Life in the Time of CoVid-Day 3 Lockdown
March 29, 2020—Lockdown Day 3
USA: 103, 321 confirmed cases; 1,668 deaths
Italy: 86 498 confirmed cases (finally numbers are decreasing); 9,136 deaths
It amazes me how some creatives spurt out brilliant, funny, clever responses in crisis. When the chips are down the funny get funnier, the clever get cleverer.
I am definitely not in that category. Friends I’m hearing from have set up offices and figured out how to work from home—and tackle lists of Honey Dos. (Charles has washed both cars, straightened the garage, and finished a puzzle.) Those with kids—wow! cook/ cleaner/ supervisor /teacher /entertainer/ referee rolled into one…Writer friends are zooming forward with stories. Homeless, I am not even a snail. I am a slug. A slug with Internet. An inert slug.
However, I have a room and a small garden to circle. I forced Curtis up from his computer to take laps around the tiny yard. 29 strides per circle. He clocked them on his fitbit, humored me through 25 laps; I jollied him through 20 toe touches before he cut bait.
But, while we circled, my thoughts turned to all the families and children Lockdown in the Townships living 5 or 8 or 12 to a 10x10, without a bathroom, maybe a clothesline to circle.
From what I’ve seen of South Africa in the 9 years and thousands of road trip kilometers, the country is largely rural. There are several major cities: Johannesburg, Durban, Capetown among them, these are like cities anywhere—buildings, businesses, highways, traffic, mixed with suburbs. And on the outskirts, crowded clusters where laborers, domestics, hourly workers and their families live.
Think tenements, barrios, kampungs—shanty towns. Whole extended families crowded into one tiny room with no running water, some no electric or TV, shared toilets at the end of a row.
whole families living in one room
Hundreds of tiny tin or cinder block homes squished side to side, thousands together—Social distancing??? Six-feet-apart???
…and my big complaint is internet speed and “only” getting to circle this lovely garden…
South Africa: Confirmed CoVid cases have risen to 1187, 2 deaths
Meanwhile…Headlines in this morning’s paper:
LOCKDOWN? What Lockdown? “Capetonians continue to shop and walk their dogs.”-timeslive.co.za