DukeEngage alumnus featured in Duke Magazine
Six students recently were invited by Duke Magazine to talk about current campus life at Duke through essays. One of them, Michael Blake '10, who participated in DukeEngage in South Africa during the summer of 2008, offered his perspective on civic engagement.
"As I walked through the bustling streets of Cape Town each morning on my way to work at the District Six Museum, I stared in awe at the world around me. I passed by Zimbabwean refugees, sleeping on the sidewalk and hawking goods in the street, struggling to survive hundreds of miles away from home. I gazed in disbelief at the latest headlines in the newspapers that highlighted rising xenophobic attacks on foreigners and the failure of government intervention to stop the violence. And, for the first time in my life, I was in the racial minority. The sights and sounds I encountered made my life back in the U.S. seem distant and unreal."