by Manita Holtrop
Contributing Writer

Tired of the classroom? Imagine leaving Seattle’s fall colors to join spring as it lifts off in South Africa.

You’ll see an iridescent carpet of flowers covering the desert plains, penguins begrudgingly sharing white sandy beaches with hordes of sunbathers and brightly wrapped women selling fresh tropical fruits on every street corner.

You’ll also meet with Xhosa, Zulu, mixed-race and white South Africans. You’ll see and experience their vastly different living conditions and be able to ask them how they feel about the political changes that are occurring in their country.

On August 17, 2008, Dr. Ernest Johnson will take a group of SCC students on a month-long summer institute to South Africa. There are some prerequisite multicultural studies classes to take in spring of 2008, so now is a good time to start planning.

Johnson teaches multicultural studies at Shoreline Community College. He found that South Africa affects some of the students quite deeply.

“Students make close relationships with the people they meet,” he said. “One of the students who went last year, is going to spend this Christmas with the family she met there.”

Johnson has had an affinity for Africa since his studies took him to Sudan in the 70s and 80s. Wishing to return to the continent in 2003, he organized a summer institute to coastal Kenya, but a terrorist incident in that country forced them to choose somewhere else to go. So he contacted friends at the University of Washington who were going on a trip to South Africa and organized a program to dovetail into theirs.

Johnson is interested in so many of the African countries that he didn’t think he would go back to the same country three times. But the South Africa summer institutes in fall 2003 and 2006 were so successful that he will take a group of 12 Shoreline students back there in 2008.

Colleen Ferguson of the Shoreline International Programs department said, “Students can’t imagine what it’s like to live where there’s been oppression, they tell me they are so impressed by the human spirit and the warmth of the people.”

Johnson aims to show his multicultural studies students how different cultures live together in Africa. He feels that the program can achieve this very well. Students spend three of the four weeks in Cape Town, where they visit wealthy Rotary clubs, Zulu schools and mixed race schools. They also stay two nights in a Xhosa township.

ending eight days away from the educational aspects of the program to take in the sights and relax. Students will visit Nelson Mandela’s home village, the burial sites of Xhosa kings and the small mud hut community of Coffee Bay on the Wild Coast.

Johnson says part of the reason that he likes going back is that he’s made so many good friends and contacts.

Among then is Moss, a teacher from the township of Langa, who supervises the two-night stay in the shantytown. Last year, one of Nelson Mandela’s nephews showed the group the spot where Mandela will one day be buried.

Another thing that Johnson likes to see is how much the students get out of the program and how it changes their lives.

Two students in the 2006 who were planning to be policemen decided to change their majors, one of them is pursuing law at the UW.

How do you think the experience would change you? If you’d like to know more about the program, which will begin enrollment soon, consult Dr. Ernest Johnson or Colleen Ferguson at the International Programs office.

There will also be an open house to answer your questions about this and other study abroad opportunities at noon on November 30 in Room 5302.