Read all my lockdown journal posts.

Welcome to Lockdown Day 40. It’s also Cinco de Mayo, which doesn’t mean much in South Africa but I couldn’t think of a better title.

I managed to work up the motivation to go for a walk this morning to buy cat food from Ziggy’s Pet Pamporium. (Ziggy’s opens at 9:00 a.m. so technically I had to break the rules and extend my walk slightly past the legal cut-off time.) I saw Lucky again, working in the garden next to my first Melville house. This made me happy.

I also bumped into Father Russell from the Jesuit Institute, who I didn’t recognize right away because he was on a bicycle and wearing spandex, a bike helmet, and a buff over his face — quite a change from his usual priest vibes. These daily pandemic exercise sessions have created a funny new kind of human interaction, where you have to look at people carefully and try to identify them using characteristics other than their faces. It’s oddly uncomfortable. Anyway it was nice to catch up with Father Russell as he pedalled along beside me for a bit.

I’m struggling to come up with interesting things to say about lockdown life. I think tomorrow I’ll spend a bit more time delving into the current pandemic situation in South Africa and other related news, but today I’m not in the mood. I’m not sure why but I’ve become weepy for the first time in a while.

Thank goodness I’m still soliciting other people’s lockdown narratives, one of which I’m going to share with you right now.

Lockdown Around the World

Most of you know my friend Fiver, as I write about her all the time. (Fiver also designed the header at the top of this blog.) Fiver and her husband Stuart live in Joburg for half the year, and the other half they live on a boat in the Netherlands. I visited them on their boat, Hendrika, in 2018.

Fiver sent me a little description of her lockdown life on Hendrika. The pictures and captions at the bottom are also hers:

Every summer we live on a boat currently parked in a tiny marina on a lake in the Netherlands. Normally we drive it round the country, visiting towns and museums. We travel a lot, for work and fun, so staying in one place for six weeks has been strange.

I have become obsessed with growing things: the flowering hawthorn spilling white over the paths; the first ducklings awkwardly paddling past the boat; the fancy bunch of tulips that last and last in the vase.

My daily routine revolves around growing things: In the morning I rinse my sprouting lentils in a jar before putting them back in the dark cupboard, looking forward to sprinkling them on to my scrambled eggs in a few days; later I water the herb garden on deck — thyme, lavender, rosemary and basil — grown from supermarket pots liberated and coddled in their new spacious containers; I cut some of the mint that has colonised the whole pot, pushing out last year’s hydrangeas; in the afternoon I check the status of my seedlings in the greenhouse — beans, garlic, lettuce. I found a website selling seeds but I have to limit myself to things that don’t grow high — when we travel the boat has to fit under bridges without the bean stalks getting in the way.

We are stuck here for the duration, so for the first time I can indulge my desire for a garden. A boat is great for gardening. The roof windows double up as greenhouses, the deck has lots of space for containers and I can drop a bucket on a rope over the side to fetch water.

The world is a weird place right now. Concentrating on growing things helps.

I miss Fiver.

Today’s Worthy Cause

A few years ago, I took a tour of Cape Town’s historic District 6 with the fabulous Juma Mkwela of Juma Art Tours.

Juma also does art tours in Khayelitsha Township, one of the most underprivileged areas in South Africa. Obviously Juma’s business, like all tourism businesses, is currently at a standstill, so he is raising funds to support the families in Khayelitsha that he normally interacts with on his tours.

Juma has set up an online fundraiser, which includes photos of the people he’s helping and a video of himself explaining the situation. Please check it out and donate.

Happy Cinco de Mayo and see you tomorrow.