Day 1 LockDown

27 March 2020

927 cases (218 new confirmed cases) from stats of 26 March (no new final stats yet)
Recovered: 5
Deceased: 1 (Western Cape)

Woke up this morning with a heavy queasiness in my stomach, threatening to spill over into my mouth. That feeling you get when you are writing your finals at university, but you opted to stay out with your friends the night before because “you’ve got this” and now you realise that, in fact, you don’t.

Are we physically prepared for lockdown? Who knows – I hope so. We have a secure home. We have food, but not all we need – I went out to buy some staples yesterday because I didn’t want to stockpile, thinking of all the thousands of other people who also need to shop. But the shelves were glaringly empty, with a sad limp lettuce in the one corner at the bottom in a crate, and fluorescent lights highlighting the lack. We are lucky, I can try online for some eggs, milk, yoghurt, fresh vegetables.

Am I mentally prepared for lockdown? Probably better than most. I have always been a bit of an introvert, and am awkward when having to interact with people for any length of time. But even I am not prepared for all the feelings. Fear, anxiety, insecurity, sadness. I understand most of my emotions, but why this overwhelming sadness with tears sitting just behind my eyes, and a constant conscious effort to not break down crying?

I think it is because my mind keeps on straying to our townships, where the children may not have access to food, the elderly to care. Where 8 – 12 people live in a tin shack with no space to hoard food, even if they did have the money to. With the relentless sun beating down on these roofs, no fences between the houses, nowhere to go. Where people can no longer come out to actually earn their daily bread, because there is nobody to allow them to do it. God knows, I know this is the right thing to do, but I also know the vulnerable will be the first to suffer.

The voices in my head are oscillating between calming me down and freaking me out. The what ifs and the that won’t happens, coupled with the already present anxiety are not helping. Does everyone have this dichotomy between “all will be well”, and “no it won’t be”? I hope so, because otherwise I am already certifiable.

Some of my fears are completely groundless, and irrational. I realise this morning I forgot to bring the printer from the office, and I also don’t have any paper. That means… printing no activities for the twins to do. No printing of worksheets, recipes, or whatever my busy mind can come up with to print. Why is this irrational? We are a digital company and household – I haven’t actually used a printer myself for over two years. My children have more than enough to occupy them. There are children who has nothing during this time.

There is no cake flour in the house to bake if I felt at any point to bake an impromptu cake. Irrational, because I have never in my life baked a cake. I wouldn’t know where to start – I know it has something to do with flour, eggs and oil. Even cookies, the once I tried, were an absolute disaster – my cookie dough was runny and I kept on adding Maizena to get it to thicken up, and what I eventually got were misshapen dinosaur-y shapes that tasted very strange and I couldn’t even get the dogs to eat, let alone the children.

The twins asked to go play outside while I worked at my home office. With a trampoline, a ball pit and a covered swimming pool, I thought it’s a great idea. Some fresh air, a bit of activity, what could go wrong? Minutes later, the neighbours call me – the twins threw trampoline springs over the wall at their bakkie, denting it. I really don’t even know what to say about this. My little boy has a compromised immune system, so their lockdown started 9 days ago. They are bored, frustrated and need attention and stimulation. They know I am working during the day still, even though it is from home, but they don’t understand why our restaurant treats, road trips, walks and cycling has stopped. Four years old, so little and innocent still. I wish I could just protect them more.

I accessed my social media feeds this morning to get a gauge on the general mood, and right away knew it was a mistake. The public outcry online is so loud that it drowns out my small flame of positivity with a tsunamic wave of negative energy. There is SO. MUCH. ENTITLEMENT. Who are these people? Don’t they understand? There is arrogance, belittling, anger and a general dismissive attitude from a large number of people that makes me realise we are not all accepting of what is the right thing to do. And my fear is the sheer ignorance (sorry, there really is no other word) of these people is going to make it worse for all of us. Someone said it perfectly: We are fighting two pandemics at the same time; Covid-19 and Stupidity.

Unbelievably, there are apparently people who are letting their gardeners come to work (apparently this is acceptable because they use their own bicycles for transport). Although there was a clear directive against jogging, some are pounding the streets, attired in their sweats and running shoes, because the rules don’t apply to them. I watched youtube footage of police loading transgressors into their vans who were drinking at shebeens/taverns/pubs in Hillbrow last night.

My people, three weeks is a blink of an eye in the bigger scheme of things. This is hard, it is already hard. And it is harder on so many more people than we can imagine. But by not obeying the rules, we will not flatten the curve, and this will carry on longer, with more losses, than it needs to.