It’s an epic journey getting to Durban – twenty-plus air hours, three international airports, substandard aircraft meals – but, touch the ground on these gorgeous shores, feel the warmth, and I’m home.
Yes. It’s arduous travel, hard on the body, but relief comes on touchdown. In conversations. Refreshing accents. Desire to please; serve. Interest in my origins from the welcoming team. Everyone I meet, bar none, appears enlisted in an army of hospitality, each apparently sworn to welcome me and all visitors.
Then, one more.
Waiting for the Mango flight from Cape Town to Durban, a young man, about my younger son’s age, sits next to me.
We chat. I ask about his schooling.
“I’m from LIV Village. Have you heard of it?”
I grab my phone and swipe for a photograph of my son wearing his LIV bracelet.
We talk more. I can barely hold back my tears while he humbly reports his successes at sport, in the sciences. He expresses a hope to attend university in Cape Town.
Zipho tells me, as we board, there’s no required time or age to leave LIV.
“We leave when we are ready.”
Thanks, Zipho, in our shared 45 minutes you made my day and I encountered first-hand the powerful love you found at LIV.
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