Jun 212012
 

Neighbors, Cape Town

 

Last Easter I traveled with my two sons to visit the fourth member of our nuclear family—my husband, their father—who has been assigned responsibility for his company’s Jo’burg office. It was our first trip. On the plane—a night flight—we wondered as we flew south over the sleeping continent. What unexpected things would we find in a place where constellations are unfamiliar, the seasons switched, foods like springbok and biltong grace menus, man-eating sharks cruise bays, penguins waddle along beaches and townships still teem and thrive?

This is a first answer.

–Natalia Sarkissian

 

Soweto, Johannesburg

 

Below Table Mountain, Cape Town

 

Near Regina Mundi, Johannesburg

 

Art on the Green, Cape Town

 

Art in Soweto, Johannesburg

 

Hill, Cape Town

 

Near the Abandoned Gold Mines, Johannesburg

 

Safari, Gauteng Province

 

Penguin Safari, Western Cape

 

Guarded Compound, Johannesburg

 

Houses of Landudno Beach, Cape Peninsula

 

Girl, Pretoria

 

Girls, Soweto

 

Ladies at the Zoo, Pretoria

 

Girl, Landudno Beach

 

Family, Landudno

 

Monument to the 1976 Uprising, Soweto

 

Mandela’s Prison, Robben Island, Cape Town

 

Apartheid Museum, Gold Rush City

 

Pretoria

 

Cape Point

 

Near Sandton, Gauteng Province

 

Cape of Good Hope

 

–Natalia Sarkissian

————————

Natalia Sarkissian has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been a contributing editor at Numéro Cinq since 2010.

  6 Responses to “Gauteng and the Cape Peninsula: Encountering South Africa — Natalia Sarkissian”

  1. As always from you, these are extraordinary. Thank you for letting Numero Cinq make them available to us.

  2. Thanks Diane, so glad you enjoyed them.

  3. Absolutely Stunning!

  4. Nat, these are so wonderful. The one that resonated most with me was the guarded compound in Jo’burg. I felt oppressed in Capetown by the feeling of fear and the ways I was taught to accommodate to it. So looking forward to seeing you again at BWW.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.