"I'd had unanswered questions my whole life," says Xoliswa April, of Capetown, South Africa, "even though I was a regular churchgoer. We would be sitting in church, and in one breath the pastor would be telling us that God loved the world, and in the next he'd be telling us that we were all condemned. And I would wonder: 'Now what kind of God is this? One minute He's so loving and the next, He's punishing us.' "
But even though Xoliswa had questions, she didn't know where to turn to find answers. "I ended up just accepting every bad thing that happened to me or to the people in my community—accepting that it was punishment from God," she explains. "And we were often afraid. Afraid of witchcraft, for one thing. But also just fearful about day-to-day problems, like what are we going to eat tomorrow? And, how am I going to support my family?"
Looking back on that period now, Xoliswa sees it not as a time of darkness, but as a dawn. "I feel like all those years, I was being prepared for this moment," she says. "And then, when it came, I was ready."
