South Africa « OSU Abroad

Morgan Thompson is a student at Oregon State University studying Sociology and Psychology with a minor in Communications. During the winter of 2015, she decided to intern with IE3 Global in South Africa. Most of the work that she completed was centered around Human Rights and the political history of South Africa. Read on learn more about her life-changing experience!

One of my most memorable days in Cape Town was a very physically and emotionally straining day. This was the day I visited Robben Island. Robben Island is the Alcatraz of South Africa. It is internationally known for the fact that Nobel Laureate and former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island for 18 of the 27 years he served behind bars before the fall of apartheid. Kgalema Motlanthe, who also served as President of South Africa, spent 10 years on Robben Island as a political prisoner, as did the current President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma.

Our tour began with a forty minute boat ride from the downtown waterside of Cape Town out to the island. We were fortunate enough to get seats on the smaller jet boat that made much faster time! The first half of the tour was by bus around the island showing off the different prison sections, the housing for the guards and officials, the nature scenes of the island, and the Leper sections. Robben Island was also where people suffering from leprosy were sent for many years to be kept in isolation from the general population.

The second half of the tour was through the actual prison. This section was led by a former political prisoner who had spent 18 years of his life in this prison. It was heart wrenching to hear of the torture and abuse that these individuals who were fighting for freedom, equality, and the end of Apartheid faced. It was especially powerful to hear the story from a former prisoner and really made me realize how recent these events transpired. It really made me think how fortunate I was to be born into the circumstances I was and the sacrifices many people made to make that possible.

This was a very humbling experience that really made me realize that a violation to human rights anywhere is a violation of human rights everywhere, and that it is our responsibility to learn from the mistakes of the past. This experience gave me the courage and motivation to change my career focus and spend my life making the world a better place for all.

To learn more about study abroad and internship opportunities at OSU, click here!

While at Oregon State University, Jordan Machtelinckx majored in Civil Engineering and International Studies, and spent a semester in Cape Town, South Africa in the Spring of 2012. Since his graduation, he has embarked on a journey to explore Eastern Europe and Asia. In this blog entry he articulates how his perceptions of various cultures have changed. Read on to learn about an Oregonian’s experience across the world!

In travelling to entirely unfamiliar places, I have been happily overwhelmed by the complexity and relationships of cultures. Currently on a journey to experience the spectrum of culture and landscapes across Central Asia, I am constantly surprised by the way seemingly different cultures are actually hugely related. I’ve come to realize that geographically neighboring cultures which have always seemed, in my inexperience, to be similar have been, in actuality, historically unrelated until relatively recently. The bottom line is that cultural and political borders are not the same.

I must admit that I have little background knowledge on the subject compared to those who may have studied it academically so my revelations may come without surprise to many, but jumping into the trip with no preparation was a conscious decision on my part. I have been lucky enough to travel by numerous methods for various objectives, but this trip was fueled by little more than curiosity for what I might learn along the way.

For example, hitch hiking across Turkey illustrated the difference between the European-style west side and the Central Asian east side with its significant Middle Eastern influence. Meeting the inhabitants of various backgrounds along the way piqued my interest about the cultural history of the area and motivated me to dive into some articles on regional history that provided headaches of confusion rivalling those of my time as an undergrad in engineering. Trying to research more about the boundaries of Kurdistan led me through articles that felt like condensed political science courses and clarified why so many residents of Turkey identified themselves to me a bit differently than others. Some were proud of Turkish heritage, some of Kurdish heritage, and some of each group embraced Arabic language to varying degrees. I was fascinated to see the associations of these cultural distinctions with my geographical eastward progress.

