On Saturday we took a field trip to Robben Island, an island off the coast of Cape Town that was once a prison- best known for detaining Nelson Mandela for 18 years. To get there you have to take a ferry from the Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island at the V&A Waterfront. While we were on line for the ferry, the craziest thing happened! We were making conversation with a guy who had noticed our Providence College gear, and he turned out to be from the Rhode Island area where my boyfriend and a lot of my PC classmates are from. As we searched for commonalities, we discovered that he was the COUSIN of my freshman year college roommate! He had an internship in Cape Town for the summer and had decided to pay a visit to Robben Island on his own. I couldn't believe it- almost halfway across the world, on another continent, out of all people and places, we just happened to run into each other. It makes you realize just how interconnected we all are. If Uncle Sully were there, he would've called it confluentiality. :) I've taken ferries to get back and forth to Providence College more than I can count, but I've never experienced anything like the Robben Island ferry. It felt more like a roller coaster than a boat! I don't get seasick or motion sick, but I do get anxious and I was VERY nervous as we jumped and dived over the waves. The seas weren't rough, but the boat was going so fast that every time we hit a wave it was like shooting up a ski ramp into the air. One benefit of flying so fast over the waves is that we got there pretty fast- thank goodness. I was SO excited to go to Robben Island, probably the most excited out of all of us girls, because I had spent the summer reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography and I vividly remembered the details of his arrival and activities there. As soon as I stepped off the boat, I tried to imagine Robben Island as Nelson Mandela had described himself seeing when he arrived for his sentence. I wondered how different what I saw was from what he saw- I wondered how much it had changed. Robben Island is no longer a functioning prison, but it is home to a village of the guides and their families. There was a clinic, homes, a church, and even a school. It was very impersonal just driving around the island on a bus and seemed a bit wrong, but I guess it was the most efficient way for the guides to show all the parts of the island without taking the entire day. It kept the island traffic moving. Our guide was a powerful speaker, and I'll never forget the way she said "maximum seCUREity prrrison" and "limestone QUArrrry" by rolling her r's. I was entranced by her voice as she spoke and raised her voice at important moments, and it helped me remember what she said. One thing I learned that I didn't know before is that Robben Island used to be a leper colony. They sent people with leprosy to be treated there in order to isolate the disease. I'm still not exactly sure what leprosy is, but it doesn't sound like something you want to catch. There's a graveyard with a few of their bodies, and one building was left from that period (the rest were demolished out of fear that the disease would breed in the buildings and come back to haunt them). The view from our first pit-stop was so breathtaking that it was hard to believe it was a prison. A place so beautiful was a stifling torture chamber for those who were imprisoned there. Few tried to escape, and those that did didn't make it. Back on the bus, we passed the prison for solitary confinement. Our guide stressed the sacrifices of one man, Robert Sobukwe, to the freedom fight. She wanted to make it clear that Nelson Mandela wasn't the only political prisoner who made an impact, and she wanted Mr. Sobukwe to become more well-known. He was isolated for years- imagine going years without talking to another human being. I would be so depressed and would probably go mentally insane- I'm very much a people person and I'm happiest when I'm surrounded by the company of others. The thoughts that must've consumed his mind- you have nothing to do, no one to talk to, so all you can do is think, and think, and think, and think, and talk to yourself (or the walls). That isn't a way to live. I'd honestly rather die if I knew I was never getting out, but Mr. Sobukwe had a cause to stay alive for- he had hope that one day the changes he fought for would lead to his release. Hope is strong enough to overpower both fear and sadness. I got very excited when our guide took us to the limestone quarry. Mandela talked a lot about it in his book since he spent a little over a decade working there. I remembered specifically that he liked working in the open air by the sea much better, compared to the work they used to do inside, and that while they weren't allowed to talk to each other when they worked, the noise of their tools on the limestone provided the perfect cover for them to have conversations. At the limestone quarry, I also saw the pile of stones that Mandela had started and the other political prisoners had added to when they returned to the island after being released from prison. In part two of the tour, we got out of the bus and entered the Maximum Security Prison (as I was writing this, I said it in my head in our guide's voice). We were supposed to be let in by an ex-political prisoner, but we were met by an apologetic young man who said that most of the ex-political prisoners were old, sick, or dying. As powerful a speaker as our guide was, I was disappointed that we didn't get a tour from an ex-prisoner. I was looking forward to listening to stories of his experience to take away bits of wisdom. I was sad that I didn't get to speak to one because I probably won't ever get back to Robben Island before they all pass away. While most prisoners were housed in communal cells and slept on mats on the floor, Nelson Mandela and the other freedom fighters were separated and placed into individual cells in a different section because there was too much of a risk of them corrupting other prisoners. As we stood in the courtyard waiting to go inside the cell block, I took everything in. Nelson Mandela had walked where I was standing and had spent 18 years of his life here. I remembered the times in his book where he had talked about being in the courtyard. The manuscript of his first book, which he secretly wrote and split into 3 pieces to hide, had been hidden in the sand at the edge of the courtyard. I got to walk over to where it was buried and discovered- it was a powerful moment for me. Mandela's cell was the fourth window in from the outside. When we walked by we could look inside and take pictures, but we could not go inside. They used to leave his cell open, but a) someone stole his spoon, b) people would go inside and be so emotionally moved that they would refuse to leave and have to be dragged out, and c) people would do strange things inside his cell like propose or get married. So for those reasons, they kept his cell door closed. It was pretty small, so it's hard to imagine that a person lived in there. Magali made the point to remind us several times how privileged we were to go to Robben Island and how most South Africans have never even been. My first thought was that I've lived in New York my entire life and I've never been to the top of the Empire State Building. When you live somewhere, you tend not to visit the tourist attractions because you're busy going about your normal life. But I kept her point in mind during our visit. At the Maximum Security Prison, I surveyed the crowd that was on our tour. What I noticed was that almost everyone around me was white and several families were foreign and spoke very little English. I won't deny, Magali had a point. I wonder what barriers or infrastructure prevent so many black South Africans from visiting where Mandela continued to fight for their freedom. It's this kind of situation that our social infrastructures class aims to remedy by reminding engineers to keep access for the people in mind whenever they plan or build.
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