Terri witnesses ongoing legacy of apartheid

Now that our time here in Cape Town is coming to an end I have been thinking a lot about what is to come for the rest of my time at Uconn and then for the rest of my life.  I think over and over again about the things I have learned and how to change them from thoughts to actions.  I have seen the growth of every person on this program because of the conversations we have.  I know we will all do a great job next year during out workshops while teaching other Uconn students some of the things we have learned here.

While writing Marita’s final response paper I added an experience from my activist project and felt that I would love to share it with more people than just Marita and what better way to do that than to add it to my blog:

My activist project was a lot of fun.  It was the one time I was able to have a more personal relationship with the black community while at Maitland Cottage.  I also love medicine and learning about different conditions so I thoroughly enjoyed going in every Friday.  There were a lot of things I was able to learn from a medical level to a communal level. There was one specific thing that happened during my activist project that played with my emotions and has repeated in my head multiple times.  I had to ask a grandmother of one of the children to sign consent for her granddaughter to get medical attention.  First of all this grandmother had a very hard time understanding my English but the sad part was watching her actually sign the form.  All she wrote was “Flynn”, all in manuscript, she did not hold the pen correctly, and it took her an exceptionally long time to sign her name.  If I had not seen it written with my own eyes I would have thought a six year old who had just learned how to write her last name had wrote it.  At that moment all I could think about was Apartheid and the struggle the black community had to go through to get proper education.  I do not think this woman has a learning disability, I think the oppression she went through while growing up has prevented her to learn how to do something that we consider to be so simple, signing our names.  The Sharpville Massacre was all I could think about for the rest of the day.  I couldn’t help but think what this woman must have gone through as a child in school.  While at the age that most of us are having a good time at school, making friends, and learning from a teacher we speak the same language as and understand; children during Apartheid were struggling to get a proper education.  This was just another way the Apartheid government was able to oppress the black community.  If they couldn’t learn, they couldn’t be educated enough to get jobs and therefore make money.  Without proper education they were not educated enough to understand politics and know that their human rights were being torn away from them.  Many people think that since apartheid has ended so has the oppression and abuse but I have seen with my own eyes the consequences of the actions made by the Apartheid government.  Although little things have happened, it will take a lot more effort for equality to be reached.  I hope that day will come soon so the suffering of so many will come to an end.