The majority of the day was spent on Robben Island even
though it was a beautiful place a lot of harsh and ugly things happened there.
Robben Island wasn’t always a prison. Originally it was where they shipped people who had
leprosy. They would isolate them from everyone because it was contagious. It
became a whole community with churches, stores and houses. Afterwards it became
a prison and under apartheid it is where those political prisoners classified as African and coloured were sent. The most interesting part was the people who give the
tours there are people who were in the prison before. I was confused about this
because why would anyone want to work for a place that did so much damage to
them. That is something I have learned being in South Africa the people in
museums and these great places of history are shared by people who experienced
them. Instead of holding on to the things that have been done to them they use
what happened to learn from it and to share their experiences so others can
learn from what happened. In a way it has more meaning to it.
We were able to learn a lot of cool facts about the
prisoners from the tour guides. Some of them being that where the prisoners
would work was hell but was something to look forward to because it was a time
to share with others. There was a limestone crave created and the guards tried to make
into a toilet but the prisoners did not use it for that instead they would use
it to be together and a learning place. “Each one teach one” was what that cave
symbolized and the way they did this was by taking the toilet buckets and
filling them with sand to write in them. Even though they were in prison they
wanted to stay together because they were all there for the same purpose. One
thing that sticks out to me was the church that was there can be use on
Valentines Day for visitors to get married.
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