I didn’t know what to expect when I first arrived in Cape Town. I had never been this far south of the equator before, and my only visit to Africa was a day trip to Morocco around 2006ish. Friends had been and were quick to tell me how great it is; how beautiful and how awe-inspiring this place can be. Of course, there were the warnings, the bad side of life in a country where democracy has only existed for 20 years, and people hastened to add that with my loud mouth it wouldn’t be too long before I would find myself in trouble. Aside from a lost camera and some missing dignity, however, Cape Town has been more than welcoming and more than worth her status as The Mother City. Warm and hospitable, she has taken me under her matriarchal wing with aplomb, greeting me with wonderful weather and an amazingly convivial atmosphere.
The sunset outside of what has been my home in Heathfield for the past three months. Photo: Daniel Risse
It’s far too easy to heap praise upon praise, and I know for a fact that thousands of other volunteers, visitors and tourists would be saying exactly the same thing as I have just said. Instead, I would rather make a comparison with my home town of Loughborough, Leicestershire’s biggest town and so hilariously prosaic and predictable as to make a comparison like this almost redundant. If you’re not from the UK chances are you won’t have heard of Loughborough, and I think that says it all really.
You might, at this point, think, ‘Why only ten points, dear Thomas, if your hometown is so pedestrian?’, but this article would go on for far too long if I were to list every way in which Cape Town eclipses Loughborough, so we’ll do this as a condensed list, an essential ten reasons; a quick, and shallow, summation of what I’ve learned in my three months out here.
Cape Town by night, from Lion’s Head. Photo: Daniel Risse
Braais, in wonderful weather. The closest you will get to this in Loughborough is a wet and miserable barbeque round your mate’s house with too much-charcoaled chicken and an inevitable hangover the next day.
And so this is it. Ten reasons why I don’t want to return home and ten reasons why I will be catching the next flight back here (as soon as I can source some money from somewhere, of course). Cape Town my love, I’ll be back soon. Keep me in your heart for a while. I know you’ll be in mine.
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