UNIFORMS AND NAMES

One day at the bus stop the two young girls (ages 14 and 15) were not wearing their usual school uniforms. (Nearly all South African students wear uniforms.) I asked them if they liked being able to wear whatever they wanted, and the both immediately responded that no, they did not!  It was too stressful to decide what to wear to make sure they would fit in and be wearing the "right" thing.  Interesting, yes?

Many black South Africans keep the name of their home language, most (all?) have some meaning.  For example, when Linda and I did a safari three years ago, our guide's name was Peace.  Angie's mother's name is Beauty.  (I wonder if she gave her daughter an American name to be more contemporary.) The NGO director I worked with in KwaZuluNatal went by the name of Knowledge.  My colleague's name at Operation Hope is Tshidi, which is a fairly common Zulu name.  I have seen and met Khanye, but was surprised yesterday at the grocery store to hear someone call "Connie" and one of the workers had a name tag with that spelling.  Quite unusual.