A gym in the sky and a street in the dirt

After about 7 weeks in Cape Town, I have developed the beginnings of a routine.

I recently joined a gym located on the 5th floor of a wellness centre. The facilities are incredible: weight machines with electronic interfaces that count your reps and pace your movement, pristine free weights and dumbbells, an impeccable view of the city, and a sauna are just some of the amenities. Singing up for a month-long membership was about a dollar a day and we were asked, "Are you students or models?" The other gym goers are all incredibly fit, mid-thirties, white mountains with nice suits and funny accents, presumably the models. Though quite intimidates, a few friends and I try to go a few times a week. Apart from this, weekdays usually follow the following formula:

I start my day with an hour-long commute to the Refugee Centre, where I work four days a week. After a few hours there, the other non-South African interns and I walk out of the Wynberg Shopping Centre and onto the Main Road for lunch.

The Main Road is an assault on the senses. Every few feet a vendor peddles their wares, shouting over each other and the noise of car horns. They sell spices, books, biltong, watches, belts–anything you could spend less than $5USD on without thinking. Most days, a young boy follows you begging for money or food. Some days there are adults as well, unaffiliated. The population here is almost entirely black. About a block away, fancy restaurants litter the street bordering a beautiful park. Here, near the entire population is white.

This is the biggest sensory overload. The smell of spices and the noise of cars is not new to me, but dire poverty so close to up-scale restaurants and parks is astonishing. Less than 5 minutes of walking takes me from an area where I couldn't overspend if I tried to one where half of the menu is offensively overpriced to American eyes.

Back at work, I spend the majority of my time interviewing refugees to determine if they qualify for assistance from the Refugee Centre. Due to reduced funding, the criteria is now exclusive and demanding. I often find myself listening to stories of homes being burned, families being murdered, and no food on the table with no avenue to help. Many refugees flee their home country only to find xenophobia, sickness, poverty, and illness when they arrive.

An hour-long bus ride back takes me to Tamboerskloof, where I and the other members of my program live. The name is a mixture between a tamboer, meaning a drum and often used by the Dutch settlers to talk about native African drums, and kloof, described as the space between two cliffs or a ravine. It is a "safe" neighborhood populated mostly by older Afrikaners. The view from our house is extraordinary. At night, you can see the twinkle of city lights and the massive looming shadow of Table Mountain.

And this is very emblematic of the 'Mother City.' It is incredibly beautiful with a personality to match, but it is most certainly a segregated city. The legacies of Apartheid are still casting their shadow and there does not seem to be a 'way out' or 'way in' for many. Because South Africa has the highest income inequality of any country in the world, this may in fact be the most pertinent example of inequality in a major city that there is. To say this isn't based on race simply because Apartheid ended is naïve. Though black South Africans are legally allowed to use the same facilities and live in the same places as whites today, they often do not. For most the barrier merely changed from a legal one to an economic one.

My routine may not reach the highest heights or the lowest lows, but it definitely takes place in two cities.