"Apartheid is Exactly Where It Belongs - In a Museum"

Our team of twenty-three Road Scholars embarks on our first adventure,  a visit to The Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. We are a diverse group; there are doctors, chemical engineers, a physics teacher, a history professor, a town clerk, a geologist, a lawyer, a travel write, an oil industry executive, a medical researcher, and a weaver. And that's just for starters.

For six of us, this is the ninth in a thirteen-year series of Road Scholar adventures shared as a group, and their laughs and spirited conversation are a hint of what's in store for us all in the next two weeks.

Bianca Preusker, our Program Leader, takes us to the gates of the museum. We arrive fifteen minutes early, enough time to admire the seven Pillars of the South African Constitution before we meet Mduduzi Tshabalala, the museum's Tourist Guide, who takes us through exhibits spanning one hundred and twenty-five years of the country's history. It's a gripping story, particularly the time from the 1960s through the present. 

For many of us, it brings back memories of our own youthful idealism, but with much more drama, and fortunately with a rewarding happy ending. Mduduzi is too young to remember much of what he shows us, but his optimism for the future, and his admiration of Nelson Mandela's leadership, is inspirational. 




The Apartheid Museum is a perfect transition from our busy day-to-day lives at home to the wonders of Africa we are about to see first-hand. That unique combination of education, inspiration, and anticipation -- shared with a friendly group of soon-not-to-be-strangers -- just might be something of a trademark for the entire Road Scholar organization.