The View From Inside: Day Four

by Chris de Beer-Procter from Cape Town, South Africa

 

We celebrated our second-year marriage anniversary locked down in Cape Town, drinking our last precious bottle of red wine (sales of alcohol is prohibited during lockdown) in our first home, which we bought together only a few months ago. My wife has an immune condition, they’re not allowed to leave the house.

I’ve turned my camera on the safe, intimate space we’ve created for our little family, perhaps as a way to affirm the difference between Out There and Inside.

Inside we are safe, warm and in love. That we know as true. Out There is uncertain. When I come from the Out There, shooting for work or shopping for groceries, there are rituals I must observe to pass through from Out There to Inside. To keep our space safe, sacred and intimate. The activity of putting on a mask, sanitising my hands, washing my clothes and tracing my steps to sanitise again have become little daily expressions of care.

 
 

I left the house for the first time to buy groceries today. Our stocks didn't last as long as I'd hoped, but then I tried my best to resist stockpiling. I have to remind myself to be extra careful when I leave, my wife has an immune disease that could leave them more sick if they catch the virus. The experience was bizarre. Roadblocks, heavy security guiding shoppers through parts of shopping that are otherwise normal, empty streets, more roadblocks.

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