My experience in South Africa!!!

How the South Africa Experience can make us global citizens

South Africa’s Situation is one unique to the world, not since America in the 1960’s has such a major player in world affairs undergone such a radical transformation as south Africa has in the past 25 years. South Africa has become its own melting pot society, since 1994 South Africa has added 9 more official languages bringing the total to 11. The 11 languages is a great symbol of inclusion and acceptance. Not only learning the languages but also understanding each languages cultural tradition is very important in our quest to become world citizens.

Culture is not something that can be easily understood, especially on just a short two-week excursion. However due to our many activities I was able to get a good gauge on how South Africa’s different languages and culture’s can broaden my own horizons. One of the activities that really opened my eyes in terms of language was the movie tsotsi. The movie was mostly in Tsotsitaal, a language often spoken by South Africa’s youth. This added another dimension to the film, instead of just being a cinematic experience it added another dimension and gave me a n insight into what its like to be a poor youth in South Africa. Though we as American’s and those from more privileged parts of the world can not easily experience nor see this struggle that plagues millions every day movies like Tsotsi can open our eyes.

Another thing that helped me better understand the culture of South Africa as well as other countries was the articles we encountered as well as our class discussions. One thing found very interesting was the idea of unilinguazation an idea posed by Neville Alexander and spoken about by our professor. The idea was that South Africa and other nations all around the world were heading towards a society in which there is a single unifying language. While this may be the current trend I certainly hope that this does not come fruition. It is important that we preserve the language as well as the culture that accompanies it. I think that unilingualism while convenient does not make us true “global citizens” a true global citizen makes an effort to understand other cultures and not just their own. That’s one of the most important lesson’s I learned in South Africa, though you can read about other cultures in books the best way to understand someone is to immerse yourself in their lifestyle.

The entire experience in Africa has certainly broadened my horizons and made me understand how important a person’s culture is to their identity. As Americans we are always told that we have no true identity, however the more I experienced of other cultures the more I found out what my own identity was. This is the true value of being a global citizen.

~Kevin