ABSTRACT
Upon moving to South Africa, I again discovered that the color of one’s skin had little to do with shared cultural experience. Over 60% of white South Africans spoke Afrikaans with English as a second language. Consequently, from early in life I understood that the world was a complex and, on occasion, confusing place where surface details rarely held true knowledge and indeed begged to be questioned. My mother’s love of language (She spoke German as fluently as English and Afrikaans and even studied Russian at one point.) opened a world of access for me to the huge and varied cultural base that surrounded us. My father’s work (He’d mapped Lebanon, large parts of Africa, and even Beijing, China.) further ingrained in me a thirst for both travel and cultural experience.
