Showing posts with label English. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English. Show all posts

Friday, June 5, 2015

The Winter Trees

By Arnia Kiara Oosthuizen

"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words"- Robert Frost

An amazing friend of mine gave me, The Poet's Sphere, a poetry book. What an amazing gift! And since it is Winter here in South-Africa and we are freezing I found a poem about Winter.

In the woods near the university.


The Winter Trees


Against the evening sky the trees are black,
Iron themselves against the iron rails;

The hurrying crowds seek cinemas or homes,
A cozy hour where warmth will mock the wind.
They do not look at trees now summer's gone, 
For fallen with their leaves are those glad days
Of sand and sea and ships, of swallows, lambs,
Of cricket teams, and walking long in woods.

Standing among the trees, a shadow bends
And picks a cigarette-end from the ground;
It lifts the collar of an overcoat,
And blows upon its hand and stamps its feet-
For this winter, chastiser of the free,
This is winter, kind only to the bound.

CLIFFORD DYMENT

I love poetry because it awakens feelings and emotion within you, just by using words. I hope you have a warm winter's day or a nice summer's day, wherever you are.

With love xx

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Marching for our rights

By Arnia Kiara Oosthuizen

Today, we made history! We, as students, fought for our rights to be educated in our home language, Afrikaans and to have English and Tswana, as interpretation services.
Merieke and I at the march
Second poster translation "Media stoking anger, what about my degree?"

Our university has been receiving bad advertising from newspapers and television since the beginning of the year, making false accusations of the university endorsing a Nazi-culture, which is rubbish!


The university was forced to appoint a new Vice-Chancellor after all the bad media, but this Vice-Chancellor made promises that he will not change our language of instruction. So everyone was happy, until he made statements on TV that he had other motives. Yes, he was considering to change our language of instruction.

Now, here is the defense of the students and the university:

Since our country became a democracy in 1994, we had 11 official languages. Talk about a rich culture and traditions of a country! I absolutely love it! There are so many types of people here and each and everyone is individual. We all have different backgrounds and we are a Rainbow Nation. One of our rights in this Rainbow Nation, is that we have the right to be educated in our home language.

Why not go to another university to receive education in your home language?
Because we are the last Afrikaans university in South-Africa. All English and Tswana students have translators in EACH and EVERY class.
There are so many English universities, who provide interpretation services for all languages of South-Africa, except for Afrikaans.


Lizanne, me and Merieke
Thousands of students marching!
It will still take some time for the Vice-Chancellor to realize what he is doing to our student culture. He will cause the separation between students and friends, because of this. And Nelson Mandela, his hero fought so hard to prevent exactly the things that are happening now at the university.

How do you feel about this? Please share your views.