Chocolate and Vanilla
By Wendy Alexander
Copyright 2011 Wendy Alexander
Smashwords Edition
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Table of Contents
What People are Saying about Chocolate and Vanilla
Chapter One - My Journey Through Segregation
Chapter Two - Cross-Cultural Meetings
Chapter Three – A Journey Through the Sun and Rain
Chapter Four - Revelations of Everyday Life
Chapter Five - Teachings for the Next Generation
Chapter Six – Wisdom from the Everyday Journey
Section 2 - The Principles for Healing
Appendix 1 – Interview Questions
What People Are Saying about Chocolate and Vanilla
Wendy's story, beautifully rendered, reveals the very real pain she experienced as a child growing up within a culture too blinded by racial hatred to see the advantages in multiculturalism. The book is as much a stark reminder of the role we have to play in promoting diversity as much as it is a book of hope for those who have experienced injustice. Wendy's book offers the reader a goal of racial tolerance. I offer a further step on that path; I offer the ultimate goal of human acceptance. – Gary Singer, Deputy Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Australia.
This is a healing book for anyone who has been through difficult separations or relationship agonies. The pages overflow with honest dialogue of cross-cultural love relationships, where cultural contrasts add curry to the yin/yang frustrations already prevalent in so many relationships. It made me laugh out loud as I relate to the frustrations experienced by the couples. Chocolate and Vanilla is a personal, yet universal, journey of healing through time, new relationships, cultural understanding, personal discovery and serendipity. – Mansze Lew, single parent and divorcee of Chinese-Australian marriage, Melbourne, Australia.
Wendy and her book are an example to all of us of what truth and sharing can achieve. Her story and the stories of the other subjects in her book make you feel like they have a community in its readers. It made me realize that we all suffer the same worries, sadness and are confronted by the same questions. Wendy doesn't claim to answer them but she poses some amazingly clear solutions and offers compassion and companionship for those that travel with her on this journey of understanding and acceptance. I loved reading this book as it enabled me to learn so much about a friend and discover so much about strangers who I feel I could now call friends. – Georgia Van C, actress and comedienne, Los Angeles, USA.
This book needed to be written, and it needed to be published. The author has skilfully melded experiences from her own childhood under apartheid into an exploration of cultural differences in Australia, and has drawn out from these experiences lessons on cultural diversity, mutual respect and tolerance of difference. – Helen O’Donnell, mother, researcher, educator – Ireland.
Wendy's approach is as refreshing as it is courageous. In order to make sense of her world she explores the questions most people don't ask and has come up with a cathartic and healing journey for people living in a multicultural world. We may all be speaking English but what are some of the meanings behind the words we utter? It’s an enlightening read and touched many chords for me as well. – Sheryl Furman, IT professional and wife– Melbourne, Australia.
This is a very good book and I really enjoyed reading it. I rarely read a book from cover to cover. Either I don’t have time or lose interest in reading, but this book kept me interested to the end! It is great to read about the author’s life and to know how she felt about growing up in a segregated culture. I have been surprised so many times while reading this book and I have learned a lot on how cultural differences can affect relationships in a deep way if you don’t respect and accept the differences in each other’s culture. I found this book so enlightening. – Donna Morris, Administrator, wife and mother, London, UK.
This story of the author’s journey through and beyond the hatred of apartheid is a clear illustration of the indomitability of the human spirit. Wendy's experiences, far from crushing her spirit, have served to give her a depth and strength of character which radiates out from every page. Whilst the book’s central theme is cross-cultural relationships, there are so many lessons within about love, communication and emotional honesty which speak to every human being, regardless of race or background. It is an invitation to love deeply, communicate honestly and live fully with ourselves and others. – Adam O’Donnell, IT Professional, Personal and Development Coach and father – Melbourne, Australia.
