The View From Inside: Day Two

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.

These mundane moments of our domestic lives, making the bed, watering the plants, going through social media, feel momentous. I’m washing the dishes in quarantine. Our pets are lying in the sun, in quarantine. A quarantine breakfast.

But we’re the lucky ones. Us in our little home in the city. 
Most of our country can’t afford to put their lives on pause. Panic buying isn’t an option, social distancing is sometimes impossible in overcrowded settlements. The military and police have been clashing with citizens in the streets. On the 28th of March (day two) a man was killed when police shot into crowds to disperse them.

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