By Lisa Klopfer

Lisa Klopfer left a medical social work position for a two-year master's degree program at the UM School of Information (SI), specializing in contemporary library and archives practice. This summer she and eight other U-M students joined an SI project to help the University of Fort Hare arrange and describe materials for the African National Congress and other archives being set up there.

"The project," Klopfer explains, "brings together a lot of my interests, including the history of political struggle, the difficulty of documenting informal (in this case, exiled and suppressed) organizations, the whole problem of memory and history in times of violence, and of course just the wonders of different places, different languages, different people."

Funded by the Kellogg Foundation, the SI project at Fort Hare is designed to help build archives of the anti-apartheid movement. It provides a combination of consulting, training and hands-on work. Last year, the students focused entirely on getting the papers arranged and described. This summer, Klopfer's group continued processing the records and also consulted on policy issues, program planning, feasibility of an oral history project and a Website for the archives, including a virtual exhibit for the African art collection.

Throughout her stay, Klopfer wrote a diary in letter form to keep family and friends up to date about her activities and impressions; those writings served as her notes for this Michigan Today feature story.–Ed.

After flying from Amsterdam to Johannesburg, we took a one-hour flight to East London on South Africa's east coast. From East London we traveled due west to Alice, a little town in what used to be the rural Black "homeland" of Siskei. Alice is made up of a few blocks of shops, two gas stations and a post office. Right next to Alice is the University of Fort Hare, a landmark for Black education and the liberation struggle in South Africa.

We were to stay in a White enclave known as Hogsback in the bluffs about 18 miles north of Alice. Our road from East London began as a two lane highway; it dwindled to one-lane on the way to Alice, and when we turned from Alice to Hogsback, the road became more and more narrow, eventually crumbling into gravel.

We passed a number of laboring trailer trucks and small minivans full of people. A lot of people were hitchhiking or just walking alongside the highway, including groups of kids returning home from school. Considering the distance to the nearest visible settlements, they would be walking more than a few miles. The land was mostly golden grasses, dotted with darker acacia and other shrubs; a little was cultivated with corn, while six-strand barbed wire fences contained large, horned cattle, filthy sheep or motley goats.

The villages did not line the road, but were scattered along low rises in the valley and al lower flanks of the mountains. They were odd to American eyes, because they had no central place, whether marked by trees, plaza, church, temple or mosque. Instead there was simply a sprinkling of small rectangular houses, each having a yard or twig-fenced corral for animals and sometimes a vegetable garden. The houses ranged in size from as large as a two-car garage to as small as a tool shed. They were built of mud brick or wood and mud, then plastered with dung or stucco. and sometimes painted in pastels or Mediterranean blue. They had corrugated metal roofs, or more rarely, tile. Some people also had rondavels, which are small round houses built in the same manner, but reflecting older architectural styles. Barbed-wire fences were everywhere, keeping livestock out of gardens. They do not function to keep animals enclosed, however–we met so many horses, donkeys and cattle wandering loose on the road, that we invented a little game: the person who correctly predicted the next animal on the road would get a free beer.

We were staying at King's Lodge, a rustic luxury resort. The words "rustic" and "luxury" are rarely used to describe the same noun, but in this case, they apply. On the rustic side, we had small, unheated, slightly moldy-smelling cabins with broken glass in the bathroom windows. A troop of small monkeys and three crowned hornbills hung around the hotel, adding a sense of the exotic. The monkeys were wild and would urinate on you if you approached too closely. The hornbills, however, shamelessly begged for crumbs of toast. On the luxury side, in the main lodge we enjoyed hand and foot service, the coziest of fireside lounges, and astounding gourmet meals complete with exquisite South African wines. The staff slipped hot water bottles into our beds each night and did their best to provide every possible comfort.

For example, a five-course dinner one evening consisted of smoked trout, cream of asparagus soup, incredibly delicious buttered crayfish, a dish of farm-fresh chicken breast and vegetables with a light cheese sauce, and homemade ice cream with sauce, all followed with coffee, tea or port.

From Hogsback we could take lovely hikes into the mountains or even hire horses for trail rides on the weekends. But we were in South Africa to indulge, and except for evenings and weekends, we did just that. Each morning we piled into our two minivans and drove to the University of Fort Hare (UFH).