Our ethnic groups and identities, along with culture, play a crucial role in creating the way we see the world and shaping our understanding of the worldview. The key questions are , “ where do I learn from” or “where do I know from”. Our ethnic identity can provide an answer to these questions because ethnicity is one of the most crucial aspects in shaping our worldview and understanding of the world. It can influence how we interact with others, how we perceive information, and how we make decisions.

I like to consider myself as a proud Pedi woman but one can consider that to be ironic because I know very little about my ethnic group. I was born in Limpopo, where you can find majority of the Northern Sotho or also known as Bapedi or Pedi group. My twin sister, mom and I had to move to Gauteng as my dad found employment there, I was 2 years old by then. The Pedi culture and heritage had not be rooted in me yet. All I knew was a few Sepedi words and phrases that I learned by mimicking what I heard from everyone around me. When we got to Gauteng, I was exposed to people from a wide variety of ethnicities but mostly from the Zulu ethnic group. From there on I went to a primary school situated in a Muslim dominated community, where they were various backgrounds, countries of origin and ethnicities but we, myself and most of the black learners generalized them into one group and labeled all of them as “Indians”. Throughout my life, I have been exposed to different groups and had to adapt and to an extent conform to some of their practices, beliefs and ways of doing things in respect to their religious or cultural beliefs in order to maintain peace and promote social cohesion.

With all that, they are two beliefs/ teachings that have contributed in shaping my worldwide that I still remember are that we should always take care , respect and value our parents. There is a stereotype that Pedi males are mama’s boys because they are known to listen and obey their mothers a lot and are “controlled “ by them. Secondly, hospitality is very important to us. My grandmother and mom always make sure that a guest doesn’t leave without being fed food. Even at our weddings, we make sure that we make enough food to cater for the uninvited guests to.

In conclusion, our ethnic and cultural lens is simply what we know or consider to be “normal” or “familiar” . It feels much easier to just rely on what we already know and believe to be true for us. This is why it can become so easy to make assumptions and judgements about people from other cultures and ethnicities. I need to be aware of my assumptions, prejudices and biases in order to avoid creating othering, or promoting negative stereotypes about individuals from other ethnic group. Mostly, I have learned, through the saying that anthropology is about “ making the strange familiar and the familiar strange”.