Enduring gratitude

Woken at 3am by a phone call from the friend I shall call Rakel in the informal settlement, telling me that her roof had blown off. I suppose she had to tell someone! Rakel told me that many homes (those flimsy shelters of corrugated iron and cardboard) had been  destroyed in the gales. I got up and realised that the wind blowing  at gale force through the valley was a desert wind, hot and dusty, tearing through the mountain passes all the way  from the Karoo. As we waited for daylight, I doubled up my minestrone with extra vegetables and lentils, bits of pasta etc, and made a tomato and barley soup in a seven-litre pot. Soup is always welcome in a crisis — also packed cans of pilchards, packets of sugar, jerry cans of paraffin, old blankets. This happens every winter, the floods and high winds. In summer there are veld fires and I don’t know which disaster is more terrifying.

One of the most useful definitions of codependency is ‘doing for others what they are not willing to do for themselves’ and foreign visitors to rural South Africa sometimes wonder why we are so interdependent out here. It is unheard of in areas like this to rely on the government because — well, there is no likelihood of help from that quater. There are no employment opportunities for most people and no way of reaching the cities or hospitals or universities. No transport, no electricity, erratic water supplies, limited refuse collection. Because people are largely illiterate, they have no way of contacting  municipal or civic authorities. We do what we can to help one another, especially those of us with more education and resources. There is no feeling of helplessness or passivity: people out here  may be poor but they are infinitely resourceful, pragmatic and generous. But destitution and starvation are just a hand’s-breadth away.

To be of use and able to contribute where I am genuinely needed has been  one of the key factors in my recovery, and one reason I love to read about service. The quagmire of rescuing and  saving others and believing we could get others sober was soon revealed to be as futile as those dear and caring friends who set out to ‘help’ me and save me from myself. We can’t do for others what they are not willing to do for themselves.  But by helping to keep meetings going, staying in touch with other sober alcoholics and supporting recovery online, I like to believe that I am sharing in  our primary purpose, to hold out my hand to the still suffering alcoholic. A friend of mine in a fairly remote part of the UK (not what I would call remote at all compared to  the distances and impassable roads of Africa) remarked cheerfully in an email to me yesterday that in the last five years he has only known one person get sober. Dozens come into his meeting each month and then fall away. It isn’t always like that, but alcoholism is devastating and a killer, more so than most active alcoholics realise.  Binge drinking among teens is on the increase in Britain — like America, where alcohol remains the most abused substance among school-goers. Despite a vast and expanding recovery industry, alcoholism is as prevalent and lethal as ever.

To be sober. To be of use. To be journeying through life together with sober alcoholics I am privileged to call my friends. I am so grateful for this one precious sober day and for the gift of desperation that brought me into Alcoholics Anonymous.