Carol’s Column

Die rubriek is ook in Afrikaans beskikbaar ...

It was quite the most moving moment in my life. I watched him walk slowly towards me, the light catching his spectacles. He stopped, and in turn, I walked towards him, my heart beating against my double-A-cup underwired cross-over bra. As he gazed at me, I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath and stood before him.

He paused, then smiled, said a few appropriate words and handed me a certificate. I was so overwhelmed that I almost cried. But instead, threw my arms around his neck and planted a wet kiss on his deliciously dimpled cheek.

My colleagues clapped and cheered, as indeed I had done for them when they in turn had received their certificates.

The occasion, the graduation ceremony of the advanced class in Afrikaans at the Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit.

It had all started a few months ago.

“The problem with this country,” said Nicky, my daughter with the infinite wisdom of her 16 years, “is that we don’t communicate with each other because we can’t speak each other’s language. We should all be proficient in English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Sotho and Xhosa.”

“Of course, the best way to learn a language is to have an affair with an Afrikaner or a Zulu,” said my good friend Betty. “You have to live with someone to learn a language properly. But meanwhile, RAU has a wonderful course for people who want to learn to speak Afrikaans,” she added.

In a burst of enthusiasm, I phoned RAU and found myself enrolled by Professor Flip Strydom in a two-month advanced Afrikaans course that required me to attend intense three-hourly lectures on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

“Will you manage?” asked Betty. “You haven’t used your brain for at least 20 years?”

“This is a challenge,” I muttered.

It was wonderful. I cast off motherhood, abandoned my family to baked beans on toast and shot off to RAU to come to grips with Afrikaans.

We listened to poetry, music, prose. We fought with verbs, prepositions and conjunctions, told wicked jokes, argued about politics, praated ourselves silly and never did an English word cross our lips.

Hilton brought wine, Bev cake, Jeremy switched the lights out and Ken supplied jelly babies.

Each lesson was an adventure and everything happened in Afrikaans.

Overnight, my lifestyle changed. Boerewors replaced haddock. I ditched Dire Straits for Johannes Kerkorrel en Die Gereformeerde Blues Band, Twinings tea was replaced by boeretroos and croissants by koeksisters.

And then came the day of reckoning. “On Monday, you will all write a little test,” said Professor Strydom. Our normally lively and raucous class was stilled.

“A toets?” said Hilton with horror. Ken’s face dropped, Peter’s eyes were round with shock and Caroline and Debbie wailed in the corner.

“Be resolute,” said Jenny in Afrikaans, but none of us understood as we hadn’t learnt the word.

That fateful Monday, we shook hands and wished each other the best of British luck. Silently and soberly, as befitted the occasion, we waited at our desks for the exam papers.

I will not comment other than to say that at one stage I rolled my eyes and made a plea heavenwards. Alack, there was no response, probably because I hadn’t pleaded in Afrikaans.

I knew I’d failed and that night I cried myself to sleep causing my eyes to puff and my false eyelashes to become unglued.

The results were indeed a miracle. The entire class had passed and my joy was indescribable.

“Don’t you think you’re over-reacting,” said my husband when I sold the car in order to pay for the antique 18th century solid gold frame in which to place my Afrikaans certificate.

He doesn’t know, this is only the beginning. Now that I am fully proficient in Afrikaans, I am learning Zulu.

I have abandoned aartappels for pap, replaced my khakis and veldskoene for a blanket and have enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand for an intensive course in Zulu.

The struggle continues.

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