Pauline sharing knowledge

Last week the 11^th graders and I went on a field trip with one of the teachers at City Missions. As we took a mini bus taxi to get to a museum in Paarl that explained the history behind the Afrikaans language, the taxi driver, teacher and I somehow got onto the conversation of Apartheid and not being being able to walk around in the neighborhood of Paarl that we were in if this was during the Apartheid. The taxi driver and teacher were Coloured and I was just there as a black person. The taxi driver didn’t know that I was currently taking classes on the history of the Apartheid and the separating of people based on race into different areas throughout the Western Province. I just pretended to be an oblivious American who knew nothing about the Apartheid but trying to relate it to Slavery in America. My teacher told me that she had gone to a predominantly white school growing up and though she was Coloured, because she was the best dancer in her dance class, her talent granted her acceptance among her white dancing mates. She then went on to say that she would be out in public with her White dance instructor and said that  this allowed her to pass as white and that she didn’t need a pass to enter into some areas that were strictly for Whites only. All I could think in my mind was, “Wow, if only they knew I actually had some knowledge about this period”……The conversation went on further but that definitely was the highlight. 

The museum was cool to visit and I’m glad the students learned more about the language they speak daily. I asked one of the students if they understood Dutch when it was being spoken to them and he said that when he heard it being spoken slowly he can pick up on the language.  Also included in the museum was a photograph of Hector Pieterson, the boy that was killed in the Soweto Uprising. As we have learned during our excursion in Johannesburg that students demanded that Afrikaans be taught in their schools and because of this uprise, the massacre occurred. I was sure to let the students know that I had gotten the opportunity to visit Soweto in Johannesburg and learn more about the historical events and even visit the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum that told in depth discussed this tragic yet revolutionary event. This is definitely a day I will not forget because of the conversations as well as the reflections on what I have recently learned. The picture above is one of the monument at the museum we visited and it symbolizes the way in which different languages have influenced the Afrikaans language as well as what the language symbolizes to South Africa