Heritage Day

This past month in SA we celebrated culture and heritage. As you can imagine with 11 national languages, there are quite a number of different cultures which lends itself to a lot of interesting knowledge, beautiful outfits, and diverse dancing. I was invited to go with the crèche (preschool/daycare) to a cultural celebration in a neighboring village. I traveled with almost 100 kids dressed to the tee in their traditional outfits to a celebration consisting of almost 1000 kids from all around the area. Older men and women dressed in their traditional outfits told beautiful and elaborate stories to the children in a forum that I imagine was very popular in the days before television. Something I have always admired (especially as someone who is working on her public speaking abilities) about South Africans is their ability to talk, in whatever form it may take. Whether someone is praying, giving a speech, or merely sharing the town gossip, I feel as if the words continuously flow out of their mouths without so much as an ‘um’ to break the rhythm. After the stories, a local authority in the community gave a speech about why it is important to remember and celebrate our cultures, but also to be tolerant and accepting of others. Finally, each crèche was given the opportunity to do their traditional dances in front of the entire group. As traditional dancing is a HUGE source of joy and pride in the communities (and the dances are rarely if ever performed by children), it was really special to see how excited the children were to take this chance to perform their culture. The pictures show my 5 year old host brother is standing in front of my house, me decked out in my traditional Ndebele garb (my host sister and mother had a ball dressing me up for the occasion) standing with another teacher, and a shot of the group at the celebration.