Language itself is a cultural attribute I have always taken interest in. It was news to me that before Ataturk (modern Turkey’s first president) circa 1928, the Turkish language used an Ottoman script which was closely related in appearance to the modern Arabic script. Crossing from Georgia to Armenia brought me through a small Georgian region where most residents are Muslim Azerbaijanis. Despite the Azerbaijanis being separated from Turkey by Georgia and Armenia, which both use vastly different languages and alphabets, they are in fact historically most related to the Turkish culture (not to be confused with the country of Turkey… that’s the confusing part). In researching the next leg of my journey I discovered that the Kazakh language was originally written using an Arabic-derived script as well, and is actually also a Turkic language. Simply because Kazakhstan now uses Cyrillic, I had always associated both the language and the culture with those of Russia instead.

Coming across these kinds of discoveries as I move eastward was exactly what I was hoping for when I (didn’t) plan this journey. With my lack of previous knowledge I find it hard to retain all the details of this region’s cultural, political and linguistic history I learn along the way, but I am pleased with myself at the knowledge I have managed to retain. I consider myself well-educated in various domains, but the culture and history of this part of the world was not one of them. Wandering across it with no itinerary has proved to be an efficient method of satisfying my curiosity and exposing me to culture and history at which I am – all pride aside – a complete novice.

To learn more about study abroad opportunities at Oregon State University, click here!

Katherine Larsen, a recent OSU graduate, interned with IE3 in Cape Town, South Africa during the summer of 2014 at the Cape Town Refugee Centre. Majoring in Human Development and Family Sciences through the College of Public Health and Human Sciences, Katherine was able to help counsel and provide guidance to refugees in the small community of Observatory. She is currently pursuing a Masters of Social Work graduate degree from Portland State University and plans to focus her career on clinical social work with the intent to work abroad in the future. Read on to learn about the ups and downs of returning from a life-changing IE3 Global Internship!

It has been a year since I have returned to the United States. I still cannot believe that my time abroad is over. As I reflect back on my 10-week internship at the Cape Town Refugee Centre, it feels as though time simply flew by, although I know that each day was packed with adventure. There are so many qualities that I have gained through this experience and I feel as though I have changed in a more than noticeable way. Not only do I feel more independent, I feel confident in myself as a person, a future social worker, and a community member. I have made an abundance of new relationships and now have global friendships that will last a lifetime. By consistently challenging myself to work diligently at the Cape Town Refugee Centre, I have gained valuable skills that will stay with me throughout my future career. Through volunteering and living within a new culture, I connected to the suburb Observatory and the city of Cape Town in an unexplainable way.

I learned an abundance of life lessons throughout this experience. I took time daily to reflect on my experiences, journal, and conduct continuous research regarding South Africa. One of my favorite pieces of reading I completed during my internship abroad was “After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa” by Douglas Foster. The biggest lesson I learned was that I cannot have control over all situations. This trip allowed me to be more spontaneous and to stop sweating the small things. My stress levels had never been so low! In addition to learning to go with the flow, I learned how to immerse myself deeply into a culture and adapt to the changes in lifestyle. My work as an intern at the Cape Town Refugee Centre taught me that everybody has a story and I will never learn that story if I judge a book by its cover. Opening myself up to experiences and simply listening during one-on-one conversations has massively shifted my opinion of others and has taught me to be more empathetic to those who are different than me. Furthermore, I have come to realize how much circumstance plays a role in an individual’s life. I worked with people in South Africa that have worked so hard to better their situation but were held back by many obstacles. Many people will continue to struggle throughout their lives, simply because of the family and geographic region they were born into. I will hold all of these realizations that I made during my global internship with me for the rest of my life.

Coming home and learning to adapt back to the United States’ way of life has been a challenge. One of the most frustrating parts of ending an internship abroad is my inability to explain in words what my experience was like. Friends and family have asked me to share what it was like and although I try my best, nothing comes close to what my summer actually was. Cape Town is a city unlike any other place I have ever been and it is hard to capture in words the beauty of the culture and the people. I especially miss walking to the train in the mornings and seeing Table Mountain hovering over the city. Regardless of my struggles adjusting, being home with my loved ones is wonderful.