Wendy's book is a testimony to the power of emotion and action that humans hold within their hands. Two conflicting yet powerful emotions are portrayed – the power of hatred that causes so much destruction, loss and sorrow AND the power of love that is capable of conquering all. Here is a book that clearly shows that hate does not serve us and instead if we continue to find a way to co-exist, society could reach its full potential. Through the stories of Chocolate and Vanilla we are given glimpses of the journeys of people who have learned to embrace one another and their differences. Learning to take this acceptance and embracement to a greater level is the next journey we must ALL learn to walk. – Amalia Matzaridis, participant in book research, business owner, masseur – Melbourne, Australia.
Chocolate and Vanilla offered me great insight into the socio-political landscape in South Africa during the apartheid years from the author's perspective. It highlighted and raised my awareness of the injustices of racial prejudice and intolerance in South Africa and globally. I found this book to be an invaluable read. – Andrew Geldenhuys – Systems Administrator, Melbourne, Australia.
I found Chocolate and Vanilla a great book which promotes unity, empowerment and self-responsibility. My favourite part is how she explains what she has learned at the end of each chapter. What a wonderful tool and empowering phenomena this could be for everyone to take personal responsibility for their life. This is just one of many blessings and teachings that have her be an amazing role model. Read this book and let it be the pathway to inspire you! Wonderfully lived Wendy! – Marie McNeal, spiritual and personal development coach – Los Angeles, USA.
Prologue
Chocolate – The Colour of My Skin – (Wendy Alexander)
Chocolate was the colour of my skin
As I twirled in my innocent childhood spin
For I still knew that carefree pleasure
A young child captures like a hidden treasure
Time goes by and chocolate loses its flavour
For the wounds of bigotry are nothing to savour
And I long for the days when I did not know
That hurtful names like a weed would grow
Strangling my pride as it ridiculed my mind
At times leaving nothing but hatred to find
Now black is the colour of my skin
And I wonder when that became a sin
My childhood innocence has been marred
As the years of slurs my soul has scarred
And as I shrink from the colour of black
Longing for the days when I can go back
When chocolate was the colour of my skin
My twirl was fresh, my mind not in a spin.
I was seven years old when I first discovered that my skin was black and what that meant growing up in a place like South Africa in the 1970s. I thought it was chocolate. To my young mind that meant everything sweet, yummy and tasty. I didn’t fully understand the implications of being born a person of colour in South Africa at that age. The day I learned that my skin was black remains etched in my mind for many reasons. It was the day I first experienced racial bigotry. That day I lost my childhood belief that I belonged to the world and it belonged to me. The experience I went through made me feel that I was different. It wasn’t an endearing different; it was a different that felt uncomfortable. Though I didn’t know why at that time, it was a different I wanted to reject. The confusion I felt inside created a need to understand why one person would treat another in such an unkind way.
As time went by and many more experiences of bigotry followed, my confusion turned to hurt, anger and fear. My need to understand that kind of human behaviour grew. I did little to appease that need. It remained something unanswered in the back of my mind. Without knowing it consciously, my negative experiences influenced me in two ways. In one way it was the underlying factor for many of my limiting decisions that invariably led to suffering on an emotional, physical or spiritual level. In another, it became the driving force for me wanting to be part of anything that tried to understand, cultivate and advocate racial and cultural harmony.
A friend asked me one day what I would do if I wasn’t doing my day job. He wanted to know what I’d do if time or money wasn’t an issue. Without thinking or blinking I replied that I’d be involved in promoting cultural and racial harmony through speaking and through my writing. I don’t know if I displayed an over-zealous passion for the subject. He wouldn’t leave it alone until I had given him a plan of action on how I would write about that subject. I decided to explore the areas where racial and cultural harmony was working through the every day lives of people like me. I quickly realized that there were plenty of candidates within my community that I could talk to. I wanted to speak to people who were living through or had lived through a relationship that had the specific added dimension of cultural or racial differences. By the end of that day we’d drawn up a draft of interview questions and I’d mustered up the enthusiasm to begin this journey.
