round TRIP
Cape Town
To be able not only to see but also to recognise the beauty in the world is a gift. Not to close one's eyes to the ugly is an even greater one. After all, life is not only about the obligatory sunny side, but is rather a pro and con, consisting of beauty and ugliness and determined by the constant contrast between light and darkness.
Cape Town is no exception: here, breathtaking natural wonders and abject poverty are so incredibly close and yet so far apart.
A dreamlike sight, for example, is the mountain range of Table Mountain, shrouded in countless sea clouds, which cover it in a girlish orange-yellow veil as the sun sets. Then there is the bushy, lush mountain vegetation, whose enchanting grasses, shrubs and herbs still present themselves in late summer in rich colours and abundantly fragrant, and whose delicate blossoms shake excitedly in the changing east and west winds. Likewise the roar of windswept waves, chasing like hordes of white wild horses onto equally white beaches, to tell of the sailor's tale of days gone by. Also the sun-kissed, glistening kelp forests that serve as a playground for joyful penguins. And not to forget the vividly coloured countrysides around Wellington, Paarl and Franschhoek and are characterised by wheat fields, orchards and vineyards.
As rich as the nature of the Cape Peninsula is, the obvious poverty of many Capetonians is shocking. The reasons for this are complex. The consequences, however, are all the more clear. The cityscape is dominated by people dressed in little more than a plastic bag, begging for money, water and food, and mostly addicted to drugs. While many of them seem to wander aimlessly through the streets during the day, the nights are more survived than spent under motorway bridges, in tent-like shelters or half-naked on plastic sheets or cardboard boxes.
Images that literally burn themselves in and do not leave us untouched … It feels all the more enriching and instructive for us to keep our eyes and hearts wide open to both worlds and to recognise what we take with us with one and what we take with us with the other, what shapes us profoundly and what makes us remember the important things in life. The beautiful as well as the ugly!
South Africa, November 2021. | All words and photos by The Sturgheons.
