PCV: Paid Caribbean Vacation

Robben Island is an island off the coast of Cape Town that was originally a place to send Lepers back in the day. Starting in 1960, they made it into a prison for political prisoners of the Apartheid. Basically anyone that was black or coloured that disagreed with the political system in place was sent here with no trial and no warning. Most people had no idea where they were going or how long they would be there. Nelson Mandela was sent there in 1963 on a life sentence for being the leader of the African National Conference. He spent 27 years in prison before being released in 1990. He later became the first president of the new democracy. He went from prisoner to president in a matter of 4 years.
Most people when they think of Robben Island or hear of it think that it will be something like Alcatraz. I may have never been there but I don’t think its anything like that. I was surprised to see that the Island had a large amount of wildlife just prancing around. We got into a bus after the 40 minute fairy ride and went around the island and got to hear a little bit about the history of the island. It was hard to believe a place so beautiful with so many animals, houses, and lighthouses were also the place of a prison that held people for no good reason besides disagreeing with politics.
When we finally got into the prison, I was surprised to see how small it was compared to the size of the island.
We were taken to cell B5 which was Nelson Mandela’s cell for the 18 years that he spent on Robben Island. The neat thing is that your tour guide on the island is always an ex-prisoner, so it’s nice to have that side of the story. The time flew by inside this place and it was weird to be there for a tour when just less than 20 years ago it was the place of torture and dehumanization that many of us cant comprehend.
One of the most interesting things about this was how the museum was not set up to be a remembrance of the suffering of the cause. Instead it was set up to show the struggle of the black people and how this museum symbolized the human spirit and courage to fight for what was right. Bad things may have happened, but no one there was bitter at any white person for the harm done.
Our tour guide’s name was Sparks and he was in the F section. We sat in his cell that was about 60 feet by 25 feet that had 1 toilet, 1 shower, and it held 80 men. He was there for 7 years. Kind of hard to believe considering how hard it must have been to come back to the place that stole your life away for 7 years every day. He was as happy as ever to tell his story despite how hard it must have been.
I was supposed to be asking questions for a class of mine but I felt the need to just stay quiet and take all of it in. It was a somber place and I wish I could have spent more time going into the cells and reading about the individual prisoners that inhabited those cells.
If Robben Island did anything to me, it helped me better understand that I had to go to a township even more. I had to see how things still were. I was sick and tired of living the privileged life in Cape Town where black people were hard to find and white people were the majority. I was in Africa, and I was having trouble finding what I would consider Africans. I saw this as a problem.