Although I am actually 2 months away from going back home, it is weird to think that I’m already having my last times with all of my friends in South Africa. It is also strange to think that at this point all of my friends have either graduated from Wheaton already or have embarked on their summer adventures.
Rhodes gives us a week for our reading period, or as they call it here “Swot Week,” so my friends decided to take our last trip all together to Hogsback in the Amatole Mountains. We did a lot of hiking and camping but mostly spent our time talking and appreciating where we were. It is hard not to be reflective when you’re in such an idyllic place- with regards to state of mind and location in the world. I feel very lucky to be able to have such a unique opportunity, and suddenly all the cliche-study-abroad-nostalgia that my upperclassmen friends experienced makes sense to me.
After exams are finished, my friend and I are traveling across South Africa to Cape Town, Durban, and the region formerly known as the Transkei before we return back to Grahamstown for the National Arts Festival. Although I haven’t even started my trip across the country, many of my South African and non-South African friends are going home. Although I am looking forward to traveling again, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed by the idea of having to indefinitely say goodbye to many of my friends.

After an exhausting week of finals (I had 6!) it was nice to escape the academic atmosphere. I had a very tearful goodbye with many of my friends.
I know that I will see my American friends back home, but to all my friends going back home within South Africa, or to France or the Netherlands, I’m not quite sure when I will see them again!
Nonetheless, I was comforted by the adventures and potential stories that awaited me in my trip across the country. I packed up my room and hopped on a plane to Cape Town, where I was lucky enough to be able to meet up with my sister and tour around to all the places I hadn’t been my first time around.
After my sister left Cape Town, my friend Jackie and I went to Durban where we met up with several of our American friends who were on their last trip before returning home to the States. We said our goodbyes in Durban, then headed south to the area known as the Transkei, an apartheid-era region that was meant to linguistically and culturally isolate different ethnic groups within South Africa to support the former policy of “Separate Development.”
After a long trip through the cities of South Africa, it was nice, for a change, to experience the rural village life.
For about a week, we lived in a rural !Xhosa village at a backpacker’s lodge that is owned and ran by the people of Bulungula.
We were able to participate in a variety of aspects of the traditional !Xhosa life, such as collecting firewood, cooking a meal, and collecting water. We met the village’s Sangoma, and had a drink of Jabulani beer with the village elders.
It was a very different experience for us because for the first time in South Africa, we felt immersed in a different culture and came face to face with the language barrier which is surprising considering that South Africa has 11 national languages.
After our jaunt across South Africa, we headed back to Grahamstown for the National Arts Festival where we are living off campus in an apartment. I am excited to see how the quiet city of Grahamstown will be transformed by this world famous festival.