Shannan Browne

South Africa

We see differently

As a woman who has taught in classrooms around the world, I have learned a truth: We see differently.

In Taiwan, I was teaching a class in a city and a cockroach decided to venture out and scuttle across my classroom floor. In an instant, automatic, reaction, I stood on it. To my shock and horror, one of the little boys burst out crying and started praying over the corpse… another learner explained that in their culture, that could have been a family member. I saw a bug, they saw an eternity.

In London, I told a teen that the rubbish work he had handed in was at the level of kindergarten, he told me that made me racist. I asked if he knew what death by “necklacing” was… He said no. I told him that necklacing was what true racism was, ask any South African about real racism. The teen saw things differently to me.

Working in a South African school, the white lady amidst Zulu black African men; the rules of the place of a woman, we see differently.

I see butterflies as my evidence of a divine presence of hope and beauty, of My Creator and faith, so I have butterflies on my classroom wall. One morning, after class, a young learner with curiosity asked me if I was Satanic. I didn’t understand. I asked him why he asked me that? He replied that I always wear black, and the butterflies scare him… No, I wear black because it’s an easy-to-keep-stainless, drama teacher thing, and my butterflies are the opposite of scary for me. The two of us, we definitely see things different.