Freedom Tour

My first week here has been so great. I have had so time to relax on the beach and work on my tan. As I read my book I wondered how cold everyone was back home.

Yesterday we went on an orientation excursion which was an amazing learning experience and help me learn much more about the more recent political past of South Africa. We started the day at the District Six museum where we learned about the apartheid. The Sixth District was a vibrant, multicultural section of the city. Our tour guide told us about how during the apartheid they classified people by race and South African towns and cities were divided into whites, blacks, and coloureds. He told of how they demolished the sixth district and forced all the non-whites out.
Everyone who was non-white was forced to leave and but in townships outside the city. The township were further divided by black and coloured. Many families were ripped apart because being defined as coloured or black was very subjective. They used the pencil test by which they stuck a pencil in a person hair if it stayed in they were black and if they it feel they were coloured.

After we had time to explore and read in the museum, we were taking to the first and oldest township in South Africa, Langa, where people from district six were moved. We got to tour the township. The whole experience in the township is really hard to describe. It was like leaving the 1st world live of the city of Cape Town and going to the impoverished 3rd world. Parts of Langa in the “Beverly Hills area” were one story houses that looked much like houses in the US. However they are owned by the lawyers, doctors, and teachers that choose to stay apart of the community. However most of Langa looks like any other poorer town but everyone lived with more families in houses and flats. There was also a whole part of the town that just one room shacks made from whatever the people had, which reminded me of how much of Africa is still consider 3rd world. The rain day we had added to the gloom of the township but the people were relatively happy and the children were sooo cute.

We finish our freedom tour by taking a ferry to Robben Island museum, which is where many political activists who fought against the apartheid were held. We got a bus tour of the island and got to see the cells where the prisoners lived. Our tour guide was an ex- political prisoner and told us much of his time there. We were also allowed to see the cell which Nelson Mandela was held.

The whole day was such a great learning experience for me. I got to learn so much about such recent political events. I thought a lot about how if I live in South Africa when I was younger I would have been alive for some of what I was reading and hearing about. It also made me think about how many of the local people I meet and talk to were directly effect by the apartheid.