Life under lockdown in South Africa

VARIOUS

Mandy Wiener

Counting to midnight lockdown like it was New Year’s Eve, I felt a sense of foreboding, of trepidation, like we were on the verge of something immense. It was anxiety, fear of the unknown. I later learnt that it was “anticipatory grief”, according to the foremost world expert on grief. Grief for our lives as we have come to know them.

None of us know what tomorrow will bring. But we do know that our lives are going to be irrevocably changed by this experience.

Locked down with my six and four-year-old, we have been taking it day by day. It’s been about trying to find the balance of what works for us, and stay sane in the process. Those of us who are trying to find a new normal, working at home while trying to keep children stimulated and alive are navigating through uncharted territory.

Are we doing enough? Are we doing the right thing? Are we overachieving? How does that make others feel? A schedule might work for my kids, but that doesn’t mean it works for yours. A day of TV and iPad might be what they need right now to deal with the anxiety. You do what you gotta do to survive, and there should be no judgement about what that is.

For us, a schedule works. So we’ve been kicking the day off every morning at 08:00 with exercise, either training together outside or an episode of Cosmic Yoga, PE with Joe Wicks, or videos thoughtfully sent by their karate or dancing teachers.

Fortunately, the teachers at Sydenham Nursery School have put together the most amazing Pesach packs, so we’ve been crafting ourselves silly. There are also amazing resources online so days have been filled with science experiments as well as vintage board games, puzzles, sticker books, drawing shadow animals, and gardening. It’s non-stop. But to be honest, there have been hours and hours of iPad and TV time too.

Technology has also completely changed the game – we’ve been doing lessons via Zoom, baking challah with granny on Skype, and checking in with Bobs on Facetime. This year, we are doing a Seder by Zoom – my family is dispersed around the world so we’re each going to have ten minutes to “present” the Pesach story. A novel coronavirus forces us into novel ways of thinking and acting, it seems.

I’ve also been trying to balance all this with fielding dozens and dozens of questions from people who don’t know who else to ask, posting regular updates and opinion pieces on where we are as a country, and becoming a veritable information bureau. It’s a welcome distraction. I’m also trying to finish a book due out later this year – just for some added pressure. Social media can become a vortex of emotion, sucking you in for hours and spitting you out drained and tormented.

Right now, I’m grateful for my privilege. For having a home, a garden, a full fridge, a selfless helper, and family. It’s not going to be an easy 21 days for people who don’t enjoy these privileges and who aren’t so fortunate. They are going to need help. I’m also grateful to all those who are on the frontline of this fight – in hospitals, laboratories, and on the streets.

Mental health is going to become a very real concern amongst us all over the next few weeks. People are already fraying at the edges. It’s the anxiety about the unknown that’s rocking us. The panic about a potential threat to our families that we can’t see. It has a devastating effect.

It’s a terrifying time. People are feeling bereft and scared. Shuls are closed. We can’t hug our friends. Our kids can’t play with their friends. Our sanity is slowly eroding.

Check on each other. Check on your strong friend. Ask your kids to share what the best part of their day was. We need to talk and share and do what we can to keep each other sane.

•            Mandy Wiener is one of the country’s best known and most credible journalists and authors. She is also a multi award-winning reporter.

When past and future collide

Elliot Wolf

Our familiar and customary reading of the Haggadah with its description of the ten plagues this Pesach in such “unfamily-like” circumstances certainly made the COVID-19 scourge all the more relevant and terrifying. I, for one, have never had to experience a seder alone in all my 84 years!

Every day, we are informed of the rising numbers of those infected, and the tens of thousands worldwide who have lost their lives. The inevitable lockdown all over the world, so absolutely essential in these circumstances has, of course, had a severe effect on the global economy with the concomitant escalation of unemployment. In addition, we all have felt the restrictions of the lockdown on our personal lives.

Technology has, fortunately, come to the rescue, with many companies and businesses maintaining operations with online computer communication and large numbers of employees working from home.

I look forward to the time when our students will return to their schools and to the ideal environment of interpersonal teacher-student contact. I’m certainly no Luddite, and welcome the advantages that technology has introduced into education and its beneficial use in the classroom, but I still believe, perhaps idealistically, that true education isn’t just the imparting of factual knowledge and skills for independent thinking.

Essentially, it should be a human partnership in a shared learning experience where values and attitudes to life are exemplified and instilled.

As an “elderly” in the community, I remember the early fifties (of the last century!) when the dreaded poliomyelitis threatened societies all over the world. At that point, no anti-polio vaccine had been developed, and as a result, thousands of children were maimed for life or, tragically, died. To meet this emergency, schools were closed for six weeks without any contact with our teachers, and we children wore home-made camphor bags around our necks to ward off the debilitating infection. I wonder how many of my contemporaries will still remember this to confirm the accuracy of my words.

