Project: Have Fun

I turned in my last paper a week ago and Project: Have Fun commenced shortly there after with the arrival of Prexy to South Africa. For those of you who don’t know who Prexy is, he is my mentor. I took my first Southern African history courses with him while at Columbia and traveled with him to South Africa in 2007. He has been a major influence on me in the last several years that I have known him. Part of his Making the Road Non-Profit company is to bring groups to different parts of Africa several times a year. If you're interested, just google his name: Prexy Nesbitt

This trip, He’s in South Africa with 13 Columbia College students “conducting” a course called: “The Future of History: Memory in Post-Apartheid South Africa". The students were in Cape Town for a week, then Johannesburg for a week, then Durban for a week. Mostly, I think their work revolves around memory and how public spaces such as museums promote certain histories over others. The group is also meeting with very influential activists, scholars and historians from the struggle (most of whom are Prexy’s friends). The meeting I was most excited about for them happened this last Saturday. Ahmed Kathrada led a personal tour for the group around Robben Island. Robben Island is where Mandela was kept prisoner for 18 of the 27 years of his incarceration. Kathrada was also a political prisoner with Mandela on Robben island. 

This is a great course and I wish they had offered something like this when I was at Columbia.These students are very smart and it was good to talk about the South Africa liberation movements with them; it was a good reminder of why I'm here now.

I met with the group on several occasions, but this is a photo from a night out that I unexpectedly ran into them. This is the rooftop at a place called The Waiting Room on Long Street – so far my favorite spot.


These are the friends I was with that night. My friend Hannah from class and her friend that was visiting from Jo'burg.