Fences

Walking down the streets in Cape Town you see endless walls and security fences. Every single house has an enormous wall or a giant wrought iron fence or a hedge with a chain-link fence in the middle. The walls and fences are all topped with metal spikes or barbed wire or razor wire. In the U.S. this type of security would only be around military compounds and high-voltage power stations, but here it's around every house. While I realize that the purpose is to keep thieves out, it seems like more of a social barrier than anything. It's as though the people with money are trying to insulate themselves against the outside world. They stay inside surrounded by huge walls and fences so they don't have to look at the poverty and need outside. Surrounded by fences and barbed wire you begin to feel as though you're living in a prison rather than a house. All the wealthy people living in their gilded, barbed wire cages.

I can't discount the value of security, though. Four people from my program have been mugged since we've been here. A woman was mugged a few days ago as she was walking the same route that I walk two days a week to go work at SAEP. Beggars come to our gate several times a week asking for money or food and I walk past homeless people on the way to the grocery store and the restaurants in my neighborhood. It's just sad that socio-economic conditions here are so stratified that these situations occur.