Although my time in South Africa has come to an end, I know that I will return to the wonderful neighborhood of Observatory in the future. There is a quote on the streets of downtown Cape Town that holds so much truth: “I came here to change Cape Town, but Cape Town changed me.” I feel blessed to have had such a wonderful experience in the amazing country of South Africa. I left part of my heart in the city of Cape Town and I cannot wait to visit my second home again soon.

To learn more about the study abroad and international internships OSU offers, click here!

Laurie Armatas has been a Registered Nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital in the labor and delivery department for 20 years. Her daughter, Hilary, is following in her footsteps in becoming a nurse. While majoring in Public Health at OSU, Hilary went on an IE3 Global Internship to Durban and Cape Town, South Africa, to be part of the Child and Family Health International program. In this entry, Laurie writes about how it felt to send her child to South Africa, and provides a mother’s perspective on education abroad.

Hilary in Cape Town l Hilary Armatas — Hilary in Cape Town, South Africa.

When Hilary heard that she had been chosen to go to South Africa on a medical internship with IE3 Global she was ecstatic. She had spent a year working to accomplish the goals she had set for herself that would make her a desirable candidate for the program. As her mother I was incredibly happy for her, but I must confess that there was some trepidation. She was going to be traveling half way around the world, and immersed in a culture she knew very little about.

Working in the health care field myself, I worried that practices in a developing country may not be what I believe to be safest for the practitioner. Would they teach her to wear protective covering when needed? Would there be resources available to provide the protective covering for her? I also worried that she might not realize what she needed to do to be safe, not just in the hospitals and clinics, but out in the communities as well. What would the families she would be living with be like? Would they support her if she needed it? I gave her far more instruction than I’m sure she wanted or needed, and then I left her with probably the most important advice…get all she possibly could from the experience, open her eyes as well as her mind, and enjoy herself!

She followed my suggestions and had what she describes as the “best time in her life”. She was pretty sad when it was time to come home. The adjustment once home seemed to be hard. Her situation is likely different from others because she came back to hear she had been accepted into nursing school and would be leaving her friends at Oregon State to pursue her nursing degree. In any case, she came home a more mature and self-confident person, with clearly defined goals in place. The experiences she had in South Africa really helped her fine tune the path she wants to travel and the goals she wants to meet.

My advice to other parents whose children are heading off to experience the world on an IE3 Global internship would be to learn what you can about the culture they will be immersed in so you can help them to be safe (they will probably think you are being overprotective), stay in contact with them (we used Whats APP on our cell phones ), and they will likely need (want?) more money than you think. Hilary earned all she took with her, but ended up borrowing some so she could do the once in a life time things that came up (bungee jumping and caged shark diving!!!). Finally, I would advise parents to send them off to have the “best time in their life”.

When I was in nursing school there was no treatment other than supportive care for HIV/AIDS. Hilary’s internship opportunities taught me that it is now considered a chronic condition that can be well managed with available resources and education. I think it would be fulfilling to help provide that, and to be a tiny bit instrumental in improving the health status of a population in need. Because of the amazing experiences Hilary had, we are talking about the possibility of going back together once she has finished nursing school to volunteer in a medical venue.

Lauren Forbes (Biology, ’11) went to South Africa in Fall ’09 through IE3 Global Internships and participated in a CFHI medical rotation internship in Durban and Cape Town. She is currently an MPH student at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. She is in the process of applying to the Fulbright program.

I always thought I wanted to be a doctor; in college at Oregon State University I was a pre-med student and I had aspirations of going on to medical school to become a pediatrician. Little did I know the things that interested me most about the health field were more in line with public health than medicine.

