Dawn

Based on the debates ensuing in the wake of recent facebook statuses, the switch to daylight savings time has inspired you people in the United States to think about sunrise, sunset, and why in the world Indiana is in Central Time.

All of South Africa is in one time zone (because it would be silly for Cape Town to be by itself), and apparently there’s no daylight saving times. Where I am, the really obnoxious birds start screeching and squawking at about 4am, the sun comes up around 5, and it gets dark a little before 7pm. I’ve shockingly managed to become more of a morning person (maybe because of the birds), and I’ve seen several really fantastic sunrises while I’ve been here.

A couple weeks ago I went camping by a lake with my friends from church and we went walking a little ways around the lake as the sun was coming up.

Ducks!

 Last weekend, I went on a rafting and camping trip with the Mountain Club (which seems to be about 50% Americans). There was an epic thunderstorm with really amazing lightening in the distance in the evening, so I spent the sunset huddling under a tarp, but the sunrise over the lake the next morning was really beautiful. 

I had a paper due on Monday, but I was really tired after rafting and a somewhat interrupted night sleeping on the ground, so went to sleep soon after getting back without working on the paper. I’ll spare you the horrific details of what time I (very efficiently) wrote the paper, but I spent dawn on Monday watching the light behind my curtains gradually intensifying as I wrote about the impact of the African National Congress Youth League.

The ANC was founded in 1912, but by the 1940s it was criticized by the rising generation of South Africans due to “weaknesses in its organization and constitution; to its erratic policy of yielding to oppression, regarding itself as a body of gentlemen with clean hands and failing to see the problems of the African through the proper perspective.” These young people founded the Youth League, and many including Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela were important ANC leaders for the next three to four decades. They revolutionized elitist ANC ideology to focus on Africanism, the idea that Africans should learn about their history and redefine a positive self-image, and that because they were a nationally oppressed group, they could only “win their national freedom through a National Liberation Movement led by the Africans themselves.” The Youth League members also replaced the reactionary tactics of passing resolutions and sending memorandums to the British Commonwealth and South African government with mass-based protests, marches, stay-at-homes, and strikes. It was the dawn of a new era in the struggle...and I think those two ideas actually stayed interesting for 7 pages.