A Night with SAWIP

Throughout this summer we have been fortunate to be joined in Washington by 7 South African interns (SAWIP). The first thing that we noticed about the South Africans was a deep passion and intensity when they talked about their home nation. They also served another purpose-that of ensuring we were not the only interns with ridiculous accents running around DC. So it was with pleasure that we attended the SAWIP congressional forum, hosted by Congressman Donald Payne. Despite an important vote in the House that evening the Congressman stayed at our event for its entire duration.

We were further privileged to hear a speech from Congressman John Lewis at this event. He recounted how, at the age of 15, seeing the injustice faced by black Americans, he simply asked his mother ‘why?’. She told him firmly not to get involved but a young Lewis had other ideas and said that he has made it his life’s ambition to ‘get in the way’. He has spent his life fighting against racial discrimination and at just the age of 23 he shared the stage with Martin Luther King, speaking on the day of the reverends ‘I have a dream’ speech. Sadly Lewis is the only one of the ten speakers from that day who is still alive, so to hear him speak was truly humbling and something I will never forget.

His words and the words of the SAWIP interns were inspiring and I’d like to thank the South Africans for letting us share in their evening. The event offered us a different insight into DC from the Irish – American events that we had so far attended. It is on nights like this that you realise that WIP really does offer experiences so far removed from everyday life; it is up to us to take these experiences home with us.