We have all heard comments that in the face of this terrifying pandemic that has affected all our lives so drastically and universally, we can look forward, when the virus has been controlled, to an era of greater co-operation internationally, of a decline in violence of all kinds, and of sensitivity to world issues in ecology. I sincerely hope so, though I have my doubts.

•            Elliot Wolf is the former headmaster of King David High School Linksfield, and the director of the King David Schools Foundation.

Wake up and smell the hibiscus

Mike Abel

That’s precisely what I did on day one. I walked into the garden, sipping my Nespresso Cosi Lungo, and noticed how quiet the streets were – in terms of sound, not sight. And then I saw lots of salmon coloured hibiscus on a bush at the end of my garden, so I walked over to examine them more closely. I was brought up to love plants, passed on by my parents and grandparents while growing up in Port Elizabeth.

We lived in a suburb called Walmer, and the gardens there are generally large and lush. The hibiscuses at the bottom of our garden were bright red and pink. I remember my mom used to pick the leaves when making a chocolate cake for one of their fancy dinner parties. She’d coat the leaves of the hibiscus with melted hot chocolate and leave them in the fridge to harden. She’d then carefully peel away the leaf and a perfect chocolate one would remain. And then she’d decorate her cake with lots of them. She was an amazing cook.

So, that’s how my day started. I share this story for one reason. A dramatisation of sensory deprivation, or at least the coming sense of it. I haven’t recalled my mom doing this leaf-making as an adult. It’s a memory of over 40 years. I similarly haven’t recalled the hibiscuses in my childhood garden in decades, or being aware of exactly which coffee I was drinking as I wandered across our lawn. I’m generally an observant person, but I was startled by my acute level of heightened awareness from the moment I was told about the lockdown.

For someone who has a keen sense of the world around them – visually particularly – and is, both to my own detriment and advantage, insatiably curious, the concept of 35 days in isolation is rather intimidating. You see, I’d only been out of confinement for a few days post a business trip to London and then a few days of skiing in Switzerland, cut short by the need to return. Little did I know as I left for my meetings in the United Kingdom that we’d be facing a rampant virus just a week later. There were less than 10 cases when I landed in the great city, yet I fastidiously wiped and swiped everything in close sight with alcohol swabs, being a self-confessed germaphobe my entire life.

After my walk in the garden, I got onto a three-hour, highly focused and productive video conference with the exco of M&C Saatchi Abel. There were no distractions for any of us, apart from my dachshund, Molly, being uncertain of whether she wanted to be in my study or not, and pawing the door both ways. A full day of virtual work and meetings followed, and then Shabbat supper with my wife and our three sons, while the rest of my wife’s family dialled in on a WhatsApp video and my father-in-law said kiddush for us, over the phone from Port Elizabeth.

A day full of learning, hard decisions, new experiences, old memories, and cherished family. We went to bed hopeful that the days to follow would remain calm, productive, and healthy.

•            Mike Abel is the founding partner and chief executive officer of MC Saatchi Abel.

It will get better, but in the meantime, stay home

Jacques Weber

I’ll be writing to you live from my desk at home on day two of the lockdown if I’m not out on the road assisting someone.

I’m involved in several security-based organisations which are allowed to perform services during lockdown. If not on duty, I’m in self-isolation.

Fortunately work is keeping me busy – my professional job as well as keeping you up to date on JWI.News, an area-based information page providing vital information along Cape Town’s Atlantic Seaboard and City Bowl. In the past 72 hours, the page has received more than 250 comments a day, which I try to answer. It has a view rate of about 10 000 a day.

As a former government representative (a ward councillor for the Democratic Alliance), I feel a responsibility to beg everyone to stay at home, as this is the course of action the government has chosen. This is a global crisis. We need to come together as a community worldwide and put our daily routine aside so that we can move through this faster. I know things will turn around, and we will be stronger for it.

I will focus on the things I can control. Cooking and baking, online gym sessions, staying healthy, keeping my community informed at all times, and surrounding myself with positive energy. I can’t control what’s going on in the world, but I can control where my thoughts go. Don’t use your energy to worry, use it to believe.

We have already seen incredible acts of selflessness and community spirit. Those at the frontline are risking their own health to look after those in need. It gives me hope for humanity. I’m so proud of all those individuals who have become part of the solution. We are in this together. We are one. This will truly shift us into a kinder and more connected space.

