Cynthia's valuable lesson

Last night was our last night here and Cape Town and spending it at the HIV/AIDS awareness concert topped off my entire experience here at Cape Town. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed the singing and the dancing very much but it was the messages behind them that really struck out to me. One of the most memorable moments that I will take back with me to America is when the comedian for the night got serious for a couple of moments and did a demonstration with money. He held up a R200 and asked the audience who here wants the money and of course many people raised their hands including myself. Then he threw the money on the ground, stepped on it and asked the audience who still wanted it and once again many people raised their hands including myself. He continued to do many things to the R200 including pretending to wipe his butt with and in the end people still wanted the money including myself. When he got the message across that we should value people’s lives like we do money. It does not matter if someone is living with HIV/AIDS or not their life is as valuable as ours. The really stuck out to me because many times when people have an illness like HIV/AIDS, a birth defect, or even people of a different class many people start to devalue the lives of those people and act like they are less than human. Yet, regardless of what happened to the piece of paper we call money in the pass we still value it for what it is. This demonstration taught me a lesson about treating everyone equally because regardless of where we came from, or what disease one might have, in the end we all still human beings and that is what matter.