A child’s story about advocating for interracial relationships
By the time Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rogers wrote the book: Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching, a book first published in 2001, they highlighted that the estimated percentage of multilingual people in the world was about 60%.
“From both a contemporary and historical perspective, bilingualism or multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception.”
It dawned on me when I approached the age of 30 that much of what shapes people’s perspectives on love, life and politics; what tends to have a major influence on molding identities or sense of self-awareness has to do with language, behaviours they see from their parents and grandparents if they’re lucky, as well as all the other people their nuclear family exposes them to.
When I was knee high I didn’t quite comprehend why I was fascinated by beaten up stereotypes. I was later able to put a name to it, that my fascination was for multilingualism and interracial coupling. I knew that I was intrigued and so curious about people who looked like they were ‘different’ couples. My family and I didn’t have to live in suburban areas and be surrounded by white people all the time in order for me to have ample opportunities to interact with white people because my first pool of diversity and colourful cultural experiences was alive and well at my Primary school (The Connie Minchin Primary School). There, nearly every child had at least one friend from the Indian and Asian communities, another from the coloured community, or as we used to say growing up, ‘Praat jy Afrikaans? Is jy ‘n kleurling?, then one other friend from the Nguni and Basotho communities. Finally, it was apparent that every child had a white friend too.
Personally, I didn’t think that I was unique because I had noticeable and commendable language aptitude. It’s an African gift. Many children of my generation spoke 3 or even 4 languages back then; imperfectly admittedly, but our environment was rich enough to afford us the freedom to learn and immerse ourselves in practical and culturally sensitive situations. We played together and shared our food with each other. We pushed and shoved when queuing to enter the music class – the music class has always had legendary status throughout the years at that school, as voted for by the pupils. We fought, but never to the point of hate. We were taught how to swim, how to play recorders, and how to pray.
It was not my white friends at my primary school who made me think about the reality of a white man loving a black woman or a black man loving a white woman. We were children, of course we didn’t think of romantic scenarios. It was a different time back then. Our teachers discouraged girls and boys leaning on each other in the literal and figurative sense. Fast-forward to millennial children who were reported to be experimenting at much younger ages, primary school-going ages… that gave parents chills.
No, my fascination for beaten up stereotypes and interracial couples was inspired by someone I grew up very close to. This person was a big influence to my outlook on life because she was my second mother in every way. She was my mamogolo. The direct translation for that word and relationship to the child is ‘big mummy’. Mamogolo takes over the mother’s duties whenever she is not around, but in the African culture all elderly mothers assist in raising all the children unprovoked.
Every family has its unique set of dynamics so it is not the usual case for all families that mamogolo is the big mummy.
My mamogolo had a white man in her life. I met him when I was around 7 or 8 years old. His name was Alan. He spoiled me all the time when I spent time with my mamogolo. He bought me the chocolate Flake without fail every time he saw me. As an adult I do not have a sweet tooth. I do not like chocolates all that much; I can avoid them, but that particular one is special because of him.
I grew up very fond of the English language. English was already a global language franca at the time, defintely for children of my generation. I read many books. I developed my vocabulary, writing and spelling very young. My father taught me how to play the board game Scrabble when I was 10. I’ve been hooked ever since then.
My little brain understood that engaging with people should be a human experience to be a wholesome one. I was brought up with much love around me. I was a bubbly child who was not shy, and I loved people. I imagined people loved me too, people like Alan. I was encouraged to have big dreams than what the world narrated was the limit. My shoes were smaller than my head. My best friend in the first grade was a girl called Raisa. We became friends after she stared at my shoes and all she could come up with was: “You have small feet.”
I enjoyed getting to know friends who did not speak my mother tongue. I wanted to teach them my mother’s language.
Fastforward to adulthood… in romantic relationships I have often sought to see the bigger picture. I have worked on nurturing empathy as a character trait. Over the years I have followed the stories of interracial couples. I earnestly believed that they challenged existing stereotypes. I decided to highlight my admiration for such couples in this piece and their contribution to their societies and the world. Understandably, phrases like “different strokes for different folks” exist with reason. Some people may not see the beauty of interracial coupling. Furthermore, they may also not see the fuss with being able to speak more than 3 languages.
In preparing this piece, I interviewed Lee. Lee is a family friend who has an events company. Hers is an attractive business because she meets all sorts of people from different walks of life, including interracial couples who seek her services in planning their wedding days. One of the questions I asked her was for her share her thoughts on Kgosi Seretse Khama’s marriage to the First Lady Ruth, and how it shaped the perspectives of young women in Southern Africa about love. This exceptional couple caught my attention unlike many others. Kgosi Seretse is one past leader I admire because his impact on what was not understood then as a ‘progressive culture’ was impressive, as well as how he spearheaded Botswana to be an African success story. To add to that, he certainly challenged African people’s view on what love looks like between two people.
Lee admitted that she was not familiar with Kgosi’s story, but here’s a look at some of her answers about African cultures, interracial couples and the passion for doing what she does.
Q: Please discuss your business and what you do, as well as what you enjoy about your job.
A: “I’m an events coordinator. I do all sorts of functions; personal functions, corporate functions, government functions etc. So that will be weddings, birthday parties, kiddies parties, funerals, business meetings etc. People come to me and ask for a quotation. I would consult, then the process of planning the event begins. Some of the special events are unveilings, especially for mothers, siblings, grandparents and so forth. Planning the dream wedding and funerals; I think that is self-explanatory. Planning these events is a process with the client because it involves interviewing them and get to know what their vision is.
Sometimes they come knowing what they want, but sometimes others come and they don’t know what they want. So it’s different characters. I would advise on the budget.
We would do site-inspections. We would talk about the layout, setup of the band and where people will walk in from etc.
