honey coated nightmares

I Hated Afrikaans (Spoken Word).

I was used to being the joke.
"the work is easy enough"
"we've already dumbed it enough,
for you."
This was my fourth
additional language.
Mother and father
crossed the cultural boundaries

"But then why are you here?"
It was as if
they forgot
that the schools
where I came from
were not as advanced.
I was not Hector Peterson.
I was a coward
who studied her way out,
For a better future.
He danced with bullets
while I
crossed my legs and replied with
dit was ek, juffrou.

I will never forget
Ms Van De Merwe.
Sweet lady,
great teacher.
I adored her,
until she gave me homework.
Afrikaans homework.
The homework was in afrikaans.
I didn't bother taking it home.
because afrikaans isn't really about the
pronunciation
and i couldn't
make it sound fancy
or sophisticated
without understanding it.
It is nothing like english!
C is K
F is V
The is Die
now try to imagine me,
doing homework
with parents
who are traumatized
by this language
of my ancestor's oppressors.

Jacob and I
were good friends.
He would let me copy
it out in the morning ,
before class time.
Being the slow child
that I was.
It took me a while
to realize that he wrote down
all the incorrect answers
and memorized the right ones.
And when ma'am asked
"en die antwoord is?"
pointing at me.
I replied with
something similar to
melkskommel.
I still don't even know
what that is.
"cheer up,skommeletjie"

uhh,
I Hated Afrikaans.

To be continued