I’m a huge U2 fan, which is why I didn’t mind standing in a Computicket line for 2 hours to get tickets for the U2 show in Cape Town next year. When I was younger, I often used to think that Bono should concentrate more on being an artist and less on saving the world. I listened to Sunday Bloody Sunday so many times that you could shake me awake at 2am, intone “This is not a rebel song” (the line Bono uses to introduce the song at live concerts) and I would launch into…

Yes

I can’t believe the news today

Oh, I can’t close my eyes and make it go away

How long, how long must we sing this song?

How long? How long?

Although the song is about violence in Irish history, it is so very applicable to povery in South Africa. And yes, I’ve grown up and now wish that more people thought like Bono and want to save the world. How long must we plead for help with the poverty situation? It is certainly not going to go away by itself – and apathy only makes the situation worse.

Why is it that we watch television, read newspapers and magazines, listen to the radio – where we are constantly exposed to the message of misery, but so few of us feel moved to take action to make a difference? Is it because the message is so overwhelming that we feel no action can stem the tsunami of suffering?

Every little action can make a difference. You don’t have to rush out and buy twenty loaves of bread for your local crowd of hungry children. You certainly don’t have to spend four hours cooking a pot of soup to go and feed waiting TB patients to ease the working of their medication. Not everyone can train as a first-aider or a care-giver or even a missionary. You can, however, visit one lonely elderly person for half an hour every month, share some titbits from a magazine, and maybe some fruit and flowers. You can ask after the health and well-being of your housekeepers child/ren, and perhaps give a little gift with love this Christmas. You can make some sandwiches for the legless beggar who sits in the sun all day on the corner, crying out for help. Who knows, you may even find some time to volunteer at an existing organisation, where another pair of hands will certainly make all the difference in the world to a few overworked volunteers.

If every one of us do one little thing maybe once a week, or even once a month, this will add up to thousands of loving deeds, and this WILL make a difference.