So like everyone in SA, we woke up on Friday 27th March 2020 in lock down. It’s not so bad. 21 days. It’s doable…bullshit. It’s going to be testing, but here’s the thing it can be testing and a total waste of time…or it can be testing and fruitful…and I suppose if you’re superhuman it might not even be testing. In fact it might be kind of fun if you’re an introvert in a big house with fuck load of toys and things to ‘explore’…

The thing is although it shouldn’t have, the lock down still sprung itself on a lot of us…we were up the coast, hanging and breaking the ‘beaches are all closed’ rule in Plettenburg Bay with about 50 other folk, dotted down about 5 kilometres of sand. We could have come back earlier but didn’t.

So, you wake up to your freedom having been removed. You understand why, but it’s still gone, and you’re feeling a bit sorry for yourself because you can’t go bodyboarding, or jogging or mountain biking, and you’re wondering which of the many walls of your largish, solidly built, indoor plumbed house (with swimming pool) you’re going to climb first and someone posts a shot of a 2 meter by fuck all tin and wood shack clinging desperately onto the side of a hill about 1,500 meters from where you are and you instantly hate yourself.

When you live in South Africa you can’t feel sorry for yourself…it’s not fucking possible. This is a good thing. Not the situation, but the ‘not being able to feel sorry for yourself.’ bit. For the majority of my adopted country, this nasty, invisible thing is striking very real fear into their hearts. How do you ‘social distance’, or ‘self isolate’ when you live with 15 people in a lean to the size a garage…and that’s not a double garage by the way. Once the virus hits the crowded townships it’s going to run riot, and there will be no where to hide…and the worst of it, it’s been brought into the country by the rich folk who fly…and continued to fly…to fly in for weddings in the wine lands, and business meetings (which could have been done on any of a thousand online tools) and it’s going to make it’s way into the townships because the people living there need to work every day, and they work for the wealthy infected folk as their maids, or gardeners and nannies. It’s cruel. So damn cruel.

South Africa has been given some grace. The virus took its time to get to us, and the government has done a great job of learning from the rest of the world – what to do, and what not to do…but I think we’re about 10 days out from hell being unleashed unfortunately…let’s hope not.