Robben Island

My roommate Kenyatta heads back to Chicago on Friday, so we went out Saturday night to celebrate.  We were told that Long Street is where you go to find the dance clubs and bars.  You definitely lose track of time and meet some interesting people when you are out.  A highlight for me was when several guys from Botswana thought I was South African.

Sunday morning we went to the waterfront to take a ferry to Robben Island.  This is where Nelson Mandela (the first president of South Africa elected in a democratic election in 1994) served 18 years of his 27 years in prison.  The ferry takes about 45 minutes to sail out across Table Bay to the island.  You could see jellyfish floating around in the bay on the trip over.  The wall to protect the harbor was covered in more birds than I have ever seen in one place in my life.  The island is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.  There are 200 residents of the island who live and work there.  They have a post office, a super market, but no police force because the crime rate is zero.  We started the tour on foot in the prison.  Here a former inmate showed us around the facilities.  He spent 5 years in jail for protesting being taught at University in Afrikaans.  He had been in the lower security rooms where they stick up to 60 people in at a time.  He spoke of how international organizations had intervened somewhat to provide them with blankets/mattress to sleep on and to give them hot water for their showers.  They were very grateful for these changes. 

The high security political prisoners, including Mandela, were kept in tiny cells with only a pot for a toilet, a cup for water, and a bamboo mat for a bed. In the prison there is a little courtyard where Mandela was allowed to have a garden for a brief period of time.  The well behaved inmates were allowed to have study time as well.  Outside of the prison there is the quarry where the inmates had to collect limestone.  They were told it was a 6 month project, but it ended up lasting for 13 years.  The dust was so bad that all of the prisoner’s eyesight was ruined.  In the quarry there is a little cave where, they went to use the bathroom during the day in buckets.  Over 70% of the prisoners were college grads, lawyers, and political figures – very highly educated.  They taught all the other prisoners to write on the dust in the floor of this cave and they taught them to read.  Then those prisoners could study at the prison and most of them went on to higher education after being released.  Lots of these individuals are in high power positions today.  Parts of the Constitution of South Africa were discussed in this cave.  I read the abridged version of Nelson Mandela’s first book A Long Walk to Freedom last week.  He wrote the majority of this book from that prison cell on Robben Island.

The island was a mental hospital and a facility for those suffering from leprosy before its days as a prison. We passed a graveyard of 1,500 people who died from leprosy. When they built the prison every single building but one church was destroyed for fear of contamination.  The island is home to many bird species and even penguins that were just waddling around on the side of the road.  There is an exceptional view of Cape Town with Table Mountain in the backdrop. This used to give the prisoners hope.

At this point I have to share one of the funniest coincidences that has ever occurred in my life.  At the bars Saturday night the guy in front of us at one of the bars bought 5 shots – 1 for himself and 1 each for four of us girls.  We left the bar right away afterward to get away from him.  It turns out he was on our 4 hour Robben Island tour with his girlfriend… We didn’t see him until Emma made eye contact with him once getting off the ferry and it made the entire trip so incredibly awkward and hilarious when we got anywhere near him.  Amy – I am sharing this story because I know you will appreciate it.

We walked to Green Market Square after sailing back to the mainland to see what stalls were open and what they were selling.  The market was nice, but we must have been looking exceptionally like tourists because we kept getting hit up for money by everyone which was really uncomfortable.

We attended supper club Sunday night.  Leila is South African, a chef, and she lives in our building.  A group of us went up to have a 3 course meal that she prepared.  It was absolutely delicious.  Afterward Paco and Fabrice who are from the Democratic Republic of Congo were talking about different parts of their countries history which was really interesting to learn about.  The DRC is right next to Rwanda where all of the conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis occurred.  I have seen the movie Hotel Rwanda that relates to this conflict, but hearing about the genocide from a neighboring country was horrifying and makes me appreciate the USA.