Bosmont with Corin

On Saturday, Corin, our on the ground contact for Warwick in Africa, took us to Bosmont to see where he grew up. Corin classifies as coloured, and is descended from a huge collection of different ethnic backgrounds. During Apartheid, Bosmont was the area which was zoned for everyone who classified as coloured. While they had a tentatively higher status than blacks, coloured people still suffered immensely under apartheid, and had the added difficulty of not being accepted by any of the other ethnic groups in South Africa.

Corin took us to meet the family of one of his childhood friends, who is from a Malay background, she and her children told us about their heritage, before feeding us a huge amount of food, ranging from samosas to cake. We then moved on to play a variety of children's games with the family. These generally seemed to involve throwing tennis balls at people as hard as you could, and people who got hit being out.

After this, we moved on to have quarters - essentially a quarter loaf of bread, filled with chips, cuts of meat and any sauces you fancy. Before moving on to visit Willa who makes beaded jewelry. She taught everyone how to make bead angels before leaving us to experiment with the beads on our own. Finally, we went to have dinner with another one of Corin's friends, who had provided an enormous selection of curries, and other dishes, along with a lovely chocolate cake for dessert.

You may have noticed the abundance of food I've talked about - this is because we never stopped eating all day, and all ended up going home feeling rather full.

Corin

It was nice getting a chance to see Corin outside of the usual hassle of school, particularly since he has a knack of visiting just as I'm about to kill my Grade 11s in their pre-lunch mania and I'm feeling rather frazzled. The opportunity to get a feeling for someone's childhood is always special, and this was no exception.