Week 3 in South Africa

Friday, July 4
Happy 4th of July!!!
It’s pretty strange to be celebrating here where most people don’t know why we’re celebrating. This past week it has been down pouring every day, and it doesn’t look like the weather is going to get better for the braai later. A braai is like an American barbecue. It is a whole process and the South African students in the program are looking forward to helping us with it. We all bought a bunch of meet to cook up for the celebration. The rest of the weekend is going to be spent working on our SEE Models, which is basically a critique of the client’s business. We will use the SEE models to develop deliverables for each client. I can’t believe I have already been in South Africa for 2 weeks. Time has gone by so fast.

Tuesday, July 8
The SEE models are due tomorrow night so it’s crunch time. There is still sooooooo much to do and it doesn’t seem like the work will ever end. I am not really used to working in a group which makes the situation more difficult. It’s difficult to make sure everyone is putting in equal amounts of work. It is also so hard to balance because you want to make sure everyone is pulling equal weight. At the same time, though, there is so much work to be done that we can’t really waste time babysitting others. After tomorrow we will be done finally and we can start focusing on deliverables.

Friday, July 11
After a long few days of work, we had a day-trip today to Robben Island. Robben Island is off the coast of Cape Town. It served as a political prison when the apartheid system was still in place. Nelson Mandela and other members of the anti-apartheid movement were imprisoned there. The tour was really interesting. All the tour guides are former prisoners and they share their stories openly. I realized that calling this a prison wasn’t entirely accurate; prisoners were tortured there and overworked and not given proper information about the political situation. Despite all this, they still managed to communicate and mobilize the party. It’s so strange that less than 15 years ago people were imprisoned there.