Robben Island

On Thursday the 9^th of March we were going to Robben Island. We were meeting at Bishops in front of the chapel around 7.45. We took the bishops school bus to waterfront where we would take the fairy to Robben Island. The waves were quite rough and the fairy was rocking over the ocean. Lucky none of us got see sick. Once on the Island we got a bus where we were introduced to the tour guide. He would be giving us information about the island while we were driving through. It was quite an interesting bus ride seeing that he had a lot to say and had a really good sense of humour. He knew how to interact with the people in the bus and their nationalities to make it more interesting. He told us some fascinating and sometimes rather shocking stories about the island and the apartheid. He told us that during the apartheid, people in Holland would say in supermarkets like Albert Heijn that whenever you ate an orange imported from South Africa, you would be sucking the blood of the black people. I was shocked when I heard that and at the same moment ashamed of my own country.

An interesting fact about Robben Island is that it has the 3^rd world’s biggest penguin colony and that even though the Dutch people used to eat the penguins with cheese, it still has the third biggest penguin population. After the bus ride, we went into the prison on Robben Island where we obviously visited the cell of Nelson Mandela. I was impressed by the fact that it was so small and He was able to stay there for about 18 years.  Afterwards we went back to Waterfront and had some time to look around and have fun. We went back around 2 ‘o clock and were dropped off at Bishops where we would be picked up by the Herschel school bus to take us back.

I really enjoyed the trip to Robben Island because that it was interesting and made me realize how it must have been a couple of years ago seeing that it was rather unimaginable to me.