Covid-19 lockdown day 30 – people starting to emerge

The lockdown continues, I can hardly believe I have spent 30 days like this. With five days left, people are coming out of their self-imposed isolation quite rapidly. My visit to the local supermarket and pharmacy appeared busy as did the roads. Although we are still under lockdown, folks are probably open to opening up.

The president’s speech recently about two nights ago, explained how we will gradually be going from stage five on current hard lockdown to stage four of gradual release of the wheels of industry and social life once more. I presume most of us realize that this is the new norm for a while and things are not going back to normal in a hurry.

For example the most vulnerable should continue staying home and only a third of staff at one time are allowed to go back to work. Provincial varieties have been allowed in the coming lowering of lockdown, and with our Western Cape Province the highest case numbers of positive carriers, I suspect things may be slow to shift here. Hopefully beaches will open up again so that we can take in the healthy benefits.

Also businesses are obliged to start implementing strict sanitary and hygiene precautions for their staff as they return to work now. That probably means plastic gloves, gowns and masks, for example. A phased opening of schools and universities has been announced, which will help the parents who have been doubling up as teachers this month. Unfortunately borders remain closed to international travel, except for foreigners, so no one is going on any holiday. The flight and tourism industry as a whole must be reeling worse than others form this.

Of course, no gatherings are allowed so I presume no sport’s matches, religious congregation or events, only funerals. And bars and probably restaurants remain closed. What a loss of work and income that will bring. Many will be reduced to poverty overnight, like me. Luckily I have a considerate landlord and friends willing to assist me now. It’s at times like these where our humanity is being tested and it is proving to be resilliant for the moment. At least in my current circumstances. Others may be far worse off, even though I have no cash left or none coming in.
One ray of joy for the masses will be the return of cigarette sales. Even though smoking them increases your health risk as this crucial time, people will rather carry on using nicotine, so that will pacify them in their time of need now.

With cities obviously being a hotspot for cases, I’m well situated in a rural setup near a small town. Winter’s approaching and the masses that will now increase public transportation and schooling, may result in a flare up of cases. We need to weather this out by pumping our immune systems and gradually obtaining herd immunity. This will be the year we stayed home.

Daily sms text messages are being delivered on the phone telling people it’s an offence to go out and we must stay home, etc, so they are really pushing the narrative. 70 000 military troops have been deployed to assist the few thousand already deployed nationwide. More troops in the streets and we are supposed to be easing up from hard lockdown? I imagine they will assist with essential services and back up the police, particularly since folks may still be edgy and also impoverished and desperate. It’s almost our entire army, which is being deployed to help with water distribution, health services and general maintenance, including monitoring the citizens.

SO we are not going anywhere near back to normal. For Africa this may only be the beginning. Hopefully we have stemmed the tide with the initial lockdown, but anything is still on the cards, and I’m not going to interpret the omens I have seen and heard already. Better I remain silent and just observe and report. For as long as the internet holds up and the food too. Shortages may be on the horizon according to some, so I’m still stocked up for a month at a time with rice, lentils and oats. That and a pocket of potatoes and a few butternut, complimented with some green leafy veg in the property’s communal garden, And I am in survival mode par excellence.

This is what my decade in the yoga ashram monastery trained me for – to live on the essentials and eschew any need for luxuries. Simple living facilitates high thinking, so the new norm will perfectly facilitate my real goals of life, namely to become renounced from material desires and focused in consciousness and transcendence. That is where the magic happens, and that is my new norm. What will be yours?