As I’m writing this, I’m waiting at the airport for my flight departing Cape Town and reflecting on my experiences here over the past 10 days. My study abroad program focused on the study of race and politics here in South Africa, learning about how the legacy of the brutal apartheid system shaped the country today. Across this program I had a lot of interesting experiences and framing them within the context of the class made it all the more engaging. We visited both District 6 and Robben Island Prison, two sites that were home to some of the worst abuses of the apartheid era and we got to learn firsthand about how these events and systems affected people from guides that actually lived through them. It was a very cool experience getting such a firsthand perspective, but it also reflected some of the modern economic issues we were also studying, mainly the fact that many of these people wouldn’t be returning to jobs like this if the country’s unemployment rate wasn’t so high.

Apart from that, we also had an amazing experience touring the natural sites Cape Town has to offer. This included a massive day trip to the Cape Peninsula, where we got to see the mountains, tons of wildlife including penguins, seals and eland, and even got to hike to the top of the Cape of Good Hope, the furthest south-western point in Africa. This, in addition to exploring city life and all it has to offer, made for an amazing experience I won’t soon forget.

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Learn more about this blogger’s study abroad program: Race and Politics in South Africa