Probably the only people who realise that I am South African are themselves South African, and that’s not something that has happened very often.
I come from a city called Durban, which, as I have told almost everyone I’ve met, is on the opposite side of the country to Cape Town. A fairly inaccurate description, but it serves to give you an accurate enough impression. To even begin to describe the differences between York and Durban would develop into a book-long travel piece. But to give you a small taste of that difference: I spent Christmas Eve blasted with air-conditioning, slouched in front of a whirring fan. Here, I wear ski jackets and have a beanie almost sewn onto my head. It was a bit of an adjustment.
It was not really possible to adjust straight away to the city of York. Coming from a country that is only 103 years old, York struck me like a strike to the place with an ancient brick. Tar roads are replaced here by cobbled streets, and cities of concrete are replaced by cities of stone and brick. Where blocks of flats would be, there stands a Minster. Everything towers, and walking down the street I scrape shoulders with people and lamp-posts alike. It’s as one would imagine being shrunk down and walking through the sprawling model of an ancient city. And growing up through the cracks of the cobbles where trees should be is a deep-rooted history. My footsteps follow the heavy tread of the Vikings, who in turn lurched after the rumbling march of the Romans. As strange as it may sound, that history lies buried both beneath the city and in the eyes of anyone I’ve met in York.
As for the University, it would take far too long to detail every discovery that I have made here. Though this is the norm for most of you, it is a toy box full of amazing discoveries for me. One thing that I almost immediately noticed while walking on campus was the variety of accents. The area of the country that you come from is characterised by your use of the English language. The babble of voices are all an inflection of one another. Back home, the babble of voices are a mix of different tongues. Given that South Africa has 11 official languages, you could hear isiZulu, Afrikaans, isiXhosa (pronounced with the click used to spur a horse) and English on any single street. And contained within each language is an identity and a sense of pride.
It has to be said that one of the things I find strangest about the University of York is the absolute focus of each degree. Let me explain. Whereas I have studied Philosophy, Linguistics, English Literature, Psychology and Classical Civilizations in the course of my degree, most students at York focus on only one of those. The most extreme variation is PPE. To me it is neither a strength nor a weakness of the system here. It is simply an anomaly.
There is no single thing that I miss most about South Africa. The beaches, the boerewors (a type of sausage) the braais (a barbeque), and the sight of the Drakensberg Mountains all stay with me like beads on a necklace. Even though this, England, may be the land of my ancestors, South Africa is the land of my heart.
I just have one parting request: if you ever see me in the corridors, or know me by my accent, please come up to me and tell me how you pronounce ‘pecan nut’. I am determined to prove to the Americans that it is not a ‘pecaan’.