The second time I was exposed to something related to South Africa was senior year of high school. At the time, I was going through the stereotypical end-of-the-world teenage angst. I was never going to get into a good college. I was failing all my classes. That one girl was never going to like me. I hated the way I looked. I felt like such a disappointment to my parents. You know, that kind of stuff.

To cope, I did what all overachieving, spoiled, and coddled 18-year-olds would’ve done. I went to the school’s choir room, sat behind the piano, and cried about it. It was 4:30pm. The school was so quiet, you would’ve thought the whole place was abandoned.

But whether by coincidence or serendipity, someone walked in on my tear-drenched moment—a girl I had known since the 3rd grade. Not a word spoken. She didn’t even look surprised. She simply sat down and gave me a hug. The candour she showed would’ve swept me off my feet had I been standing. I barely had time to react or give into my macho urges to control my crying before I heard sniffling sounds next to me. The f**k she crying for?

“Because you’re crying.”

Weirdly empathetic, but welcomed catharsis for my fragile teenage heart.

A month later, I asked her to watch a movie with me. She probably thought it was a date, but I just wanted to let her know how grateful I was. It’s not everyday somebody just rocks up, sees that you’re sad, and decides not just to listen to you, but also cry with you. To further suck out any possibility romance in the air, I picked the movie Invictus by Clint Eastwood, about the inspiring story of South Africa’s victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

Mind you, this was also before the age of smartphone Wikipedia and instant Googling. Morgan Freeman is playing Nelson Mandela, how fitting. Matt Damon? His muscles look really big. I wonder what his workout routine was. His accent sounds funny. The woman who plays his girlfriend looks pretty. What’s apartheid? The music kicks ass! Rugby looks brutal with way too much testosterone. What the hell is apartheid?? 27 years in prison? Yeah right. Mandela chose forgiveness? I’d put white people in their place. Armed revolution!

I understood nothing.

But I did realise how wrong I was to believe South Africa was a country where black topped white. That glaring difference played itself out over and over. White kids in uniform played rugby on freshly mowed grass while their black counterparts in rags kicked an old soccer ball on a dirt field. White suburbs had it all: trimmed hedges, large houses, swimming pools. Blacks were relegated to places called “townships” that were cramped and full of tin foil shacks. 

The inequality messed with my head more so than the plot entertained me. For the next week, I Googled and read nonstop about South Africa: Robben Island, Soweto, Pollsmoor, Durban, Johannesburg, places the filmed was set in became real. At the same time, I found out one of the colleges I applied for, Northwestern University, offered a journalism residency program in South Africa. Exciting! The brochure said it was highly selective. Maybe not then.

It wasn’t until years later, during and after my time in Johannesburg, that I would return to watch Invictus repeatedly and pick out all the nuances. To this day, I’ve probably watched Invictus more than 10 times and can definitely reenact it front to back.

Oh, and the girl who watched the movie with me? I asked her to get dinner afterwards and got turned down.

Maybe I did have some feelings.