To be honest what I love the most are the happy events; not the sad events like the funerals and the unveilings. If I do funerals and unveilings it’s very emotionally taxing. It drains my energy because obviously everyone is sad including the client, so it automatically puts a negative emotion on me. Now when it comes to weddings and parties and happy occasions, I absolutely love that because their energy, their love and their happiness; it automatically also puts positive energy on me. So I love being positive.
I love being happy. What also makes me happy is that I can make somebody else happy. So the happiness part is what brings joy to me doing this job. I don’t see myself doing any other job in this entire world. I just feel like this is my calling. I used to work at the bank. I loved it, but I never loved it. You know when you loved it because it pays the bills, but with this, it’s entirely different. You get that sense of achievement. You really feel like you’ve really achieved something beautiful because clients are happy with you, they love what you do, they’re constantly praising you, you know, “you’ve made my dream come true”… Especially with women; this is their fairytale…it’s their dream; so you get to be part of every woman’s dream, and I think that this is very powerful.”
Q: How interesting are the events you’ve been part of at the organizing stage such as wedding decor, food/the menu etc? Please comment on the attires you’ve witnessed from the guests and from the grooms and their brides.
A: “The decor is always evolving. Every year it’s a new season, it’s a new colour, it’s a new theme. This year it’s the bohemian theme, so deep into bohemian; the earthy look, the burnt orange look – everything to do with earth.
The colours actually changed twice this year. A couple of months ago it was the mint and beige, still complimenting the browns and nudes; those are still the current colours for this year, and like I said it changes every year. Every year a colour starts to trend and then they just go with it.
The food is so exciting because we don’t just host South Africans. South African common foods are the stews, chotlo, beef, samp, dumpling; there are cultural food menus, there are coloureds who would also have the same thing…like very mild curries, then fried chicken, mutton curries, and biryanis, they call it ackee. What I absolutely love, is food menus from other countries like Ghana, Cameroon; but the Cameroon dishes I really don’t like it because it’s not to everybody’s palates, but there are some dishes that are really really nice – as clean as it is. There is no artifical anything; they call it the peanut soup. I also enjoy the Nigerian food, quite spicy. I also enjoy the Ethiopian food. Ethiopians don’t actually let us host a lot of their weddings but there are those small, intimate ones that do, but they generally want to have their own people to cook their own food because we don’t understand their food. You don’t have the utensils, you don’t have the knack, and you also don’t have half the ingredients that they use. That’s what I’ve come across. Their cultures aren’t so different from each other.
I would say, whether it’s white people, Blacks, coloureds, Indians, any race, whoever; their culture is actually not so different from anybody else because you know, when the young ladies that would come in and the groom would have to say which one is his bride… The muslims actually do the same thing, and the Ghananians and the Indians do the same thing. The dowry for Muslims is the lobola for the Tswanas, the Indians also do the same thing, the coloureds don’t have lobola but the husband is responsible for the rings and the dress, and the wife’s family is responsible for everything else. The other thing I have also seen is that the attires are not so different, everybody is rather conservative, very covered up, not too revealing, not too sexy, it’s only the coloured that are different. The groom doesn’t really care. The men can look almost similar, they don’t really care; but the women, the bride doesn’t want the bridesmaids to take from her shine, so they are more modest than the bride. The African weddings they always dress according to their flags or their cultural material; in South Africa we have the seshweshwe and then the coloureds and the whites are quite similar with the silky dresses – some green or blue, something really bright that can make the skin pop. The Indians it’s the saris, really beautiful colours with the hand paintings and the foot paintings.”
“About the president, the Kgosi, I don’t know him but what I’ve gathered is that he’s Black and she (the First Lady) was white; what I can tell you is what I have experienced and what I have seen. For me personally I would not advise on interracial marriages, but it’s everybody’s preference. What I’ve seen is they are as different as light and darkness. Some people would say they bring out the best in each other but I really don’t think so. Every couple has its issues but I think interracial couples have more issues than your average two Blacks, two coloureds, two Indians, two whites. Average couples understand each other’s languages and cultures. A typical example is like with a Black couple, they have typical problems, money problems, children etc.
Now you have to add in cultural problems, like he wants to throw bones, you don’t want to throw bones; he wants to go to the madlozis and you don’t know who the madlozis are; he wants to eat malamogdu, and you don’t eat intestines.
He wants you to cook it and you don’t want to cook it. You can’t go to his family events without covering your head, and you are a fresh, modern girl; you want to go with your pants, you can’t understand why he is insisting that this is the way it has to be done…constant fights about everything. I myself am coloured and my husband is Black, and I could not understand half the things my husband was saying, super strong Black man, and he could not understand half the things I was saying. The way I saw women treated from his perspective was totally different from the way I saw women treated in my culture. So I would not advise it because it’s extra stress but if you love each other, choose who you want to.
I once had a white groom (from a different country, not South African), and a Black bride, Tswana girl – everytime she said something, he would say the total opposite. They kept irritating one another. We couldn’t get anything done. We tried to mediate and liaise and try to let them see that this is a beautiful event, their wedding day, but they were just like night and day. One wanted wine, the other wanted beer. One wants umqombothi, the other hates it; he doesn’t know what it is. He hates the smell, the taste. The girl says but this is my culture. He says I don’t care, it’s my wedding. There are a lot of them that just look nice in pictures but in reality they are just day and night.
I’ve hosted a lot of interracial weddings. It’s not a racist thing. It’s just not my cup of tea. Take communication for example, coloured people speak very loud, very rough, and their slang, especially the Capetonians, their slang is very brutal. If you put a person like that with maybe a Tswana person, and the coloured answers using their own slang. There’s always a break in communication because the other would take offense and think it’s rude. I think maybe I’ve just experienced the worst of interracial couples.”
