MOTHER'S DAY...SOUTH AFRICAN STYLE!
Every international holiday celebrated here has been special. Mother's Day was no different! The plan was to celebrate the grand day with a teacher-colleague's family (her name is Lynelle Vetter; she teaches English at Norkem Park H.S.).
First, we were invited by one of my students (they call them "learners" here), to attend a Protestant church service on Mom's Day. The church was easy to locate; it's situated across the street from my school. The service was to begin at 9am...we figured it would be for about two hours and it was almost exactly that long. Lynelle was to drive to the church at 11:30am, then we'd follow her in our Corolla to their home.
The church is titled, "Living Stones." It reminded me of some Pentecostal services I'm familiar with from back in the States. We were there because one of my students, an 8th-grader by the name of Thapelo Paul Tedile, invited us. He was proud to see us there that morning; I know it meant a lot for us to be there with him. He was alone. No mom on Mother's Day at the service.
Anyway, Lynelle was about 20 minutes late...we followed her and a brother to their family home. The family home was the residence of her father and mother: Derek and Lucelle Augustus. I was impressed with both of them from the moment I met them.
Derek has white hair. It seems to glimmer against his handsome brown skin. In South Africa Derek is considered "colored." His wife is also a "colored" person. As Derek explained it to me, it all relates to the old apartheid days. That's when there were four distinct racial groups in the uptight, racially-correct, apartheid government and world of South Africa.
The Masters of Racism framed themselves in at the top of the heap...the white group. Next came the "colored" and Asians. At the bottom of the social/racial groupings were the indigenous blacks. It was all very complicated, of course. One's race could be decided simply by taking a pencil and running it through one's hair. If the pencil stayed there, then that meant you were black. If it happened to clearly fall out, then you had to be "white." Hell, I wonder what happened if someone was having a bad hair day that particular day...your race could be changed right then and there!
Anyway, the day was spent with the Augustus clan; we had a splendid time! I learned that Derek, who is almost my age, has been teaching primary-age learners in South Africa for 38 years. I also learned that we have a lot in common. He's from the "old school" of teaching...there's no hesitation on his part to "hide" a so-called learner if said learner resists his lesson on any given day. In other words, Mr. Augustus has a reputation as a teacher will "take no mess" from kids.
Derek called it "hiding" a student. At first I thought he was referring to "hide and seek" games. No way. He meant whopping the hide off of a kid. And he relished talking about how his stern methods brought results. Upon inquiring further, I realized that some of his former learners are now in my 8th-grade classes.
On the Monday following the Sunday Mother's Day fun, I inquired about who was a former student of Mr. Augustus from my classes. The students glowed with wonderful comments about their former teacher...it was evident they loved him and also learned from him. You could see and feel the respect. I realized that the ones who had Derek as their teacher were the ones who were the best behaved in my classroom. Strange. Is there a lesson to be learned here?
There will be more, much more on the life and times of Mr. Derek Augustus in another posting. I want to reveal more about the wierd world of racial classification here. I told Derek that in American society he would be considered "black." Here he is "colored." Or should I say "Cape-Malay Colored?" This is where things get fairly complicated...thanks to the masters of deceit and racial smoke-screening, the architects of the apartheid laws that began with the white empire created by strict laws in 1948.
Baby Derek Augustus was born and raised near Durbin, South Africa. His golden brown skin branded him as a "colored" person, thanks to the white manipulators of apartheid. His world was not a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, rich diverse planet. His was the world of separation, division, and divisiveness.
One would think that such a world would turn one bitter. Wrong. Derek is a man who can tell many tales about those early apartheid days, but there is no rancor in his voice. He is a happy, well-adjusted man. And why not? Seeing his lovely home, filled to capacity with an extended family on Mother's Day meant the world to my wife, Svetlana, and our 6-year-old, Ivan J.J.
The single-floor, comfortable dwelling revealed a multi-faceted, diverse family to us that day. The only color evident was the joyful color of laughter, sprinkled with a rainbow of colorful conversations as we sat down to hear a family prayer of thanks before consuming a sumptuous Mother's Day feast.
