America’s Independence Day – never more significant to me than now after visiting 68 other countries. Today I met Cindy, a 40-year-old driver, from the Durban area. She has two daughters, 13 and seven – the 13-year-old lives with Cindy’s parents near Durban helping take care of them and going to school in an all black township. The seven-year-old lives with Cindy who shares an apartment with her aunt in a suburb of Johannesburg.

Cindy says things are better now since Apartheid is over. “I can now drive white people around and before black people could have nothing to do with white people. Plus my seven-year-old, who lives here with me, goes to a school with white and black children. I think she’s getting a better education than my 13 year old going to a black school in the township, but I can’t afford to have both the children here.”

Cindy is a single mother who left her husband after four years of marriage when she found out he was unfaithful. Cindy says she feared he might contract and pass Aids on to her.