Tsoku Maela

Abstract

I grew up in a low-income township in the Limpopo province of South Africa. We don't have the vocabulary for issues of the mind such as depression or anxiety in our native languages, nor do we have adequate health systems or facilities to care for those afflicted. We do, however, have a word for crazy, and that is what we settle for. We call those who have suffered traumatic experiences such as abject poverty, violence, and abuse, and those living with mental illnesses and personality disorders crazy, while the world we live in is laid to waste by the sane.