This book was born out of a need to understand the underlying thoughts and feelings that drive human behaviour. It was fuelled by the passion for promoting a peaceful world of harmony for all people. It was nurtured by a special friend who took the time to ask a significant question, listened to the answer with his heart and decided to accompany me on this journey. This journey has been eye-opening, heart-warming, gut-wrenching, sad, joyful, frightening and surprising. Above all, it’s started a journey of healing for me.
Section 1
Chapter One - My Journey Through Segregation
The carefree feeling of early childhood isn’t something we even notice, until it’s taken from us. I played with carefree abandon in the backyard of my home and the yards of our neighbours. I recklessly climbed the loquat tree and ate its golden, ripe fruit until my belly hurt. I jumped the hop-scotch blocks of my elementary school playground with the same eagerness as everyone else. I screeched with delight as my siblings and I raced the waves on our summer jaunts to the beach. Like most children in my first years of life, I was loved, well-fed, comforted when sick or hurt and probably a source of both joy and frustration to my parents. I lived with all the innocence of infancy and early childhood.
It was an ordinary, hot day at the beach when I was introduced to the reality of life as a child of colour in South Africa. My siblings and I were building sandcastles on the shore, while our parents rested in the shade of a tree. Our buckets and spades were so busy forming the shapes of sandcastles along the shoreline that we didn’t pay much attention to the sweltering heat. All I remember thinking was how much fun I was having. One of my best moments of fun, was to turn into one of the defining moments of my life.
I looked up momentarily after pouring a bucket of sand onto my brother’s sandcastle. My view was obstructed by black shoes and navy trousers. With the awareness of a child, I sensed that something wasn’t right. The tones of the angry voices soon confirmed what I’d sensed. “Wat doen julle hier?” (What are you doing here?), the harsh voice yelled in Afrikaans. It was the first time I saw strain and anxiety on my father’s face. I could see his jaw clench, but he didn’t move. His body was rigid and the tension in my dad scared me. I felt a lump form in my throat and I remember wanting to hold a grown-up’s hand. Most children would probably have cried at that kind of fear, but somehow in that moment it felt dangerous to cry. I don’t know how I knew that at age seven, but I knew not to cry. I knew not to make a sound. I wanted that comfort and reassurance that I always felt when my hand was being held by a grown-up’s and that was the most dominant thought at the time – “I want my mummy’s hand”. Only my mum was quite a few feet away from me. The tension in the air told me to be still. I didn’t move.
I saw the police officers point to a sign, and then my parents and my friends’ parents hurriedly gathered up the picnic blankets and our belongings and summoned us to go. The tension in the air was so thick, that even though none of us wanted to leave, we instinctively knew not to question our parents. It was probably one of the only times we all sprang to immediate obedience when told to “come”. As our cars drove off the beach parking lot, I turned back and looked at the sign which said “NET BLANKES” on one side and its English translation of “WHITES ONLY” on the other side. I don’t think too many kids expect their first reading of public signs to say “Whites Only”. That was the moment I looked at my skin and realized it wasn’t just chocolate. Something felt wrong with it. I haven’t felt that complete carefree feeling of childhood innocence since that day.
I was classified a child of colour on my birth certificate. It officially stated “Cape Coloured” and in South Africa in the era of apartheid that meant only slightly better than those classified “Black”. Black was often considered and treated less than most white people’s pets.
I think most females of colour, born in South Africa in the era of apartheid can well relate to being:
“born poor and powerless in a land where power is money and money is adored; born black in a land where might is white and white is adored; born female in a land where decisions are masculine and masculine controls.”
Even the stars look lonesome, Maya Angelou, 1994
I started to understand from very young that the road ahead was going to be far from smooth. I started wondering and asking in my mind – what is it that makes another human being treat someone that way? I realize now that I missed a lot of my childhood. I became a little adult in a girl’s body long before my time. Sometimes I still mourn that loss. I wonder what it would’ve been like to feel and act like a child for just a bit longer than I did. I look at my young daughter at play sometimes. I listen to her made-up tales of mermaids and fairies and fantastical creatures. I wonder what it would’ve felt like to experience that as a child.
