Safety is a luxury

Cape Town

I’ve spent the past two days watching the progress of the men across the street painting a building.  The building is finished in something that looks like stucco. It’s three storeys high, and is quite long…it has at least four separate businesses in it.  The amazing thing about the painting is that they are doing it with brushes!  They are actually making surprisingly good progress, but it is strange to watch their progress…set up a ladder, climb up the ladder with a large bucket of paint, paint everything within reach, climb down the ladder, move the ladder over, climb up the ladder, repeat.  Today they have the ladders balanced on the second floor balconies so that they can reach the gable ends.  What makes it nerve wracking for me is that it’s quite windy out, and they are up above a busy street.  I am reminded again that safety is a luxury.

Best quote overheard  today, “The session taught in Spanish was in Portuguese.”