About 15 years ago

About fifteen years ago, White Bear Lake, MN: I am just finishing eighth grade. Because I am switching school districts for high school, I won't be making the big transition with my classmates, the kids I have known since kindergarten, the major characters in the unfolding drama of my life up till that point. We put our arms around each others' shoulders and sing "Lean on Me" at graduation, we pinky-swear to be best friends forever, and drift quickly out of each others' lives. The eighth-grade Jess hasn't seen much of the world, hasn't, in fact, seen much outside of a 100-mile radius of her hometown. But someday, she will travel.

About fifteen years ago, Berlin, Germany: Hundreds of thousands of people gather together at the Nikolas Church in Leipzig for the "Monday prayers", peaceful demonstrations against oppressive communist rule.They overflow the church, fill the town square, week after week. On November 9, 1989, due to this and other pressures, the Berlin Wall is opened. Citizens of the East are now permitted to visit the West. A mass exodus occurs as many East German citizens, blocked for over 25 years from visiting relatives or glorying in the free-market economy of the West, leave their homes and belongings behind in their mad rush to start anew in the promised land. Those who stay behind faced a massive rebuilding project: replacing their facades, crumbled and darkened by years of brown-coal smoke; removing the contamination from the lakes and streams, for environmentalism hasn't been a high concern of the communist party; rebuilding a government now based on the voices of voters; forgiving those who had been informers, party secretaries, minions.

Church leaders - formerly fugitives and counter-cultural anti-heroes - become political leaders, because they are the only ones whose organizational structures survive the transition. Unemployment rages as jobs, sometimes entire categories of jobs, fall victim to the restructuring of Reunification. One people has become two, with differing histories, cultures, traditions, and they gaze warily into each other's eyes across the fallen Wall.

About fifteen years ago, March 21, 1990, Namibia: Sam Nujoma is sworn in as the first president of the Republic of Namibia. A celebration rages across the country as the independence from South Africa is finally realized. Citizens - black, white, colored - join forces to create one of the most liberal constitutions in the world. Afrikaans is eschewed in favor of English as the national language. Massive repatriation occurs, reuniting families... and spreading HIV in an ever-mounting epidemic. Apartheid is officially a phenomenon of the past... and yet, stubbornly, structural and emotional vestiges remain.

It's never black and white, is it? It wasn't fifteen years ago, and it still isn't.