I think the greatest tragedy of realizing something doesn’t feel right is realizing it and doing nothing to change it. Accepting it like it’s a natural part of every day life and forcing yourself to still those voices that scream within your soul “this doesn’t feel right”. For a long time black people in South Africa tolerated the cancerous wounds of oppression and violence in every part of our lives. It wasn’t merely the actions of our oppressors that saw us suffer for so long under the oppressive regime of apartheid. It was our apathy and acceptance of a vile and sick situation. Our collective consciousness of silent agreement by our failure to question and to act saw us trapped in feelings of inferiority and endless suffering.
After a while I noticed that we adopted the same measurements of worthiness that seemed most common to white people. It wasn’t uncommon for people who were lighter shades of colour to look down upon their charcoal-skinned brothers and sisters. It wasn’t uncommon for blacks as a whole to measure their successes by the standards more common to white people. The teachings of ancient, African tribalism that advocated community and brotherhood were replaced by the aspirations to “make it” by the white man’s standards of imperialism and materialism, often by any means necessary. It was only within the safe confines of our own homes or segregated neighbourhoods that we nurtured and cared for each other as a community. The moment we stepped out of that to integrate or work in the white man’s homes, businesses or neighbourhoods, we would often turn our backs on each other to survive. That kind of living eats away slowly at the soul and before long the clouds of inferiority poison the last pieces of self-esteem.
Our parents and community tried to encourage self- belief by constantly reminding us that we “are as good as anyone”. Years later when reading Dr King’s autobiography, where he specifically stated that the mere use of the phrase “you are as good as anyone” speaks of the injustice that makes its use necessary, I realized why that phrase rarely comforted me in my youth. Besides, as a kid I just thought the adults lied to us by saying that to us, because the laws of the land clearly stated that we weren’t as good as anyone.
As the chains of apartheid South Africa tightened around my every day life, I began to hunger for my freedom. It was a hunger that remained insatiable for many more years to come. At first I longed for the simple freedoms of being able to go into any cinema, sit in any train carriage or go to any school. I even started dreaming of going to another place – anywhere, but South Africa. America became the desired destination after I heard the phrase “the land of the free and home of the brave” when I first heard the American national anthem on a radio show. As time went by I noticed that my mind was slowly being taken hostage by the ominous clouds of inferiority. These clouds would hang around my life for many years. Like the young Nelson Mandela, I started to realize that –
“it was not just my freedom that was curtailed, but the freedom of everyone who looked like I did.”
Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, 1994
As the ramifications of apartheid wove itself into every fibre of our lives, I noticed the anger and hatred building within me. The influence of religious doctrine and practices in the form of nuns and teachers at my Catholic school fell on deaf and indignant ears. I attended Sunday service and practiced Catholicism in almost robotic fashion, mostly out of respect for my parents. I couldn’t see God in any of the racial taunts, police shootings, imprisonment of protestors or worse still – useless loss of young lives as innocent children were caught in the cross-fire of martial law officers and freedom fighters. I didn’t witness many Catholic leaders take any active steps towards improving the plight of the blacks in South Africa. Like Dr King in the heart of the Civil Rights movement in America’s south, I noticed that –
“the church so often in our struggle had been a taillight, rather than a headlight. The church had so often been an echo, rather than a voice.”
Clayborne, The autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., 1998
My frustration at the Church was displayed in my rebelliousness towards its teachings and my outright anger at God. It’s very hard to feel good about yourself when you’re fighting with God in your heart all the time and you’re experiencing a constant replay of how inferior you are. I looked at the bigotry and hatred around me and started to think the concept of divinity was total bullshit.
