Life in the Time of CoVid-Lockdown
Lockdown Countdown—Better Get Ready!
We had watched President Ramphosa’s speech, and listened as others discussed what National Lockdown meant curiously, as one watches Survivor programs. After all, this was our last full day in South Africa. We were still on schedule to fly out the next evening…
Monday morning brought a text message from British Airways. Our flight had been cancelled. We scrambled to devices. While I sat on hold waiting for an airline rep to come on the line, Dave and Les, set to depart Tuesday for Australia called Qantas to check their flights. They were on schedule and proceeded to pack. We set about rebooking on another airlines. A few hours later, we had it all worked out, again: We were rebooked on Ethiad from Johannesburg, set to leave Tuesday, about the same time as Dave and Les. Even better, we could all drive to the airport together. Problem solved. When we told our kids about the change in flights, they said maybe we should stay. We laughed, “hah-hah.”
The next day, spectators in the mad-dash to stockpile, we did a little exit-buying. A dress for me; chutney and rusks for Curtis; Easter eggs for the grands. Lockdown-schmockdown we’d be gone by then…
Tuesday night Ethiad cancelled our flights. We rebooked on Ethiopian Airlines and took a walk to the beach. By dinnertime, that flight was cancelled, too.
Break for Backstory:
We have been in South Africa since March 3. What began, as a jolly holiday-spurred by an invitation to our friend, Charles’ 60th Bash and the 42nd Cape Argus Cycle Tour, the world’s largest timed 110 KM cycling event, has morphed into a new challenge. We were due to depart from Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape on March 23rd. For most of our holiday, while the US and much of the world wrestled and worried and battled effects of the Corona virus, we frolicked.
Yes, along with 30,000 from all over the world, we had swapped sweat and the highway and pre-festivities with cyclists, friends, and fans during the Cape Argus ride. Shortly after we’d driven to the Eastern Cape where in a tightly confined, co-mingled group we cavorted largely symptom and worry free. (Of course, every sneeze, wheeze, cough—dry or otherwise—came under suspicion but none of us, and noone we knew of, had or has contracted the virus.)
Port Alfred, where Shona and Charles live, is a gorgeous seaside community. Their home is on a marina even farther removed from the town, an hour or more from the nearest city, and a flight or long day’s ride from Johannesburg (where the CoVid cases until then had been reported.) Furthermore, what we’d read on Corona Virus said that heat and sun destroy it. Our hope was that the warmer temperatures we enjoyed would keep it at bay—at least until vaccines, etc. can be created. This is still my hope.
Back to Monday:
With flights set and days only a few days until Lockdown, I joined Shona on a trip to the “shops.” (The “shops” is what grocery stores, et al are called. “I’m going to the shops.” “What do you need from the shops?” “No loo paper left in the shops.”) That day, after SA President Ramphosa announced the National Lockdown, felt like the days before Christmas. Everyone had rushed to the shops to buy, buy, buy supplies. Even though every news report promised food stories and pharmacies would be open and food would be available during the lockdown, the frenzy was on. Rosehill mall, has two big shops: Woolworths or “Woolies” which, like a smaller version of Walmart with groceries and a little of everything else and Spar which is like any regular grocery store, with many boutiques in-between. Several of the smaller shops were already closed. Woolies shelves were wiped out. The meat fridge empty. The produce gone. The toilet paper…never mind. Spar, likewise, had picked over. There was plenty of milk and milk products, but not much else.
Masked, gloved attendants with hand-sanitizer at the ready, guarded every entrance & exit. As, along with everyone else, I slathered myself, I wondered what effect injecting & digesting so much hand sanitizer will have later…
That evening, our last night all together, Charles, Dave, Curtis and I went out in the sea fishing.
The fishing wasn’t much: we caught nasty poisonous stingy fish called barbles or “seacatfish” that didn’t give much of a fight but gave Charles a nasty poke as he tried to pull them off the hook, and nasty barbed sharks. The highlight of the trip was a rookery of penguins which appeared bobbing and flapping past.
Sure we played, that just as Nero played while Rome burned, we were acting callously—for folks like Charles and Shona, with cars and savings, a 21-day lockdown would be an inconvenience. Their staff, Gloria, Eunice, Edward were freaked. They’d all been worried about catching the virus from us, and rightly so. It had jet propelled to South Africa. But now, their worry was more for their families, what to do with their children trapped in tiny houses for 3 weeks, and how to get food with no buses running…But beneath the fun, we were all worried, worried about them, our families, and the world-wide economy.