ROBBEN ISLAND

1/28/09

I’ve reached the 10 day mark! And in celebration we did something awesome today-we went to Robben Island and it was incredible. We took a boat to the island, had a tour and then took the boat back (in total it was a 4 ½ hour trip) Our guide for the bus tour around the island was a former prisoner and his speech for the trip was really good. Besides explaining the history of the island and its prisons he taught us about the town (which I had no idea existed) and told anecdotes from other prisoners during apartheid. He also showed us the place where in 1995, one year after the prison closed, he and others had gathered for a reunion for its closing. One of the people from the group had picked up a rock and set it in the middle of a limestone quarry (where manual labor was done during imprisonment), each person followed by adding another rock to the pile. The rocks were all different shapes and sizes but the simple pile now serves as the official monument of South Africa’s democratic government. Our guide ended the tour by encouraging us to believe in the possibility of forgiveness and change. He spoke of educating our generation so that other nations can follow South Africa in using reconciliation to end conflict-it was really motivational and encouraging, especially because I’m studying peace and conflict resolution…and reconciliation is part of the foundation to that field.
After his ending speech, our group was dropped off in front of a prison. Our guide apologized explaining he couldn’t give prison tours because they are too painful but that another guide would be waiting for us inside to give the second half of our tour. The prison we were shown was the same prison where Nelson Mandela was kept. We got to see his prison cell, which was a lot smaller than I imagined, I think our guide said it was something like 2 x 2.5 meters…basically really tiny. After the prison tour we got back on the boat and returned to Cape Town. I can’t really explain how cool the tour was and I know it sounds really dumb to say it was inspirational but it really was AND it felt really good to finally do something authentic to Cape Town.