One day in my teenage years I was roughly shoved off the train by an uncompromising white conductor on my way to school because I’d dared to jump into the “Whites Only” carriage. It really was more desperation than dare. My connecting bus had been late to the train station and I had to make that particular train or I would be late for school. I don’t know what I feared more – the nuns at school who would no doubt chastise me for being late or being caught in the ‘wrong’ carriage. I took a chance on the carriage. I was caught within moments of boarding. Tears of humiliation trickled down my face as many pairs of eyes stared at me as the conductor roughly marched me through the carriage and forced me off the train at the next stop. I remember scanning the crowd hoping to find just one friendly or sympathetic face. There were none. As I walked to the part of the station reserved for “Coloureds” and waited for the next train, thoughts of leaving South Africa dominated my mind. I wanted to leave that hatred behind. I knew that I was going to be even later for school than I’d first feared. The anger and hurt within me swept away the fear I had of facing the nuns. I was cross-questioned and punished as expected by the school principal and my teacher. The overwhelming anger and pain I felt at the time only saw me stare defiantly back without offering any kind of explanation for being late. I forced back the hot tears stinging the back of my eyes and pushed my head up angrily as I was given the detention slip and called “rebellious” and “troublesome”.
At the age of sixteen, I mentally checked out of the life around me. Most of my peers and teachers believed that I entered my journey of depression because of a particular incident with a girl at school who I was having trouble with. I know now that it was the culmination of years of suppression of the hatred, anger and pain I saw around me. Some souls can’t bear to witness that without it eating away at the core. Eventually something occurs to shake the mind, body or spirit, or all three. Finally the years of suppression had caught up with me. I was in my second last year of high school and one day I just collapsed at school. I remember feeling sad all the time prior to that, so much so that I wasn’t eating properly. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was making me sad. I only remember feeling deeply sad inside – all the time. Everything seemed dark around me. I remember walking down the school corridor to my English class and my legs just gave way under me. I was shaking and couldn’t make sense of anything around me. I vaguely remember mum and dad taking me home. After that – it was like I lived in a black cloud. I didn’t return to school for some time. I don’t remember what I did. All I remember was sitting in my bedroom looking out of the window a lot. My memory of that time is not clear. The pictures are clouded, fuzzy snippets of mum bringing me food and muffled sounds of “are you alright?” or “how are you feeling today?” and not much more than that. It felt like I was in a dark abyss and there was no feeling – no joy, no happiness, no love, no hate, no anger, no hurt – just nothing. There were no colours anymore. That’s one of the things that stand out the most for me – the absence of colour. I would look out of the window and see the shapes of things – plants, trees, the garden, but no colours. They all seemed to just merge together in one big colourless lump. Nothing was clearly defined anymore.
At some point I remember having this feeling that I wasn’t alone. There were moments when I could sense or feel someone with me. It felt like a little light around me. I didn’t know what it was. Maybe it was a touch of God’s grace. Whatever it was, it felt divine and comforting to me. One day it felt as though that light just pulled me out of the dark cloud and I emerged from my bedroom and resumed my life unable to explain where I’d been all those weeks or how I had returned to my life. It would be years later that I would remember that light and realize that I was protected even through that time. The realization that I was not alone even through a time when I couldn’t identify myself in the world anymore has been a source of comfort to me since. At that time I didn’t know that there was a lot more pain to come. For some reason it felt that I’d been touched by a certain something that would see me through all things. No matter how challenging life has become for me since then, I have always known – even if only on a soul level – that I’m not alone and that I’m protected and there’s light even in the darkest moments.
I emerged from the abyss determined to be part of the solution in South Africa and before long was one of the “troublemakers” leading awareness campaigns at my high school. The head prefect and some of the prefects at school, of which I was one, became involved in some of the political movements going on. It was 1984. That year, as well as 1985 were particularly violent periods of political unrest in South Africa. The boil of oppression had reached bursting point and people were beginning to rally more and more for their civil rights. Political rallies, picketing and burning tires in protest became familiar signs of the changing times. Political activists started penetrating the high schools. Before long pamphlets were being passed out by students amongst and for fellow students to bring about awareness on freedom and justice for our people.
