendship. In one occassion while penning down my thoughts, I made a rather bold and unsettling statement: I wrote “friendship is the central story of my life”. Out of that thought conceived I started shaping my relations from that lifetime statement, and began to have more appreciation for the people I encounter. My walk of faith became real because in it I could claim friendship. And so it happened that when I came to the US I had the opportunity to form relationships with the people I met. I have since enjoyed the conversations I have had with strangers, and to see friends in them…that has been the best part of my stay.

But what has really spoken to me is the real inspiration behind this letter. What do you do when friendship happens to you? I mean SAWIP had this vision to bring people from different walks of life in South Africa to at least form working relationships as leaders who are and will be addressing the issues that face the new democratic South Africa. That is the true gift that SAWIP can give, both to itself and to the world. But then I became friends with Petrus. Sigh.

What happens when all the meetings from the board members and donors, when the phone calls and the paper work, when the travelling and the frustrations, when the conversations at dinners and pubs, when fancy brochures and mission statements, become a friendship so absent for many years in South Africa, but present today? What happens when finally black meets white? Do they amalgam to a grey? Do they become synonyms of each other? Do they become antonyms of each other? Or do they simply become words that when put together form a sentence that defines South Africa? Do they keep themselves, white words printing on white-color paper and black words printing on black-color paper? Or do they realise that not only are they necessary silhouettes of each other, but that they are a beautiful and visible read, because I would hate it were I to write with black words on black paper; newspapers wouldn’t sell, and apartheid could not sell. We are just beautiful together.

SAWIP has become as such, all the ideas and dreams and meetings and administrations, published into a book about friendship in the new South Africa. A book that all who believed in this initiative can read. I am looking forward to a South Africa that has a deeper revelation of true reconciliation, a kind that is engraved not just in a constitution, but in the heart, manifest everyday, where the color of our thoughts will be both black and white, because we need each other, at least for the sake of publishing a book about friendship.

Petrus will be coming to Soweto this December, the home of my umbilical cord, and I will be going to his home as well. Let’s page to the next chapter of our friendship book titled “South Africa-Reconciliation map uncovered through friendship”, and see how this friendship will impact South Africa, forever.