I confess when I first moved to South Africa I thought Afrikaners were the bad guys
Boer Nation a proud God Fearing nation for hundreds of year
Because I was never required to study African history in school, I knew only what the American media had taught me, which was that Afrikaners (Boer Nation) were responsible for Apartheid and therefore the bad guys. Six months after moving here, I realised how incorrect my initial assumptions were. Everyone in South Africa is both a “bad guy” and a “good guy”, and so it is with the rest of the world (for such is human nature).
The following two years were spent reading every book I could get my hands on regarding South Africa. If one wants to understand a culture, I reasoned, then one must study their art, music, literature, cuisine, and history. And so I did just that – not only for the Boer culture, but for other South African cultures as well.
At the end of those two years, I felt a keen remorse for having been so arrogant in the beginning. I now knew enough to understand that I knew very little, if anything. I enrolled in university (again) to study pastoral counselling, with the intent of learning how to listen and ask better questions. After I finished my studies, I enrolled in another three-year programme to study spiritual accompaniment, which teaches one how to journey with people on a spiritual level as they wrestle with issues of faith. I have two years left of this course, which brings me to the present moment.