Welcome to Bloemfontein

I arrived to Bloemfontein on Sunday afternoon after two weeks of traveling around South Africa. We were welcomed by Louise Steyn, from the International Office at UFS. She showed us to our hostel (dorm), which she had stocked with food and other essentials. We quickly unpacked and headed to dinner with the other ASU students, UFS students, and some professors from both universities. I sat with the four UFS medical students that were there. They were all third years and preparing to take their final exam. Here in South Africa, students begin clinical rotations after this exam, so they were all very excited and ready to start seeing patients and doing rounds at the hospital! The girls seemed very nice, and I am looking forward to spending more time with them when we start shadowing them next week.

The rest of this week, we have been getting adjusted to living in Bloem. Monday, we were given a campus tour and went to the Mimosa Mall to get cell phones, buy some food for the week, and do a little fun shopping. Tuesday we went to the Waterfront, which is another large shopping center. We tried rum and raisin gelato, which we've been told is a very popular flavor here.

Wednesday, we went on a city tour! We began at the Anglo Boer War Museum. Unfortunately, the exhibits were closed for rennovations, but we were able to see various memorials outside and watch a documentary on the war. There was a specific memorial dedicated to women and children who died in concentration camps during the war. We even learned about Emily Hobhouse, the woman for whom our dorm is named. She was an Englishwoman who came to South Africa to expose what was happening in these concentration camps and is buried a the memorial. Our tour guide then told us about the relationship between the Anglo Boer War and apartheid. He argued that the homelands and townships were similar to concentration camps. Therefore, it is important to learn about history so we don't repeat the same mistakes. It was an interesting parallel that I would not have considered on my own.

After that, we drove through a township nearby. In some places, there were homes built for the people living there by the government. However, there were still shacks next door. The families living in the homes rent these shacks out to immigrants or refugees from other countries in Africa, since there are 8-9 million immigrants in South Africa. From the township, we drove into a historically colored part of Bloemfontein. This is an artificial race classification for those not distinctly black or white. During the years of apartheid, various tests were used to determine the race of these people. One specific example is the pencil test, in which a pencil was placed in the hair of the person. If the pencil fell out, the person was considered white. If it did not, the person was considered black. This often separated children from parents who looked different.

We also visited an art museum that had many unique sculptures, an exhibit on African music, and paintings ranging from very traditional to abstract. Later, we drove to Naval Hill. We saw zebras, ostriches, giraffes, antelope, and a wildebeest. Finally, we visited Lebone Village, an orphanage for children who are infected with HIV or affected by it in some way. The village also has its own woodworking shop, bakery, and textiles shop. These both raise money for the children and provide a skill for the children to use later in life. We will be volunteering there toward the end of our internship, and we are all very excited to go back!