Guest Blogger: Rachel (my roommate)

Here’s an excerpt from my roommate Rachel’s blog about Desmond Tutu and our inter port lecturer. I didn’t feel like rewriting it so I’m just stealing it from her.

Desmond Tutu speaking:

We had the opportunity to hear Arch speak to us about South Africa for the first time this week before we arrive there. He told the most amazing stories and has the most infectious laugh. When he is around you just can’t help but smile. He spoke of how he loved his country so much and thought it was so unique that it could go through so much and still do it with love and humor. He talked about how the country has many problems, but they have overcome so much, and were able to overcome Apartheid without war. Speaking with him was our interport lecturer, Louis Patler who does business in South Africa and is a SAS alumni. It was cool to hear his experiences in South Africa. He told a couple of really interesting stories that I think you might find interesting. His first story was about one SAS trip that went to Cape Town that he was on. When they arrived in Cape Town, immigration would not let the black students off of the ship. Louis got on the loudspeaker of the ship and told all of the students that if the black students weren’t getting off that neither was he and that all of the students could meet him in the Union. He said that about 98% of the students stayed on the ship and refused to get off until the black students could get off. After about 5 hours, South Africa granted the black students temporary European status so they could get off of the ship.

The next story he told was very tragic. He told us about the second SAS trip he went on, this time as a professor, where a black student got in a car with 3 white students that he was friends with to head up Table Mountain. Upon seeing the white students in the taxi with the black student, another car that passed them heading up the mountain proceeded to drive the taxi off of the road. But, they were heading up the mountain, so off of the road also means off of the side of the mountain. The black student was killed instantly and the white students were in such critical condition that they couldn’t continue their voyage. It was so powerful to hear of the impact of the apartheid on something that I am doing now. How going to Cape Town would have been different had I come not that long ago. We got to hear Louis talk about Africa the next night too, but this time about myths about Africa, many of them relating to economics and business which I found really interesting.