“HOT!”
“Run! Run, run, run to the shade!”
She shot off in front of me as quickly as her little, chubby legs would allow toward the tree shadows, padding barefoot on the red brick path.
It was 11 AM and we were already heading to the pool – our pool – for a quick dip before lunch. On a Tuesday.
“Is this really my life?” I thought as we dropped our towels on the table by the pool and plunked ourselves down to dangle our sun-singed feet in the murky blue water.
The outdoor pool and free gym were just two of the perks of choosing this particular apartment complex in a wealthy suburb of Cape Town. For just $930 a month we get a cozy, three-bedroom, two-bath flat with a modest patio and built-in braai (the ubiquitous South African grill). It’s a secure complex requiring bio-metrics for entry and exit (although, the security guards all know us now because Josh’s prints basically never work so they hide their eye roll when they see us coming and hit the key fob with a knowing nod and smile).
To top it all off, there’s a fine Montessori preschool on the premises that had room for our little three-year-old and she likes it! It’s not cheap, but as residents of the complex we get an eight percent discount, which isn’t nothing.
Our apartment comes with an underground parking spot and a personal storage unit, as well as air conditioning. It also faces the inside of the complex so we don’t get any road noise. Instead, tree branches rustling in the dusk wind wave goodnight to the gentle sunsets, even as birds call out their sweet evensong.
All in all, I’m pretty sure this is luxury.
There are dozens of little things others might point out (the scuffed paint, the dining table in the living room, the teeny-tiny second bath, the “rising damp” on the floor by the bedroom window, the murkiness of the pool water, etc.) to say sorry we ended up renting in such a cramped, run-down apartment at age 36.
But those others would not have seen the miles and miles and miles of corrugated shacks stretching out across the sand dunes between Cape Town and Somerset West. The hundreds of thousands of families crammed into one-room shelters bravely making a go of it with the hand they’ve been dealt.
As I spin Eliana around in the pool, listen to her delighted squeals, watch her kick and splash on a warm Tuesday morning, I am fairly certain the hand I’ve been dealt is a paradise.