Over the last two weeks, our grade participated in Writer’s Fortnight, an event over two weeks where speakers can come in to share their stories. Each of us met with five speakers over these two weeks. As students, we were posing as journalists trying to extract these stories from these speakers, as if we were interviewing them.  I personally really enjoyed the whole event, as the speakers were so engaging and I learnt so much from them. Here is bit more about each speaker and what I learnt from them:

The first speaker was a woman named Cathy Jones, who works here at our school. She grew up in South Africa at the height of apartheid. She talked about her experiences and the events she witnessed and heard about as a kid. Her main focus seemed to be on the bannings, boycotts and brutality during the period of apartheid. I really enjoyed her talk because I was able to understand her perspective more or less and understand how the people around her were brainwashed into accepting their lives. I also learnt about the different ways people at the time combatted the severe racism, through boycotts and even brutality. Overall, I think I better understood how scary it can be to live in a place that wants to control the way you think and what you believe.

The second speaker I listened to was Sanjay Ferrera, a history teacher at our school. Instead of a summary of his past experiences or his work, he told us a single story, taking place in England, during his college years. Through the story, he made it easy to step into his shoes and understand how he felt with vivid descriptions and sensory imagery. I enjoyed the great story, but I also understood his fear at the time and marvelled at his rather bizarre approach to combat it: humour. I think I learnt that sometimes the best responses to unfairness or injustice aren’t always the most obvious.

The third speaker was a woman named Fiona Herbert, a primary school counsellor in our school. She talked about her time working with NGOs in Kenya, such as Save the Children and UNICEF. She recounted some of her projects, and even some of the specific experiences that meant a lot to her. She also talked about the misconceptions about Kenya and the Kenyan people. I enjoyed the talk because it gave me an overarching perspective of the issues in the area, and what she was able to do to help. Most importantly, I learnt that whatever difference you can make really matters, and that sometimes the best way you can help a person or a community is to just listen to them.

The fourth talk was with four Grade 11 students in our, each telling a different story of inspiration and courage. One speaker talked about his Youtube channel where he filmed ants, the criticism he sometimes received, and how he chose to keep going. Another talked about his experience speaking in a government panel about the impacts of fake news, and what he learned from the experience. Another talked about he overcame his fear of public speaking through participating in East Talks assemblies and MUN. Finally, the last student talked about his experience integrating into the UWC community and learning to speak English more fluently. Although they were all different stories, a theme of empowerment and resilience ran through all of them, and I found it really interesting to listen to.

Our final speaker was an author, illustrator, graphic designer and artist Graham Rawle. He talked to us about his process of creating his novel Woman’s World. The book was created entirely from magazine clippings from the late 1950s and early 60s. He talked about his struggle to find the right words for some parts of his story, and how he rose to the challenge and found ways to make it work. It was a very interesting and inspiring talk. Through it, I learnt that storytelling can be so much more than words on a page, and sometimes experimenting with non-conventional methods can even help the story.

I now have a few ideas for possible articles I can write from these talks. For example, I had two talks related to racism, so I could weave that into an article about the ways to combat racism, or something related. I also listened to talks about empowerment and inspiration, so maybe I could write something about that.  Overall, I found this experience very valuable and am looking forward to trying to write a feature article!