One night, while I was sitting at the bar of The Raptor Room, a stranger struck up a conversation with me. He was a Londoner, but he had moved back to Egypt to take care of his elderly mother before the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, as a dutiful son would. As the case numbers started to cool down and travel restrictions began easing up, he decided to take a break from life at the top of the continent by spending a week exploring the very bottom of it and that’s how we came to be in the same room - three bar stools apart with our masks on - making conversation about what there is to do in Cape Town and where there is to go. I asked him how he came across The Raptor Room ( a restaurant and live performance venue situated in the heart of Cape Town’s District 6 area that prides itself as a safe space for the city’s LGBTQ+ community). He said that he had been walking around the area and noticed the large rainbow, painted along the sidewalk outside of the building. As a gay man walking around the city at night, he knew that he’d feel welcomed here. He knew that he would feel safe...
Read Online now