First, we were invited by one of my students (they call them "learners" here), to attend a Protestant church service on Mom's Day. The church was easy to locate; it's situated across the street from my school. The service was to begin at 9am...we figured it would be for about two hours and it was almost exactly that long. Lynelle was to drive to the church at 11:30am, then we'd follow her in our Corolla to their home.
The church is titled, "Living Stones." It reminded me of some Pentecostal services I'm familiar with from back in the States. We were there because one of my students, an 8th-grader by the name of Thapelo Paul Tedile, invited us. He was proud to see us there that morning; I know it meant a lot for us to be there with him. He was alone. No mom on Mother's Day at the service.
Anyway, Lynelle was about 20 minutes late...we followed her and a brother to their family home. The family home was the residence of her father and mother: Derek and Lucelle Augustus. I was impressed with both of them from the moment I met them.
Derek has white hair. It seems to glimmer against his handsome brown skin. In South Africa Derek is considered "colored." His wife is also a "colored" person. As Derek explained it to me, it all relates to the old apartheid days. That's when there were four distinct racial groups in the uptight, racially-correct, apartheid government and world of South Africa.
The Masters of Racism framed themselves in at the top of the heap...the white group. Next came the "colored" and Asians. At the bottom of the social/racial groupings were the indigenous blacks. It was all very complicated, of course. One's race could be decided simply by taking a pencil and running it through one's hair. If the pencil stayed there, then that meant you were black. If it happened to clearly fall out, then you had to be "white." Hell, I wonder what happened if someone was having a bad hair day that particular day...your race could be changed right then and there!
Anyway, the day was spent with the Augustus clan; we had a splendid time! I learned that Derek, who is almost my age, has been teaching primary-age learners in South Africa for 38 years. I also learned that we have a lot in common. He's from the "old school" of teaching...there's no hesitation on his part to "hide" a so-called learner if said learner resists his lesson on any given day. In other words, Mr. Augustus has a reputation as a teacher will "take no mess" from kids.
Derek called it "hiding" a student. At first I thought he was referring to "hide and seek" games. No way. He meant whopping the hide off of a kid. And he relished talking about how his stern methods brought results. Upon inquiring further, I realized that some of his former learners are now in my 8th-grade classes.
On the Monday following the Sunday Mother's Day fun, I inquired about who was a former student of Mr. Augustus from my classes. The students glowed with wonderful comments about their former teacher...it was evident they loved him and also learned from him. You could see and feel the respect. I realized that the ones who had Derek as their teacher were the ones who were the best behaved in my classroom. Strange. Is there a lesson to be learned here?
There will be more, much more on the life and times of Mr. Derek Augustus in another posting. I want to reveal more about the wierd world of racial classification here. I told Derek that in American society he would be considered "black." Here he is "colored." Or should I say "Cape-Malay Colored?" This is where things get fairly complicated...thanks to the masters of deceit and racial smoke-screening, the architects of the apartheid laws that began with the white empire created by strict laws in 1948.
Baby Derek Augustus was born and raised near Durbin, South Africa. His golden brown skin branded him as a "colored" person, thanks to the white manipulators of apartheid. His world was not a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, rich diverse planet. His was the world of separation, division, and divisiveness.
One would think that such a world would turn one bitter. Wrong. Derek is a man who can tell many tales about those early apartheid days, but there is no rancor in his voice. He is a happy, well-adjusted man. And why not? Seeing his lovely home, filled to capacity with an extended family on Mother's Day meant the world to my wife, Svetlana, and our 6-year-old, Ivan J.J.
The single-floor, comfortable dwelling revealed a multi-faceted, diverse family to us that day. The only color evident was the joyful color of laughter, sprinkled with a rainbow of colorful conversations as we sat down to hear a family prayer of thanks before consuming a sumptuous Mother's Day feast.
posted by JOBURG JOURNAL at 2:54 AM
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