Return From Home

"All Is Fair" - Living Proofe (Peace to the God!)

Peace,

My daughter Azania returned to Pittsburgh last week after being in South Africa for a month. Azania's mother is South African, so for them it was a return back "home" in a sense. My daughter's name is what the original people of that land called South Africa during apartheid, and dates back to Zanj, which is what the Arabs called the people of East Africa upon their arrival. She had a great overall time, and saw and experienced things that many of her classmates could never imagine. As she recounted her experiences to me, I thought "So many of our children never leave their immediate environments, much less the country."

In order to our children to be world citizens, it is imperative that we give them an international scope. All over the world, many children speak more than one language, and some speak three or more. Although my daughter can communicate in Spanish and Mandarin, in SA she had a slight problem communicating because the first language is Afrikaans. With the world "shrinking" through increased channels of communication and globalization, we must make sure that our kids know things outside of their ethnic and cultural experience. The babies are the greatest, b.u.t. only if we prepare them properly.