In my junior year, I had the opportunity to go to South Africa on an IE3 internship through Child and Family Health International. I spent 10 weeks there, five in Durban and five in Cape Town, living with host families in both cities. This was one of my first international experiences and it really sparked my passion for global health by showing me the stark reality of global poverty and how sociocultural and environmental factors influence the health of the community. Spending time in both Durban and Cape Town allowed me to experience the best of both cities—Durban and its uniquely Zulu influences and Cape Town, an amazing city, rich in cultural diversity. While the clinical experiences at the community health posts and hospitals provided me with invaluable health experience at the front lines, the stories and factors surrounding the patients, influencing their health status was what most intrigued me. One elderly man that I attended to had a dangerously infected ankle wound and had walked nearly all day to reach the hospital for treatment. For many people like him, the cost of treatment and the fear of an undiagnosed illness causes them to avoid seeking a doctor when they get sick. These public health issues are just a few of the environmental factors that influence the health status and outcomes of the South African communities in which I worked. The experience in South Africa was life changing and it helped me to grow personally and professionally, preparing me for other international experiences.

Lauren (r.) with her peers and colleagues in The Gambia

The opportunity for me to go abroad again came last spring; Drexel University had some existing ties with the Gambia, a small country in West Africa, and they wanted to send a group of public health students there to assist at a rural hospital. Myself and four other students were selected to go; we came together and formed and organization called Leading Outreach Through Volunteer Endeavors (LOVE) Abroad to help support our mission to the Gambia. Because of my experience in South Africa, I was better able to process the things that I observed and heard about while in the Gambia, such as the blatant poverty, health disparities, and gender inequities. In the Gambia, I saw the same abject poverty, but I also saw a baffling resilience and hopefulness in the communities in which I worked. This experience abroad not only allowed me to put my public health training into practice, but it also allowed for a mutually beneficial international partnership to be reinforced between Drexel University and the Gambia.

My international experiences in South Africa and the Gambia have been incredibly enriching, and have inspired me to pursue global maternal and child health as a career. This year, I will be completing my MPH degree and I plan to pursue fellowship opportunities in these fields upon graduating. I definitely encourage anyone who is considering studying abroad to go for it; the chance to experience another country through a service-learning opportunity is an invaluable experience that you will remember for the rest of your life.

Ashley Wood, a former soccer player at OSU, majored in Exercise & Sports Science, and interned abroad during the Winter term 2010 in Durban and Cape Town, South Africa, through IE3 Global Internships.

This last winter term I embarked on a journey to beautiful South Africa as a medical intern. I was able to immerse myself in an entirely new country and culture, and was able to grow both personally and professionally. It was an amazing experience that I will never forget.

The first five weeks I spent in Cape Town at a district hospital that intakes patients from the day clinics. I spent time rotating through the trauma, surgery, and orthopedics. I saw how understaffed hospitals were, and how overworked many doctors are. Many doctors are leaving the country for places that pay better, and have better lifestyles where they are not overworked. In South Africa, there are so few doctors that many day hospitals and clinics are run by nurses. Even though a lot of money is put into healthcare, I still noticed that supplies were short.

The next five weeks were spent in Durban, where I rotated around a number of medical facilities. I was able to go to a couple different day clinics, some in the rural areas just outside of Durban, as well as an orphanage, a hospice, a private hospital, and another district hospital. The focus of the Durban part of the internship was HIV/AIDS and its impact on the healthcare system in South Africa. Kwa-Zulu Natal is the province that Durban is in, and it has the highest HIV rates in the country, and one of the highest in the world. By being submerged into the medical system, I was able to see first hand how much impact HIV has on healthcare, such as resource allocation and care. There was even a huge political influence involved in the increase of HIV rates.

South Africa was an amazing country to live in. It is one of the most diverse countries in the world. No matter where I was, people were willing to help me out with questions I had, or give me suggestions on what to do. I have never experienced such amazing hospitality. I lived with host families in both cities, and loved them dearly. From day one they accepted me as their child, and cared for me. They tried to teach me their language, how to make different foods, and helped me understand the game of cricket.

Ashley Wood (L) & Kailey Poole (R) - IE3 medical internship in South Africa

Since I was an athlete, finding a time to go abroad was somewhat difficult, but also an experience I knew I couldn’t pass up. I learned way more by living with a family about the culture and customs that would be a little harder to pick up on as a vacationer.

OSU Abroad

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Tag Archives: South Africa

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