Initial Thoughts

“I’m going to Africa!”  I’ve been saying this for months but the sentence still does not feel real.  Yet, on Sunday after 24 hours of travel I’ll be in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.  After reading Disgrace by J.M. Cotzee in a class on Post Colonial literature I was drawn to South Africa.  A story centered on a professor’s self exile following a sex scandal set in post apartheid South Africa.  He leaves his job in academia in Cape Town to live with his daughter who works as a farmer in the Eastern Cape.  What stood out during my reading of that book were the stark differences that the narrator took care to point out between his life in Cape Town and the life his daughter has in the Eastern Cape.  During our class discussions prior to departure, we have been repeatedly warned to prepare ourselves to witness extreme gaps in wealth disparity, even within the city of Port Elizabeth.  This warning echoes the contrasts that were highlighted throughout the book.  I have always been aware of apartheid, but until recently I was unaware of how deeply it affected and still affects the lives of South Africans. 

With the fall of apartheid and the creation of a new constitution, all South African are theoretically guaranteed the right to have equal educational opportunities in a language that they understand.  But the vast multilingualism also works as a tool to unintentionally continue segregation even after apartheid.  Realistically, it is difficult to offer instruction in multiple languages at one school; it would be hard to create a teaching staff that could accommodate a linguistically diverse population.  Because of this, the language that the students and the school’s teaching staff speak now separates the populations of each school.  Students, especially those who speak tribal languages, are still sent to schools made up of predominantly black South African students.  In another of our class discussions it was mentioned that we would most likely be the first white teacher that these students will ever have.  This, in addition to being shocking to me, slightly worries me.  I’m nervous about the ways the students will react to me and fear that they might regard my presence in their classroom, and life, with some apprehension.