Today the weather in Cape Town is absolutely fabulous - sunny and low 70's. It feels like summer is on its way! Work was very similar to yesterday - a smaller group but quite a lot of enthusiasm. I have no idea when the substitute O.T. is coming. No one else seems to know. Some of nurses were asking me for the key to the O.T. room because they had some belongings in that room. They thought that Lucy would have given it to me and I actually asked her if she would so that I could use her sporting equipment and games while she was gone but she refused. I was not surprised but it just meant that I had to create my own supplies and also now obviously means that some of the nurses have to wait until she is back before they can recover their belongings.
After work, the entire volunteer group went to the District 6 museum. This is a museum dedicated to telling the world what happened in District 6 of Cape Town. When the Group Areas Act came into being because of apartheid the government designated certain ares of the city as "White Areas". Many areas of the city had a mixed racial profile at the time and if you were colored or black but living in a "White Area" you had to move. Your land/house was expropriated and you were relocated. The government did not move entire neighborhoods to the same area but split up neigborhoods and people were sent to live among others they did not know. District 6 was a neighborhood close to downtown Cape Town with beautiful views of the ocean and mountains and as such was a desirable place to live, which is why they designated it White. The government moved 60,000 people from their homes and bulldozed the vast majority of the neighborhood.
While I was at the museum I started wondering how I would feel if I was kicked out of my home because the government decided I was the wrong color to live there. It would be pretty devastating and hard to understand how something one has no control of could have such dramatic consequences on one's life. I also started thinking about our trip to Robben Island yesterday and about what an amazing person Nelson Mandela was and is. He was treated so poorly for so many years by whites and yet when he was released from prison he insisted that everyone - black, white and colored - be treated fairly and with peace and reconciliation. His goal was that no one in his country should ever be subject to any kind of oppression again. He is truly a wonderful role model for South Africa and the rest of the world.
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