Page 1 - Demo

INTRODUCTION ACADEMIC PILLAR SPORT PILLAR SERVICE PILLAR CULTURE PILLAR
FOUNDERS’ DAY
I call it Brown, most of my life in 10 minutes. In 1992 a young brown woman agonised over the thought of her two young brown girls mixing with a wider spectrum of girls from light brown to dark brown. You see, she grew up in a world where her shade of brown meant that she had less access and less opportunities in South Africa.
Her shade of brown confined her to certain areas, beaches, schools, sections of the train and even bridges over which to walk and door ways through which she could enter. But despite this, she was one of the lucky ones as her lighter shade of brown confused people so she snuck to the front of the bus and walked over the more convenient bridge until one of the very light brown policemen caught her and abruptly escorted her off the bridge.
This pain of oppression and singling out would stay with her for a long time and she had to make very difficult decisions for her own two brown daughters. Her darker brown daughters born in the eighties were blessed to be young women who
would not be subject to this humiliation and the whole of South Africa rejoiced as Apartheid had begun to fall in the early 90’s and schools previously reserved for only lighter brown girls had opened to all shades of brown girls in 1992.
In 1993 I proudly put on my ironically checkered brown uniform and walked through those face brick brown walls into a big scary new world that was filled with green trees and flowers and clean painted walls ... my mother held us tightly and warned us that we would be different, but she wanted the best for us, she wanted her young brown daughters to grow into strong independent women who were not afraid to stand on their own in a world that told her that she was not enough.
I met my teacher, I was in Grade 3 at the time, Mrs Rushton. She greeted me with warmth and a smile and the best hug. I loved her immediately. I had my own seat and brown chair bag, the classroom was filled with colourful pictures ... best of all the toilets were clean and had toilet paper! Something we had never experienced at our previous school.
135 years of Brown
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