Covid-19 lockdown day 32- here comes lockdown-lite or level 4

They may be calling it liberation from lockdown on May 1 in five days from now, but it’s officially more of the same, just one notch lighter. Level four after the hard lockdown of level five, will be like house arrest for many still, as the overall policy remains self-isolation, quarantine and social distancing. This is by no means over, and all that we have now are the easing of the brakes by about 25% on the overall social and economic halt.

wifi really bad lately so no pic upload

As the rationing of my reality starts coming home to my consciousness, I realize that cash will be a scarce to absent in flowing via my old income before lockdown, and as “account zero” approaches, I watch my last few bits of fiat currency dwindle to under a thousand ZAR. No way am I going to be able to pay rent in 5 days, or even earn it, as my clients aren’t going to be requiring my services any time soon.

A trip to the supermarket every 10 days or so has allowed me to stock up on basics, and I should have enough for three or four weeks at this rate. I relish my white bread and peanut butter daily as a lunch snack. It’s my treat of the day. Lightly toasted plain white bread, and a “slather” of sweet and nutty peanut butter... is the new dessert. After a bowl of oats and hot water for breakfast much earlier, along with a banana from the recent ripened garden harvest outside, a lunch time snack works well to see me through to my main meal of the day around 5pm.

I cook daily for myself and having soaked the lentils/chickpeas/beans or whatever, I cook them up with some rice, two palms full of each, and some potatoes and butternut if available. Lots of spices, while they last, and I’m well fed. That’s the daily rationing in total. Nothing more or less gets consumed by me seven days a week, except for warm water, and maybe once a week some ceylon tea when I get bored, where I’ll add a little milk powder given to me once, and some sugar – one teaspoon. Ah the luxuries.

I was lucky to also find some avos last week, while I still had some cash, but now with my last 1000 I will probably not be buying any more avos for a while. This has been a belt-tightening time for all I presume, on their respective levels, and here in sunny South Africa we see all levels, from five to zero, from billionaire to bush-dweller, with many types of shacks in between.

Of course, having been to live in India a few times in my youth, I have seen real poverty there that makes ours in South Africa look quite provincial. I mean their city slums are horrendous. We have far less people, lighter weather conditions, less disease and are actually spoiled by government handouts, as far as the vast majority are concerned. Even myself, as a child of the old Apartheid era of the 1970/80s, I was privileged to have a cheap but good education and housing while the black Africans had less.

So now three decades later almost, I am still reminded of that in my country of such vast wealth inequality. Yet now covid has reduced us all to victims of a type of imprisonment, where you are no linger master of your own fate, or destiny, or future. It is all taken out of your control by the state, a state dictated to by just WHO, we wonder? Nevertheless, whatever the source, imprisonment is here. I mean curfew from 8pm to 5am every night from level four, starting in 5 days. Only a third of staff back to work at a time. No socializing! That is the most hectic one for the mind.

Look I get the point, we need to stop the spread of a virus, but when I have realized that it’s just the flu, and I’m being played by the ID2020 Agenda, then the whole thing just feels like war on the mind. One consolation is that I can probably walk on the beach, and go out for jogs anywhere in public, as long as there’s only one of me. That means a lot to many, including the dogs, I’m sure. As for the cash crisis or Great Depression, the President offered me ZAR350 a month for the next six months, if I even qualify, being the wrong skin colour for ANC government handouts. Even though I financially qualify. Not that 350 is worth much with the ZAR now tanked to almost 20 to the USD. It means the government is offering me $17 a month as a relief package. Nice. Will let you know if it ever manifests.