Saturday, July 31, 2010
Mandela's Growing
Living with Jongintaba, Mandela’s knowledge and experience widened. He was immensely exposed to Western culture, religion, schooling, and leadership from meetings of the regent and his court. It was in these meetings where Mandela witnessed various speaking styles and the regent’s emotionless response to many charges that were made against him. From such meetings was Mandela able to develop a growing flame of anger against Westerners attentively listening to the stories of Chief Joyi. Opportunities like this were rarely bestowed upon a kid who formerly lived in Qunu. His time with Jongintaba was a period of countless learning and observations.
Mandela's Youth Notes
Mandela was destined to disrupt the norm as his birth name stood for troublemaker. This term would later characterize his stubbornness and willingness to stand for what is right.
It is often said that a person’s actions reflect experiences in one’s childhood. In Mandela’s case his father was a leadership inspiration, even compelling Mandela to “rub ash…into my hair in imitation of him” (Mandela 5). Mandela’s father’s death opened the door for Mandela to become a son of Jongintaba, a result of the chief returning a favor for getting him in such a high position.
As a child, Mandela also obtained a strong sense of community and bonding with fellow African people. Considering aunts as mothers and cousins as siblings allowed Mandela to care about others strongly; a person that would be able to unite a group of people or yet, a country.
Throughout Mandela’s youth and early years as a man, he often regarded the “white man not as an oppressor but as a benefactor”. Mandela did not have much interaction with white people as a child; well, he did not have a negative experience with white people. I would feel readers would expect such a experience to have happened to him which would carry on to his rebellious ways when he is older.
Mandela did not have a typical childhood in which most of his peers ended up uneducated. He was lucky enough to be chosen to go a British school. He was able to combine his strong sense of African culture and philosophies and culture of the British.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Where in the world is Matt Lauer?
So the other day I was watching the Today Show and they had mentioned their annual segment called Where in the world is Matt Lauer? If you have not heard of this, the lead anchorman of the Today Show, Matt Lauer, travels each year to five locations around the world and exposes viewers to the culture of the city/country he travels to. I wondered if he had gone to Cape Town and when I went on the Today website he had in fact gone in 2007. They had several very interesting video clips. The link to the website of all the Cape Town videos from the Today Show is:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/29306526/
Lauer did a good job of covering many aspects of the beautiful city of Cape Town. One of the residents summed it up by saying it could be 2 AM and you could go hiking up Table Mountain or go down to the beach and surf or walk in the city. It is truly a unique city.
Here are two videos that were my favorites which you would find useful. The first video highlights the city of Cape Town in terms of how it is moving on from its rough past of racism to a bright future with events like the upcoming World Cup. In the second video, Matt discusses with the other NBC correspondents about language would be really useful when in the city.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/29306526/
Lauer did a good job of covering many aspects of the beautiful city of Cape Town. One of the residents summed it up by saying it could be 2 AM and you could go hiking up Table Mountain or go down to the beach and surf or walk in the city. It is truly a unique city.
Here are two videos that were my favorites which you would find useful. The first video highlights the city of Cape Town in terms of how it is moving on from its rough past of racism to a bright future with events like the upcoming World Cup. In the second video, Matt discusses with the other NBC correspondents about language would be really useful when in the city.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Purpose
Hey! It's great that I have finally got to start this blog as soon as summer vacation began. I created this blog in order to highlight my preparation for my IQP trip to Cape Town, South Africa this B Term. I hope that people related to this trip and in future trips of Cape Town can look to this blog as a resource to see my experience of the IQP process and how they can relate. This blog will also serve as my summer journal that our group has been asked to write throughout the summer. I hope to write on this blog from now until the end of B-Term. I hope you enjoy the content!
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