Easter Holiday: South African Cousins

While my Grandma Knibbe immigrated to the States from the Netherlands, her brother immigrated to South Africa around 1950. Fast forward to today, I was able to have dinner with my cousins in Johannesburg last week.

I met with three cousins and their families. They were incredibly welcoming and curious about their American relatives. They asked me about why I came to South Africa and how my experience has been here. In return, I was able to ask them about their story as South Africans. They were able to tell me about their blind trust for the Dutch Reformed Church and for the state during the apartheid years. Where today their own children ask them how they could have been so ignorant. It was easy to listen to their story, because it was not defensive but simply told accounting to what they experienced to be true.

I’m incredible thankful I was able to spend an evening with them. Not only for the time with family, but also to see South Africa in the homes of South Africans.