My heart goes out to everyone who has been affected by this situation. In one way or another we are all affected. We don’t know how long it will last, or the extent of the impact. It’s tough. The COVID-19 outbreak has already changed the world, and it’s going to keep changing.

I visualise the world happy and healthy again, clinking glasses over lovely meals, hugging each other, kissing hello, walking on our beautiful beachfront, and watching the magnificent sunsets Cape Town has to offer. I realise just how precious life really is.

We’ve got this! We’re in this together! We’ll emerge from this moment stronger than ever. Stay strong, stay positive, and most importantly, don’t lose hope.

•            Jacques Weber is managing director of the WatchTower Group, a former ward councillor of Ward 54 (the Cape’s Atlantic Seaboard), and the founder of news portal JWI.News.

The heartbeat of Leningrad

Howard Sackstein

It’s 08:45, and I awake a little disorientated in a darkened room. My alarm hasn’t startled me awake this morning, and it’s so nice to have a late lie-in on a weekday morning. I listen for the familiar sounds, a passing car, the distant sound of trucks on the highway, the townhouse gardeners dragging a hosepipe, the chatter of domestic workers as they hang washing on the line and go about their daily chores. But nothing … stillness, silence, and suddenly a cold chill, and I fear I may be the only person still left alive. Am I the lonely figure of Will Smith and his dog walking through the desolate landscape of Times Square in the 2007 post-apocalyptic action thriller, I am Legend?

In 1941, the German army besieged the former Russian capital of Leningrad (now St Petersburg), cutting off its supplies and starving the city inhabitants into submission. One of the most brutal sieges in history lasted nearly three years and killed one and a half million of the city’s inhabitants.

During the siege, the Russian army installed 1 500 loudspeakers throughout the encircled city. Twenty-four hours a day, the speakers broadcast the monotonous sound of a metronome, a slow dull ticking pulse. When the city was under attack, the metronome warned inhabitants with a faster pace. Over time, the soothing sound of the metronome became known as the Heartbeat of Leningrad. The sound of a continuous heartbeat was an auditory symbol that the city was alive, its pulse could be heard beating throughout the neighborhoods.

The technology has changed, but the heartbeat continues.

I reach for my phone, it’s filled with WhatsApp messages, emails, Zoom meetings requests, and the annoyance of Houseparty App notifications – yes, I know Deelan and Pranita are in a virtual room waiting for me to join. The silence is replaced by noise, and my life is filled with people and chatter, meeting after meeting, Zoom and GoogleHangouts, Skype and WhatsApp. Can you assist with landing rights for a plane bringing in supplies? We have access to N95 masks in China, who needs? There is a copper-based mask in Israel, have you heard about it? The regulator has published new rules for rapid antibody test kits, what shall we do? A month ago, I knew nothing about planes, or hand sanitizer, plastic bottles, or rapid testing kits … My world has changed.

The SA Jewish Report is the heartbeat of our community and we continue to publish and distribute electronically and in hard copy. The thirst for connection within our community is strong. Our first medical Zoom panel attracted 1 147 participants, our comedy panel numbers are, as they say, for want of a better word, “going viral”.

I don’t yet have time for books, movies, or online courses. I haven’t got round to cleaning my study. Viktor Frankl taught us that survival is dependent on your ability to find meaning and purpose in your everyday life. I have no idea if the plane will land, if the test kits will arrive, if the personal protective equipment medical equipment will ever find its way to South Africa, but the fact that I tried allows me to get up, make my bed, and have a shave, because I will be darned if I land up looking like Tom Hanks taking to a basketball!

Immuno-compromised in a pandemic

Danielle Bitton

I’m living with a compromised immune system in Cape Town during the coronavirus pandemic.

I’m 35 years old and on 10 December 2019, I was living my dream, playing the lead alternate role in an international tour of the musical Evita in China, when I found a lump in my breast. After a visit to a hospital in Guangzhou, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I also performed in Wuhan shortly before the virus first broke out there.

I returned to Cape Town to find out that it was stage two, aggressive, and I had the BRCA2 gene. In the next month, I had a double mastectomy and expanders inserted. Two weeks afterwards, I had a CT scan which picked up irregular looking cells in my lymph nodes, and had an auxiliary lymph node clearance operation.

I was homebound, recovering from the two operations for about two months, and in considerable pain. I was blessed to have many visitors and family and friends help me out with food and essential items.

However, after I started chemotherapy on 12 March, I was advised not to go to public places, supermarkets, and pharmacies, and not to see family and friends, as my immune system was compromised and I was at greater risk of catching any illness. This was at the same time that coronavirus arrived in South Africa.

