There is No Light Without a Dark: Ugly Cape Town

So far, I think I've done a pretty good job of extolling the virtues of Cape Town, and rightly so; it really is one of the most interesting and beautiful cities I've ever experienced.  (There I go again.  I swear I don't work for the Cape Town Tourist Bureau.)

And today, I was all set to write another such post -- about the wind, of all things.  The wind here blows like no place I've ever been and it's exhilarating and wild and gorgeous ... but well, I think that it's a topic best left for poetry.  So let me tackle something else --  something I've been meaning to get to for a while -- the other side of things -- the darker side of things here.

The little slice of Cape Town life that I can show you in this blog is not how most people in Cape Town -- and certainly not in South Africa -- live.

South Africa faces serious issues (click on the links for sources):  An unemployment rate of 24%;  insane amounts of corruption; a nearly 18% adult HIV infection rate; the sexual violence rates are disgusting and scary; and the bitter social and cultural afteraffects of apartheid, to name just a few.

Things are better here in this area of the country (The Western Cape), but still, the problems are real and daunting.

So every time I write about how lovely this place is, there is part of me that feels uneasy -- like I am living this cozy, cosseted life and showing you only part of what it's really like here.

For example, I posted a bunch of pictures of Company Gardens, but I didn't show you all the homeless people that live there.  Not least of all because it seems such an ugly thing to do, to stick cameras in the faces of people who need compassion, not gawking.

And I showed you a bit of Long Street, but I didn't talk about the beggars who panhandle and harrass you and sometimes follow you as you walk along.  And how you feel like such a first-class and first-world jerk when you don't give them money or have to tell them to leave you alone.

And I haven't told you about how every single person I've talked to has admonished me to NOT GO OUT ALONE AT NIGHT.  NO MATTER WHAT.  I'm an independent kind of a gal, and it sucks, I gotta say, to feel like a prisoner at night, unable to go anywhere unless Aaron is with me. 

Of course these are beyond trivial concerns in the light of all the statistics above, but they are real and I wouldn't be honest if I didn't admit to them.

(And speaking of trivial-in-light-of-greater-concerns, I have to say that the drivers here are frigging insane and that South African bureaucracy rivals Salvadoran bureaucracy and THAT, my friends, is saying something.)

If I'm going to be honest in this blog, I can't pretend to be living some other kind of life.  And though it certainly is not extravagant (it certainly isn't by U.S. standards!), in light of what I see every day, I am well aware of how privileged a life I am living.  As I said from the beginning, I KNOW how lucky I am. 

I'm not going to ignore the negative, the difficult or the ugly, but I'm also not going to focus on it if that's not what I'm moved to do.  What I focus on day-to-day will be what strikes me most strongly -- and so far, what has struck me most (and which I think is pretty evident in the blog so far) is how lovely and amazing this place and her people are -- despite of, right alongside with, and inexorably linked to all the darkness. 

This beautiful mural sits, like so many of the stunning aspects of this city, right next to a really ugly car park that at night is filled with some very shady and scary characters and is painted on the back of a crumbling building ... that's life in South Africa.