There was one girl in my school who became heavily involved in the political rallies. She spent most of her free time attending rallies and events outside of the school ones. She was passionate about the fight for freedom. She was caught in many cross-fighting situations where police officers were trying to squash the protests of political freedom fighters who at this stage had started fighting back. Freedom fighters would hurl stones, burn tires and use other weapons like sticks and bricks which they would aim at the policemen. Sometimes she’d be sick from the teargas that she’d inhaled while running through the fighting crowds. Sometimes she’d come to school with welts from a whip called a sjambok which police officers used to try to control the crowds. She defiantly went back time after time, marching with the freedom fighters and singing the freedom songs. One day she didn’t turn up for school. A week went by before we found out she’d been arrested and thrown in jail. An ominous feeling hung in the air of our classroom as we waited for news on her sentencing. The one thing we did know was that you didn’t want to spend time in jail as a political prisoner. The horror stories were well known and many political prisoners in South Africa didn’t come out alive. Weeks later she was released. She didn’t return to school immediately. When we did see her again the thing I remember most were her eyes. They appeared lifeless. She spoke in whispers and I remember looking for signs of her passionate spirit. She just sat there – almost ghostlike and so fragile. She’d been abused, tortured and beaten almost daily by her jailers. Her lifeless eyes haunted my dreams for a long time after that. Even now when I remember it, it tears away at my heart to think of what she and others were robbed of in the quest for freedom for our people.
Half-way through 1985 all coloured schools were closed by the South African Board of Education. The violence and unrest had reached a fever pitch and students were more involved in political protests than attending school. I was in my final year at high school and the event we all looked forward to most was our end of year school prom. I suppose at that stage of life we were hanging on to anything that was a source of joy or a bit of fun in our too-serious world. I had my prom dress made well in advance and it was beautiful. I remember feeling beautiful when I went for the final fitting. We were all so excited about the prom and chit-chatted in the playground about the teenage boyfriends we’d be taking to the prom and the dresses we’d wear – all the frivolous, but exciting things that teenage girls love to talk about.
When they closed the schools in the second half of the school year, they closed the door on our prom fantasies too. Prom fantasies were replaced by anxiety of getting through our final matriculation exam. Memos were issued from the South African Board of Education that we were still expected to sit the final exam despite the fact that all coloured schools were closed and we weren’t allowed on the school premises. The clandestine activities commenced. Students all over Cape Town could be found sneaking into secret meeting places or finding their way to teachers’ homes to get some sort of tutoring and preparation done for the final exams. It was a time of great uncertainty and extreme anxiety. I spent nights with my head buried in the little material I was able to obtain, desperately trying to get ready for my final exams. I felt anxious all the time – wondering how I was going to get through. I spent nights crying myself to sleep because I was so uncertain of everything and so anxious about failing the exams. I couldn’t see how I’d pass with so little study material, not to mention the anxiety that had me feeling like a nervous wreck most of the time. Since schools were closed we didn’t know where we’d be writing the exams. We’d merely been told that we’d be informed of the locations closer to the dates of the exam. The violence was out of control and martial law was in full force. Army and police officers could be seen all over the place and curfews had been set where everyone had to be off the streets by 8.00 pm. As the days drew closer to the start of the final exams we were advised that all students had to be dropped at the nearest show-grounds where they usually held fairs or circuses. We were to be collected by bus and driven to a destination not known to us at the time to write our exams. My father drove me every day to the show-grounds and I was picked up by bus and escorted by armed soldiers to a military base. I wrote all of my final exams in an airport hanger on a military base surrounded by armed soldiers. I was terrified and at times found it difficult to concentrate. I wondered the whole time what would happen if someone made the slightest wrong move. Would the soldiers open fire and kill all of us? To this day, I can’t reconcile myself to any positive thought about guns. They terrify me.
