Posted Life is how you make it to EDHD 3100 - South Africa: Tracing the Footsteps of Social Change 2011/12
I know, "life is how you make it" seems cliche, but it is true to me. To explain this further, a girl in my class made a statement that "life is 5%, and 95% of how you react to it." A good example of this relates not to life, but to death. In a documentary we watched in class last week, a black lady said, "When people have died, if you mourn them too long it demoralizes your spirit. When we buried them we didn't cry, but we would sing." Simply stated, if a person dies you can cry, or...
Posted A Daycare in Delft to EDHD 3100 - South Africa: Tracing the Footsteps of Social Change 2011/12
A Daycare in DelftToday was a hard day for me in the township of Delft. We went to a family owned daycare as a group, so there was 25 Americans and about 17 children. If we would not have been there today, the one caregiver would have been in charge of feeding, changing, and entertaining all of the children by herself. At first, I was super pumped to see kids, paint faces, throw around the rugby ball, etc, but after the first hour I had a sad realization. Most of the kids had not bathed in awhile, the floor had not...
Posted What have we done? to EDHD 3100 - South Africa: Tracing the Footsteps of Social Change 2011/12
This is a question the white minority of South Africa had to ask themselves over and over again during the two years of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission(TRC): What have we done? I don't think this is an easy question to answer, or even to ask. After watching a documentary in class today called "Facing the Truth", compiled by Bill Moyers, I started to examine this question. As we have been learning about Apartheid, the fact of the matter is that the white minority legally controlled the black majority in South Africa from 1948 until 1994. The documentary showed real clips...
Posted The Time of My Life (not quite Dirty Dancing style) to EDHD 3100 - South Africa: Tracing the Footsteps of Social Change 2011/12
The chorus from "The Time of My Life" in Dirty Dancing is this: "Now I've had the time of my life, no I've never felt this way before, Yes I swear it's the truth, and I owe it all to you." When I was thinking about this blog post, I realized time has been on my mind the last five days in Suid Afrika (South Africa, in the daughter language of Dutch, Afrikaans). We had the incredible opportunity of spending three days in the mountains at the Groot Winterhoek Wilderness area retreat when we first arrived in the country. I literally...
Posted I'm a Dreamer, but I'm Not the Only One to EDHD 3100 - South Africa: Tracing the Footsteps of Social Change 2011/12
I titled this blog with a line from the song, Imagine, by John Lennon. Although I was not alive when the song was released in 1971, I absolutely love it now. Imagine there's no heavenIt's easy if you tryNo hell below usAbove us only skyImagine all the people living for todayImagine there's no countriesIt isn't hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion tooImagine all the people living life in peaceYou, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only oneI hope some day you'll join usAnd the world will be as oneImagine no possessionsI wonder if you...
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