Lockdown Journal: Day 28 (An American Garden)
If you’re new to this blog series and don’t know what’s happening with South Africa’s 21-day (now 35-day) lockdown, my first post has all the details. Or read all my lockdown posts.
It’s lockdown Day 28. I thought I’d share some garden photos from another continent for a change.
As I’ve mentioned previously, during the lockdown I’ve been sorting through photos from my old external hard drives. I’m moving very slowly on this project: My archives date back to August 2010 (when I moved to Joburg) and I’ve only backed up through August 2011 so far.
It’s a time-consuming process as I manually go through each folder – organized by day, month, and year – and delete out all the duplicates before uploading the files to Dropbox. There are lots of duplicates. I shot way too many frames of everything back then.
Today I came upon my photos from August 2011, when I flew home to America to attend my grandmother’s funeral. I stayed with my dad during that visit, at my childhood home in Maryland, and shot tons of pictures of Dad’s garden.
Dad’s garden always looks incredible. But wow, in August 2011 it was in rare form.
I also blogged about these pictures when I first shot them in 2011. I chose mostly different images this time and the edits are all new.
I don’t normally feel homesick in the conventional sense. I sometimes miss my friends and family in America, or specific things like football and crab cakes. But during my ten years of living in South Africa I’ve never really yearned for home.
But over the last few days I’ve found myself missing home in a new and different way. It’s not that I actually want to be there at this moment – the pandemic is worse in America than it is in South Africa right now, and I couldn’t handle the constant whine of Trump’s voice on cable news. But I’m upset I CAN’T be there. I’m upset I don’t know when I’ll be able to return.
This is my 31st straight day of blogging and I’m struggling to come up with more deep thoughts to share. I think I’ll leave it at that for now.
Recommended Listening
If you have time to listen to one more thing today/tonight, make it this radio story from the Strangers podcast. It’s about a Liberian man who escapes civil war, moves to the United States as a refugee, and eventually becomes mayor of the capital city in the whitest, most conservative state in America. I loved it because it took me into an entirely different (non-COVID-19-related) world for 30 glorious minutes.
COVID-19 in South Africa
The president is reportedly addressing us this evening, and presumably we will find out whether/how long our lockdown will be extended. There has been no official announcement about the speech though, and I don’t even know what to think or hope for anyway.
Today’s Worthy Cause
Today I’m featuring the Maker’s Valley Partnership, a collection of community groups on the east side of Joburg (Bertrams, Bez Valley, Troyeville, Lorentzville, etc.), which is pioneering an innovative plan to increase food security in the area. The plan involves spaza shops and electronic food vouchers and all kind of cool things, which are explained in this BackABuddy link: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/champion/project/food-security.
Maker’s Valley has already rolled out a few soup kitchens, which also need financial support.
Please help these guys out. I knew them even before the pandemic started and they’re doing amazing things for their community.
Until tomorrow!
I love the house you grew up in! It looks like it’s straight out of a film set. I understand your homesickness - perhaps it’s also a longing for the freedom to decide where you want to be and when.
It’s a very special house :)
Loved the pictures of your childhood home. Was the white structure on a slope a summer house for cooling items in the summer?
Oh sorry I should have explained that! It’s just a tool shed :)
Making me homesick for my people on the East Coast, too. Except my sister says the pollen is terrible and it’s about to rain for 5 days straight.
Hahaha. My friend from the UK who also lives in South Africa (you can read her comment) just said a similar thing :)
I love this house!! What an amazing iniative from makers Valley - where there is will there’s really a great opportunity to get amazing new ways of doing things going past this crisis.
I get you on the homesickness, it bothered me more last month - I’ve ‘recovered’ quite a bit now, but there’s also a certain nostalgia too - to be back in the ‘high’ times, like the Olympics in 2012 or any Edinburgh festival. The uk has been a bit of shit show since brexit anyway (kind of like post-trump too I suppose).
But still the look and feel of the simple things - my home town, the local pub etc. Not knowing when you will be able to enjoy those things ’normally’ gets you down if you sit on it. Tho I often think to myself - it would be raining the whole trip anyway ????
Hahaha. I know what you mean. The changes in the world are just so much to absorb right now.
Thank you so much for the Maker’s Valley link. It’s an area with great history and great potential. My first Joburg home was in Bez Valley; my son grew up there. I still miss the house with its fruit trees and views.
I’ll bet that was a lovely house. Such a historic area!
Beautiful childhood home photos. Good project you’ve got yourself, too. And like you I can’t believe my expat country is doing better than America.
Ugh, America is such a shit show!
OH, yeahhhhh. I never thought I’d see the day when Thailand was doing a better job than America in terms of any great crisis.