CRISSA NELSON | features editor

Blanca Ramirez decides days before departure to join the APU study abroad experience in South Africa.

On Aug. 27, 29 students from APU set off on flight bound for South Africa. The students prepared for months to leave the comfort and familiarity of their homes and APU to embark on a semester long study abroad experience at the first international APU campus in South Africa. Students met for orientation sessions throughout the summer to familiarize themselves with South African culture and get acquainted with their future classmates.

All but one, who spent her summer preparing to return to APU in the fall to begin her senior year.

Blanca Ramirez was not on the flight with the other students. She had not attended any informational or orientation meetings. She met many of the other group members the day before they left. Ramirez decided to join the APU South Africa Semester only a week before departure.

“I felt like I didn’t have time to process anything,” Ramirez said. “I just talked to my dad and told him to spread the word that I wouldn’t be here for a few months. It was all just so quick.”

Ramirez, a senior sociology major, had considered the program in early January 2007 when the applications were available. She chose not to apply because of other commitments she already had, including leading a missions trip to Chili next summer after she intended to graduate in May 2008.

Yet while Ramirez was working in the Office of World Missions as a student coordinator, she heard the program had a spot available and was approached by Executive Director of International Programs Matt Browning, Executive Assistant Jillian Gilbert and others in the IOM office, who encouraged her to reconsider. But according to Ramirez, it didn’t take much for them to talk her into it.

“We told her to take some time to pray about it, but, I needed to know by tomorrow,” Gilbert said with a smile. “I told her we could make it work, but we had to move quick.”

“[Everyone at IOM] agrees it is so important to go away and live in a different culture,” Gilbert said. “It allows you to discover yourself and who you are while still being in a learning and service environment. I didn’t want Blanca to feel she had missed out on this opportunity, especially if she wanted to go.”

This opportunity for students to be immersed in cultural learning and experience is the goal of the South Africa Study Abroad Program. Browning’s vision for APU is to create opportunities for students at APU to discover who they are as world Christians.

“To be a world Christian means to understand God’s heart of the nations,” Browning said. “To understand our calling to serve ‘the least of these.’”

As a major component of the program, students will participate in service learning at multiple sites throughout their time in South Africa and conclude their time with a month long full time service internship.

The program coordinators and students anticipate this to be an extremely intense and even difficult semester as students are immersed in a culture with very prevalent crime and hatred toward one another.

Experiencing the historical racism in a current cultural setting firsthand is exactly what intrigued Ramirez about the program from the beginning.

“The history of the country really interested me,” Ramirez said. “The conflict [of Apartheid] is so recent. I knew it would be eye opening.”

And Ramirez admits that it has been. For the first four weeks of the program the students are living and studying in Capetown, South Africa before they move to Pieter Maritzburg for the rest of the semester. Ramirez is living with a family in Capetown where she has had the opportunity to experience the reality of persistant segregation.

“There has already been a lot of mental hardships,” Ramirez said. “My homestay is a colored family meaning they are a mix of white European and [African] descent. They talk down about black people and blame them for the where they are.”

Ramirez was surprised by how prevelent racism still is.

“There are no ‘white only’ or ‘black only’ signs but you can see people dealing with [segregation] everyday,” Ramirez said. “When we ride the train third class it is mostly filled with black South Africans, but today we rode first class and it was filled with whites or mixed. Whites live in the nice parts of towns or cities while the townships are mostly blacks. In one direction you see mansions, in the other direction shacks.”

Although it has been hard for Ramirez to think about missing out on things she had planned for this semester and hard to be away from her family, she feels comfortable in the new culture and excited about what she’s learning in South Africa.

“There is so much to learn about how history and culture impacts today,” Ramirez said. “I’m learning how much we need to understand history and culture to learn from mistakes.”

Ramirez attributes her relatively smooth transition into this new culture to her Hispanic background and interest in international cultures.

“I have already gone through identity issues living in the U.S.,” Ramirez said. “I’ve already gone through feeling like an outsider. I’ve been on many missions trips…but coming to APU was the culture shock.”

Ramirez’s rapid decision similarly reflected the nature of the birth of the program. In September 2006, President Wallace and Dr. Reynolds returned from a visit to the suggested location for the new APU study abroad campus. After only seven minutes of meeting with Browning and others involved in the brainstorming and planning, a decision had been made.

‘Let’s do it!’ was the response, Browning said. “And that’s when it really began.”