Somehow, we made it through the process of writing the exams and I was astounded at my results. I’d applied for a scholarship to attend the University of Cape Town the next year to study psychology and languages. I was anxious to get good results because my success in obtaining the scholarship depended on two things. I had to write a paper stating why I should be given the scholarship above the many other applicants. I had to achieve final results that were above average. My results were so much better than I could’ve hoped for and I was shocked. I expected to scrape through because I’d been so tense throughout the writing of the exams and I didn’t think I had enough material prepared for them. It was another time in my life that I felt like something larger than myself was looking out for me. To my immense relief and joy I won that scholarship and was able to commence my university life in 1986. I cried tears of joy when I got that congratulatory letter because I knew I wouldn’t be able to go to university without a scholarship. My parents couldn’t afford to send me because the University of Cape Town was, at that time, one of the most prestigious and expensive universities in South Africa.
The last year I spent living in South Africa was 1986. After a decade of trying to migrate to Australia our family was finally successful and received our letter of acceptance into Australia in the middle of 1986. My last year of living in South Africa was not as I’d hoped it would be. Though I’d experienced racial prejudice throughout childhood and adolescence, it was something that had occurred at various intervals like the beach and train incidents. I was to feel the swords of bigotry on a daily basis in my last year of living there. It was the first time in my life that I was in class with whites. Up until then I’d attended school with my coloured community. In that respect I’d been surrounded by familiar faces and it had largely been a smooth, insulated experience.
The University of Cape Town consisted of at least ninety percent white students with a handful of coloured students, most of whom were there on scholarships. The lives of privilege and superiority that the white students had grown up with hung over campus and dominated their every action and response. Many times it felt like eyes were burning holes right through me. It’s almost impossible to feel at ease when you feel like your every move is being scrutinized and the message in every look and gesture clearly says “not welcome”.
I felt very nervous as I walked into my first class of my first year of university life. It was a class in Beginner’s French. I was the only coloured student in class and I felt the isolation immediately. There were about fifteen students in the class and not one sat next to me during the entire year. I felt like a leper and some days wished I could just disappear from sight. My initial greetings and attempts at friendliness were ignored or sometimes returned with downright rudeness. After a while I stopped trying to fit in and would creep quietly into class and do everything possible to stay inconspicuous. I loved learning French initially. When my good grades were met with sneers and sniggers after our lecturer commented on how well I’d done, I stopped asking questions in class and I don’t think I ever raised my hand to answer questions again. My other university classes were much the same, except for English. I was in English class with some of my former coloured school friends and that familiarity gave me some level of comfort and relief from the constant glares and stares. It was such a lonely time and it was challenging to keep up my motivation for studying. I would often not attend class, choosing instead to hang out in the university café with my friends from English class and attend political rallies in the area. I think the only thing that kept me going and stopped me from dropping out completely was the fact that I wanted to honour the scholarship I’d received. I was also acutely aware that an already bleak future in the working world for a woman of colour in South Africa was going to be bleaker without a good education. I felt I owed it to myself, my hard-working parents and my people to finish my education. I persevered through my studies often with great frustration and tears. The daily rejection and animosity from most of the white students in my class in the form of sneers, rudeness, stares and shoving left me feeling ugly and unworthy. I felt the world was an unsafe, harsh and cruel place. I didn’t belong in their world and they made sure I knew it.
When the letter of acceptance for immigration into Australia arrived in the latter half of 1986 I greeted it with relief and a feeling of anticipation. I couldn’t wait to board the jet that would have me leave a country I felt had long been forsaken by hope. The knowledge that I was leaving South Africa spurred me on to finish my last semester with good grades. I wanted to be prepared for my new life in Australia and I wanted to be accepted for second year university. I needed good grades to achieve this.