{"id":8325,"date":"2023-11-28T07:43:24","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T12:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/i-was-always-the-only-black-person-on-the-boat\/28\/11\/2023\/"},"modified":"2023-11-28T07:43:24","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T12:43:24","slug":"i-was-always-the-only-black-person-on-the-boat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/i-was-always-the-only-black-person-on-the-boat\/28\/11\/2023\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I was always the only black person on the boat\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Zandile Ndhlovu grew up in Soweto, a black township on the edge of Johannesburg, where no-one ever dreamed of travelling hundreds of miles to swim in the ocean. There wasn’t even a swimming pool.<\/p>\n

“And there was this narrative of, ‘Black people don’t swim, we don’t do that stuff,'” she says.<\/p>\n

So she wasn’t prepared for her first snorkelling trip, in Bali, at the age of 28.<\/p>\n

“The captain told everybody to kit up,” she recalls.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t even know what ‘kit up’ means. I didn’t even know what a snorkel did. When I jumped into the water, I started freaking out. I thought I was drowning.”<\/p>\n

But Ndhlovu says that once she became settled, she felt at peace.<\/p>\n

“I told myself to calm down. I looked beneath the surface of the water and couldn’t believe the overwhelming blue, the yellow fish, and the sun rays on the coral reef. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.”<\/p>\n

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\"Zandile