Let Me Tell You About My Boat

I've just returned from my trip to Robben Island, which was every bit as emotional and mesmerizing as Long Walk to Freedom made it seem tht it would be. Being able to freely walk the grounds of the maximum security prison - which was surprisingly only a very small part of the Island - brought the struggles and successes of the old and new South Africa home for me. Walking through B-Seksie and seeing Cell #5 in the same condition as when Prisoner #466/64, as Mr. Mandela was known, left it, seeing a spontaneous rock pile built at a reunion in 1995 marking the spot, some 50 meters from the current wall, where the limestone quarry was begun by Mandela and other political enemies of the apartheid regime, watching the South African flag wave in the winter wind above the razor wire of the prison walls, all while being led through the grounds by a former prisoner, Glen, a former student agitator from Soweto, was a totally moving experience. If you ever find yourself here, the very first thing you must do is go to Robben Island. Every human being should. Freedom, a concept I often mock because of the way it is being eroded in the United States - okay, I know, that's another rant for another blog and another time - becomes a very real concept when you see the world from behind those walls. It is a truly humbling and moving experience that I cannot - obviously - recommend highly enough.

That said, if you do go, stay away from the good ship Dias. We students had the misfortune of making the 11 km journey over open ocean in this unseaworthy excuse for a former fishing trawler. As the other ferries (high speed catamarans) whizzed by us, shuttling pilgrims from shore to shore, we were bobbing along in 4-foot seas trying not to lose our lunch. It was like being on a really twisty roller coaster for an hour (each way) with no opportunity to get off.

In any respect, do go to Robben Island, but do yourself a favor and avoid the Dias.