Day 7 - September 5, 2006

We woke up this morning again at 7am, as class would start at 8:30am. The Jammie shuttle leaves at 7:40 and 8:20 am, so we decided just to walk at 8am. It took us quite a while to walk to UCT, and we were late by almost 10 minutes. It was a good thing we had a group of 6 people with us, so we were late together. We hadn't started class yet, which worked in our benefit.

Today we have a guest leading classes, Prof. Jonathan Jansen, who is the Dean of Faculty of Education at the University of Pretoria. He was a really interesting man and delivered a thought-provoking opening round of statements on the status of education in South Africa today, many problems still based on race relations. We saw a short clip from a film about integrating schools.

Then, we left the UCT campus and traveled to Trafalgar High, a local high school in the District Six area of Cape Town. Trafalgar was the first school in Cape Town for non-white students. To this day, the school is almost 50-50 coloured and black students. We first met with the principal and then a group of 30 students were brought in to chat with us. It was great speaking to the students or "learners" as they are called. The students were all 10th and 11th graders. I spoke to mostly girls, who wanted to know about America. Some were scared about the safety situation, as crime was rampant in some of their neighborhoods and there were drug dealers too. The students who I spoke with were coloured and spoke Afrikaans at home. The school itself required both English and Afrikaans. I even exchanged email contact with the girls.

After, we went out to lunch near the parliament building in a restaurant located in a city garden. The food was decent, and I also had a yummy lime milkshake. Many of the patrons of the restaurant were white, and they were definitely giving us a few dirty looks, since our group was so ethnically diverse.

Then, we headed to the Centre of the Book for a panel with a group of education activists, including Neville Alexander - a former prisoner on Robben Island. Prof. Jansen led the discussion which was very insighting on their views of everything from South African history books to affirmative action. We concluded with a wrap-up discussion on the importance of making sure everyone is included in the educational system from Afrikaners to coloureds.

At the end of the session, one of our group members Kara was sick and had to be taken to the emergency room. She was fine though. We headed back home, and the caterer came and set up for dinner. It was a simpler dinner, pasta and salad, but it was still pretty good. Then, many of us took out our computers to write in the online journals. We fooled around online for a while and then headed off to bed.