the copy of Animal Farm on top of my other books: Amah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Down Second Avenue by Prof Es’kia Mphahlele, Richard Wright’s Black Boy and Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like and many others.
I sat back down on my bed and began to remember how, when I was at primary school, my teachers used to rely on me to perform poetry for our parents during functions such as parents’ day, and during the visits by the school inspector. Because of my ability to memorise words, I was often asked to stand before a crowd and entertain them by reciting poetry from our school syllabus. All Things Bright and Beautiful was my favourite English poem. For Afrikaans I used to do Muskiete Jag, though I only found out the meaning of the poem when I was in high school. Luckily, it was recited to our parents, who didn’t really understand what was going on. However, after each performance the performer would be praised for having a good command of the language by the assembled parents.
Before each performance took place we would practise each step of the performance under the supervision of our English teacher until he was satisfied that we were ready to appear on stage. Even to this day I still remember each gesture to All Things Bright and Beautiful. For example, where it says ‘All creatures great and small’ we were taught to use our hands to indicate ‘great and small’. Where the line reads ‘All things wise and wonderful’ we would tap our right index finger against our heads to gesture ‘wise’, and for the word ‘wonderful’ we would spread our hands wide with a smile on our lips. We would then point to the horizon with the same index finger for ‘The Lord God made them all’, with the palm of our left hand spread under our left breast to show our appreciation of everything that The Man Upstairs had done for us.
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