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February 24, 2005
Editorials + My Group = Danger
We had our bi-disciplinary course again last night, which meant that we had 25 rather opinionated students in one room for three hours. For the first hour and a half we discussed geology, so the environment was deceptively calm. After our 15-minute break, the professors gave us articles that they cut out of the latest edition of the Mail and Guardian, one of South Africa's more progressive newspapers. We split into groups, read the four different articles, and came back to class enlightened and prepared to present.
The article I was assigned to was one on the question of land in the Kruger National Park. There have been claims made to a quarter of the land that currently makes up the park, and the government must decide whether to hand the land over to those who were unfairly pushed off of it during apartheid, or to honor the land claim in a different way that would still allow for environmental conservation. The Kruger National Park is home for quite a few plants and animals that don't exist elsewhere in South Africa. Personally, I feel like the government should find land elsewhere to give to those who are laying claims to the land in Kruger, because people will most likely try to make money off the land in and around Kruger, turning it into another "Sun City" or something of the sort. I tend to be pro-environment over pro-humanity, though, so I can see where the opposite side of the argument woukd come from. Unfortunately, many students in our class get rather defensive and take debates somewhat too personally, so the tension was rather high last night.
There were three other articles that we discussed, although since we spent so much time debating the land in Kruger, we couldn't get into very much depth on the other subjects. At least our class was debating issues that really matter this time: the constant uproar over drop-off and pick-up times is getting rather annoying.
On a completely different note, when I walked into my Combinatorics class this morning, a girl I was passing said something to me in a different language. I said, "What?" and she replied, "Don't you speak Afrikaans?" She assumed that I was a white Afrikaner, so I explained that I was from the United States and that I didn't speak anything other than English (and a little bit of French, but I decided that wouldn't be an important contribution to the conversation). She said, "You should learn it, because they all speak it," referring to the majority of the white population. Her native language is Tswana, but she speaks English fluently and can get by in Afrikaans. It's so strange to be in a country where there are 11 national languages and it's common for someone to speak two or three of them. I wish I were multi-lingual, but I don't think that three months is enough time for me to pick up anything more than a few phrases here and there...
Posted by rgutwin at February 24, 2005 03:47 AM