The View From Inside: Day One

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.

Cape Town is a busy city normally. It has over 4 million residents and this time of year, our tourism, film and photography industry seasons makes the city feel filled to the brim. Today, in our country’s first official day of lockdown, I’ve never heard such deafening silence here. Pictured here is one of our busiest highways, Nelson Mandela Boulevard.

But today, when I look at the view from our backdoor, the park behind our home is empty. Often someone sits on this bench and looks at the city. There’s usually children making their way home from playing in the streets. Teenagers hang out here filling the air with cigarette smoke and belly laughs. But not tonight. Not for the next 21 days.

We’ve spent as much time as we can talking to family and friends. Some in quarantine on other continents, some just a neighborhood over. Here, my wife, ‘Dobson’ (they/them) talks to their sister who tells them that her children are playing ‘apocalypse games’. They’ve taken to calling her “teacher” and her husband the P.E (physical education) teacher to make things fun. They tease me for taking photos. “It’s 21 days” Jen tells their sister, “she needs to take photos”.

There’s a man that’s been hiding from the police in the park behind our house for two days. He’s most likely avoiding being taken away to one of the temporary shelters the state has designated for the homeless. He’s been talking to himself. I wonder what we makes of the empty streets. The authorities rounding people up. The city ground to a screaming halt like someone pressed the Pause button.

“You’re a lunatic” I say. Jen is playing hide and seek with Kwezi and Hedwig. “It’s what you have to do when you can’t walk your dogs”, Jen waiting for the two to find them. Behind us in the kitchen, their toast is burning.

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