I arrived to Durban and UKZN as an exchange student in Business early august 2010 and left medio june 2011. I do not hesitate to characterize this past year as the best year of my life so far. Well, maybe I should inform you the reader already now that I grew up as a victim of racism myself even though my skin colour is relatively white. I belong to the tiny minority people called the samis (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people) that inhabit most of northern Scandinavia and my mother tongue is spoken by approximately 700 (yes: seven hundred!) people in the two countries Norway and Sweden. The prejudices and feeling of not being worth anything has shaped my life in such a way that identity and cultural awareness are important values for me. Maybe this made it easier for me to adapt to South Africa that has a history of racism put into system called Apartheid.
The very moment I arrived SA I felt like at home, I felt and still feel I was made for this country! To my own excitement I realized I understood most of the cultural codes and had much the same mindset as most of my fellow students at UKZN. I wish I could explain a little further but lack of space limits.
Obviously it’s not like that everything has been perfect: we norwegians take free higher education for granted, but if more of my fellow norwegian students would have seen the desperation of some of the UKZN students struggling with anything else "unnecessary" than studying, they would have appreciated it more..
As an exchange student I enjoyed a special status at campus, we were only 6 of us my first semester and 3 living on campus the other semester, and I was the only remaining for both semesters (actually I enjoyed UKZN and Durban that much that I extended my stay) so I made many friends and had a relatively problem free academic life. International Office headed by dr. Prem Ramlachan was also to a great assistance whenever I needed, which often means in the registration period early in the semester. I did not come by Int. Office at all during the last semester, which means I enjoyed a semester with no urgent problems.
I did mostly undergrad modules the first semester and postgrad modules the second semester so I believe I got quite a good impression of how modules are taught within the Faculty of Management at UKZN. The quality of the teaching at UKZN is lower than what I am used to, and much time was wasted in unnecessary practical challenges like academic registration but I studied harder myself this year so I think I ended up learning as much as I would do in a normal school year at my home institution University of Nordland.
Fellow UKZN students and UKZN staff; thank you, you have been sisters and brothers for me! :-)
I am on my way back as soon as the option reveals it self.
Drag, Norway 31.7.2011
Lars Thandolwethu Kintel