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Louise Bohysen "I was brought up to think like an Afrikaner" MRS. BOHYSEN, BORN IN PRETORIA, is of mixed MrikanerAmerican descent. Her father attended Cornell University in New York, where he met and married her mother, who, upon receipt of her college degree, had gone to work for the American Historical Review, which was then housed at Cornell. They removed to South Mrica in 1932. Louise was born shortly thereafter. "My father was a Transvaaler and a true Afrikaner, 1 would call him. My grandfather fought in the Boer War on the side of the Boers. My father went to the U.S. to do his doctorate in agricultural economics. My mother had studied at Vassar and had received her doctorate in history (elsewhere).... They fell in love and it was a love that lasted about thirty-five years, until both of them passed away. 1was brought up far more Afrikaans than English speaking. 1went to Afrikaans (language) schools and to Afrikaans university. My friends were Afrikaners. 1was brought up to think the way the Afrikaners do. 1vote for the Nationalist Party. Although Bohysen's background is unusual because of her mother's nationality, the Mrikaner community is not inclusive. Urban Mrikaners, especially the men, have married into the immigrant population as well as into the English-speaking group that have been in South Mrica since the early nineteenth century. Characteristically, however, most who marry out tend to bring their spouses in-to acquaint them and their children with the Mrikaner way of life; and, as is seen in the case of Louise, to promote their language, usually through schools where the instruction is in Mrikaans. "I understand how they feel," Louise laughingly remarks, "but at the same time, 1 have a broad background in that 1 understand the Americans. . . . 1 41 LOUISE BOHYSEN know how they think. I have family in the States. We have many connections and discussions among us." Her American antecedents, however, do not lure her and her family away from South Africa. Their roots are deep in their sense of their history and in their religious ties. "I am a member of the Dutch Reformed Church and I want to speak for the Church in that it was a very strange thing-in fact it didn't happen very often that you would see a black person in church. They were especially invited for a wedding or a funeral, for instance, but other than that they [didn't come] in the past. "They started an African Dutch Reformed Church, which is, really, for blacks only. They have a seminary school and they train ministers therebut it was blacks for blacks. Although perhaps the training was done by whites. But it was a closed society on a one-to-one basis, because all whites did worship together until fairly recently. That has changed. The churches are open but we find that black people do not feel very much at home in our rather stiff and rather staid services. They like to clap hands, and make music, and stamp their feet, and really almost African-style worship their God ... our God. "We find that they simply don't feel very much at home. We are rather quiet in our services. The role of women has changed in our church, too. Until a few years ago there were no women serving-could not prepare for the ministry . They were doing missionary work, that was about all they could prepare for. Now ... a few of them have been ordained. " ... [The Anglo-Boer War] was discussed a lot in our family. Even in the 1930s and 1940s emotions still ran very heavily. One was careful not to speak Afrikaans in an English group, and vice-versa. You were fairly sure even then that feelings ran strongly among the British-against the Boers; and among the Boers-against the English. Of course the Second World War also played a role, which was a shame. If you knew anyone who had gone to North Africa to fight in the war, that would be viewed as anti-Afrikaners and pro-British. I sensed these divisions very much growing up as a child in South Africa. "This was especially true when there were losses. My husband's father's family , they lost their four first sons at a very young age. They were caught by the English and put in a concentration camp and all four of them died. one after the other. After...

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