Not being able to hug my family has been challenging, especially when I started to lose my hair and had a severe panic attack. My mother and brother came over to shave my hair last Saturday, and I just had to hug them – it was all too much!

I felt very anxious before my second round of chemo, as the coronavirus numbers started rising and members of our community in my neighbourhood tested positive. Since the country went into lockdown, I’ve been advised to isolate myself completely.

On the whole, self-quarantine hasn’t been too bad for me as I’m lucky that I can channel my energy creatively into my music, DJing, singing, painting, and writing my blog, which has been therapeutic (you can read my story www.thejourneywithin.co.za).

As far as food and essential supplies go, my brother has been going to the shops for me since my mother is also self-isolating due to asthma. If friends want to drop some food off for me, they put it outside my gate and can speak to me keeping at least two metres between us. I’m lucky that my neighbour has become a good friend, and we chat on our balconies – also two metres apart.

The only time I leave my apartment is to go to the hospital. I make sure to put on my “suit of armour” before I go: my face mask which has a filter (luckily I purchased it in China for pollution), latex gloves, sunglasses, and sometimes I wrap a scarf around my head and face. They are very strict about sanitising before you enter the building, and you are given a sticker that reads “screened”.

No visitors are allowed in the hospital and the chemo room, only patients with appointments and those in need of treatment. I drive myself to the hospital for blood tests and chemo, and park in the basement. I take the elevator all the way up to the 16th floor where the chemo room is located. Luckily, no one has entered the elevator with me on the way up so far, but the other day as I was coming down, I asked people waiting if they wouldn’t mind taking the next elevator. A bit of a diva move, I know, but drastic times call for drastic measures!

Even though the world has been turned upside down during this pandemic, I’m an optimist. I’m just so grateful to be alive, to take this time to do everything I wanted to but never had the time for: to learn, to create, to connect on a deeper level with family and friends, to appreciate the little things we take for granted. It reminds us that we are all in this together, we are all connected.

There is such power in that. All spiritual teaching is about a divine consciousness that unites us all. Maybe now we will not only see it, but feel it.

•            Danielle Bitton is a singer, actress and DJ who has lived and performed around the globe.

From cruise ship to quarantine

Raymond Schkolne

Towards the end of December 2019, my wife Sheryl and I left for a once in a lifetime five-month cruise to all seven continents.

When the virus was still primarily in Wuhan, a medical doctor named Margaret whom we had befriended on the ship said that this would spread like wildfire across the world. She asked about the implications of leaving the cruise. We all thought, of course, that this was ridiculous exaggeration.

Then the message came through that New Caledonia wouldn’t let our ship in. “Why?” we asked. “Is it overreacting?”

Well, New Caledonia imposed a strict maritime quarantine in 1918 which resulted in zero Spanish Flu-related deaths. This can be compared to Western Samoa, also in the South Pacific, which didn’t impose similar restrictions, and tragically lost about 22% of its population.

Then Tonga and the Cook Islands refused us entry. Fortunately, arrangements were made to spend additional time in beautiful French Polynesia and Fiji.

Next, we were offered a new cruise route via Africa to Europe rather than via Asia and the Middle East, where too many countries were “closing down”. We had been to Africa! So, we chose to travel around Australia and New Zealand, visiting family and friends.

After a wonderful day in Port Vila, sailing the next day to Champagne Beach, also in Vanuatu, we were told that we were no longer allowed in. Vanuatu, a country whose economy depends on tourism, had shut its doors overnight!

The captain then announced that the cruise – about halfway through – was cancelled, and we were now heading, full steam, for Australia – with a cyclone behind us. Three days through rough seas followed, and we wondered, “What if they don’t allow us to dock or to get off the ship?”

We anchored in the spectacular Sydney bay for two days, with family and friends just a few kilometres away, yet out of reach. With travelling long since off the radar, it was straight to the airport and onto one of the last flights back to South Africa. We will be reimbursed on a proportional basis for each day not sailed.

We are now under quarantine in our home in Cape Town. We are disappointed of course, and we would so love to hug our grandchildren again, but this is nothing close to the consequences for so many who are ill, and whose jobs or businesses are lost or at risk. We are healthy with much to be thankful for, and we are focused on transforming the lockdown into as special an experience as it can be.

Sadly, Margaret was right, and we sit reflecting on how special our cruise experience was, and how grateful we are to be home at this time. We are thinking about the speed at which things have changed, humanity’s shared destiny, and the lesson of New Caledonia.

•            Raymond Schkolne is retired. He has been deeply involved in the South African Jewish community his entire life, including as co-chair of Limmud Cape Town 2019, and executive committee member of the Jewish Democratic Initiative.