Celebrating an education

Last night we attended a family function at my husbands aunts house to celebrate his cousin’s graduation. Said cousin’s parents had made the almost 12 hour, over 1000km drive to attend his graduation ceremony and to share their pride with the rest of the family. A mfundisi (minister) was present to pray over him, multiple speeches were made, stories of his upbringing told and copious amounts of food was eaten. This got me thinking – how did I celebrate my graduation?

#RhodesMustFall…and then what?

Twitter has been ablaze recently with #RhodesMustFall trending in South Africa. Besides having attending a university named after Cecil John Rhodes, I’m ashamed to admit that my historical knowledge of this illustrious man is sketchy at best. So I did a little reading and to be honest was relatively surprised at what I found out – this name that for me has long been synonymous with only positive has clearly got more to it than that.

So varsity really is more than just fun to some?!

I recently read and column posted in Mail and Gaurdian titled 6 things that white people have that black people don’t. Generally I tend not to read past the first few lines of articles like this because so many of them are just cringe worthy in their bias (I’m thinking back to another such article “naming and shaming” a list of restaurants for being racist, when it was clear that what they had in fact experienced was just plain old poor service) and blatent omission of facts. But this particular piece caught my eye and kept my attention.

When all you can do is Laugh out Loud

Driving back home to Cape Town from our December holiday (and weddings / honeymoon) we experienced what is sure to be the first of many race-related mix ups. My brother had joined us for the trip back and a few hours into the journey we stopped for coffee and breakfast. After he and I got our coffees we waited, alongside my husband, for our toasted sarmies.