Our Visit to Robben Island
We took a ferry out to Robben Island on Wednesday morning to visit the prison where Nelson Mandela was held for 17 years.
Our tour guide at the prison was a former prisoner during the apartheid era. He walked us through the grounds of the prison and led us into a large room that housed fifty prisoners. He told us about the living conditions in this room and the procedures that the guards used to classify the inmates.
From this large cell, we walked out into the area that is referred to as Mandela's Garden, which is where inmates were forced to break rocks or sew bags for hours each day.
This area was the only place that included a picture of the conditions at the prison. In the picture you can see a row of men tied to the ground, spread about four feet apart, hammering rocks, and a second row of men with a pile of bags, working in the hot sun.
From the garden, we walked down the hall of solitary confinement cells, with a stop at Nelson Mandela's jail cell. Our last stop on the tour was another large cell with rows of benches. We all sat down to hear the story about the release of the prisoners and the negotiations for freedom.
Our tour guide sent us away with the charge to pass along what we have learned here at Robben Island.
Next we were given a driving tour around the rest of the island. Before it was a prison, Robben Island was also used as a leper colony. A small stone church is the only building left standing from that part of the Island's history; all the other buildings were burned.
On the back side of the island, we saw cannons from World War II that were used to shoot down German ships. The driving tour concluded back at the ferry landing, which we boarded for our return to Cape Town.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét