South Africa Nine - Text
The speaker was born in Durban, South Africa (1967). She was raised in Cape Province, South Africa. She is a medical scientist. In this file, she is reading Comma Gets A Cure and speaks about her life in Africa and Ireland
Recorded Vanessa Hyde, 2003. Edited by Shawn M. Muller, 2003. Running time 00:04:25
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I was born in Durban, in the province of Natal in South Africa, um, in the 1960’s. I was the middle child of three children to parents of English and Irish extraction. My mother’s mother was Irish, from West Cork, and her father was a Yorkshireman. Both my father’s parents were from County Westmeath. We grew up in rather an academic household. Um, my father was a professor at the local university and, um, we were all rather academic, studious children. My brother and myself attended state boarding schools. I was at a girls-only school and my brother was at a boys-only school. My sister had a slightly different option. She went to a private school and was a day scholar, so went home every day. At the time that I was at high school, which was in the 1980’s in South Africa, the schools were still segregated, both white and black and English and Afrikaans. I attended a whites-only girls’ school, English-speaking. We had to do Afrikaans as one of our subjects; it was compulsory, but none of our lessons were in Afrikaans. At school, um, my subjects were maths, science, biology, English, Afrikaans, geography, and drama. I then went on to university in Cape Town where I studied science to master’s degree. I then came over to Europe where I’ve been living in Ireland for more than ten years. My family all work in the medical field now and I work for a family medical research company in Cork, which is in south, southern part of Ireland. Um, my hobbies include horse riding, dramatic arts, sailing, music and writing.
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY LYNN BAKER, 25 FEBRUARY, 2008