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Children from from the Indermark creche.

AU Fund / Pre-school / Creche -  Click on the picture of the children above or follow this link to learn about a project that IED students have been supporting in rural South Africa over the past few years.  These children attend a pre-school in a very poor village in South Africa.

Boulders (penguin) Beach in the Cape 

Washington Semester's International Environment and Development (IED) three-week field practicum provides students with the opportunity to witness history in the making as the people and the government of South Africa struggle to address the immediate threats to their survival while seeking to ensure protection of the environment in which they live. The field practicum consists of direct interaction with individuals and groups on a wide range of environment and development issues, from HIV/AIDS to ecotourism, from wildlife protection to urban pollution, and from village initiatives to global environmental treaties. Our time in the rural regions will focus largely on the intersection of rural community livelihoods and their relationship with wildlife and cultural tourism.  Guest lecturers, homestays, safaris, and local-level project site visits will all be part of the program.  

The field practicum gives students the opportunity to discuss these issues with local farmers, laborers, village chiefs, policymakers, traditional healers, heads of local cooperatives, park officials, and the whole spectrum of social, economic, and racial groups.  Read more on our South Africa trips below. 

In 2005, we ventured into Mozambique for the first time and saw first hand a country much poorer than South Africa, but one that is apparently on the rebound after decades of civil war, preceded by a struggle for independence in 1975.

Elephant family in Kruger National Park

IED student (Matt U.) with local youths. 

First Segment
 

Our first week in South Africa will be spent in and around the majestic city of Cape Town, often described as the most beautiful city on earth. In the urban setting, we visit with social and environmental organizations, policymakers, community leaders, and townships, where millions of people struggle to survive and sometimes manage to thrive through their own creative initiatives. In Cape Town, we confront urban social, economic, health, and environmental issues, with a particular emphasis on the various townships, including Langa, Gugulethu, Crossroads, Nyanga, Khayelitsha, Philippi and beyond.  We partner up with community-based organizations including deeply grassroots groups such as the Community Networking Forum and the somewhat more formal NGOs such as the Southern Africa Environment Project.  Our experiences in Cape Town confront us with issues of race and justice, health and jobs, HIV/AIDS and education, environment and nutrition, and much more.

In and around Cape Town, we also explore beyond the urban setting and into the biologically diverse Cape Floral Kingdom (one of six in the world) and the Cape Point Peninsula, which brings you to the very edge of the continent where fantastic cliffs split the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.  Highlights also include a cable car to the top of Table Mountain and a ferry to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and other black activists were held for years during the Apartheid era. 

Second Segment

At the end of our time in Cape Town, we fly to Johannesburg and drive about 5 hours into the rural northern part of the country.  The next 6 days of our trip will be based out of Lajuma Mountain Retreat in the Soutpansberg area of the Northern Province (now known as the Limpopo Province) of South Africa.  Located in the northeastern most part of South Africa, most of the areas that we will be visiting during this time were part of the former independent homeland of Venda.  The area includes many different cultural groups, such as the Venda, Sotho and Tsonga peoples.  The Venda speaking people, with whom we will be interacting, are rich in history, culture, language, and religion, and today life is still largely rural, poor, and centered on tribal traditions.  The geographic and biological diversity of the area is truly unique, with a number of different biomes coming together in a small area.  See http://www.places.co.za/html/limpopo.html

Our hosts at Lajuma are university professors (one is a biologist, the other a sociologist with a focus on community health) and owners of a mountainous area of land that they are helping to protect in cooperation with other adjacent private reserves.  The weather can be dry and hot in the surrounding areas but often cool and rainy in the mountainous areas, so be prepared for variable weather.  Our accommodations will be basic and rustic, but clean and safe.  See the Lajuma Mountain Retreat web site at the following URL, but do not expect to be staying in the luxurious chalets that are pictured:  www.lajuma.com  

Through meetings with guest speakers from nearby University of Venda and other universities, and through site visits, meetings with local cooperative managers, park officials, traditional healers, community leaders, and a range of other individuals and groups, students learn about the culture, the history, the policies, the challenges, and the opportunities that these people face.  This segment of the trip will include a family homestay (just one night), where two students are paired up with a particular family, and small group projects.  Conditions may vary significantly from family to family, but be prepared for some new emotional and physical challenges, as conditions will not be nearly as comfortable and familiar as you are accustomed to.  Your home, for example, may not have electricity and may have a variety of crawling creatures that come and go as they please.  Special dietary needs will be taken into consideration, but be prepared for some unusual food. 

Please note that destinations and itineraries are likely to change from year to year, and with our plans to spend 8 to 10 days in Botswana in 2006, we are likely to cut out some of the Limpopo province travel that we have done on past trips.