Love – and death – in the time of Corona

I’m in self-isolation, intermittently. I did go downstairs to leave a packet of vitamins and immune boosters with security for my son. I sprayed my hands and the packet with sanitiser.

The process to establish the protocol for dealing with packets involved six people, spraying me, the packet, and each other, passing it through three doors, standing it on a table, then on a shelf and taking it outside. I appreciated the precautions but I think someone slipped into the building unsprayed while we were dancing.

Then I had a delivery. A bouquet of sunflowers and roses so enormous that it hid the young man holding it. ‘You need to put water in these immediately’, he said. ‘Up to here’, touching the top of the vase. ‘Shall I come in and do it for you?’

‘No! That could be dangerous! You should step away now.’ I held out my hand to take the flowers. From the look on his face he might have thought I was holding a gun.

‘Well, you have a beautiful day ma’am.’

‘You too. Be safe, use hand sanitiser for all your deliveries.’

I see a strange woman on my doorstep holding a huge bouquet and I step back inside. The happy flowers have a With Sympathy card. What happened to me? Who died? How did the flowers get here before the news?

Turns out the flowers are from my ex-husband, which is confusing. But the message wishes me hope and inspiration at this difficult time. So I’ll take that with good grace and gratitude. And spray it all with sanitiser.

The spray gives me asthma. I hope the neighbours can’t hear me coughing.

I’m missing my children. I wonder if they are staying away to avoid infecting me because I am old and asthmatic, or strange.

I look out over the esplanade and the harbour, illuminated orange-black and orange-green in the light from the docks.

I need more words for waves at night. Some are glinting sinews, stretching and twisting oily muscles of water over one another like a writhing giant. Some are silver stitches tacked along a sandbank. In the dark, the depths show more distinctly. The channel, where ships slide in, is a horizontal ladder, its rungs reflected light. Either side of the black water the shallows swarm with their own quivering current. Bait catchers wade knee-deep in shimmering ink. They are right where Imraan Sheik lost his leg to a shark in 2002. Maybe they know of him. Maybe it would make no difference. Once in 80 years. Hierarchy of risks.

That’s what I think when a panicked staccato clashes with the flash of late summer lightning. The voice is not wary of the electric storm, or of the knot of sweating bodies around the ball; it is desperately urging a pass, a goal. Priorities in a place of few choices. There are two matches in progress on the strip of grass that is my Netflix. This is serious. Cones and whistles. Tackle, trip, tumble and hug, as though there is no infection this fast, no virus this virile. We will live before we die. We will choose.

A huddle of hoodied guys lean against the railway wall, squashed shoulder to shoulder and hunched over their cellphones. Flicker and flash of screens. Signals from satellites, connecting us and keeping us apart. Bending our necks and flexing our thumbs.

I wonder what they are reading. Who reads the ‘stay safe’ messages that we agonise over and translate. Can tips for infection prevention compete with calls for lynching COVID-19 ‘suspects’? The comments say no. A man was murdered in a street. Because he had the virus. Because he said he had the virus. Because he might have had the virus. Because it’s Africa. Because it’s Kenya. Because it’s getting like South Africa. Because it’s fake news. Because White people. Because human nature. Because men. Because alcohol. Because the media. Because.

We nail masks to each other’s faces. Not to keep out germs but to cover everything we are, or might be, with names that stand for history and hate. Nails silence us. Mouths full of blood, empty eyes.

I read that Pastor Bheki Ngcobo of the South African Zionist Church refuses to cancel his Easter gathering. He reportedly believes Coronavirus is Satan trying to stop people worshipping god. This is outside my frame of reference but running with that metaphor I’d say the Pastor is doing the devil’s work for him.

I feel a fleeting pang of sympathy for President Ramaphosa, who apparently needed to be reminded by Pastor Ngcobo that he is not god.

The President is not relying on prayer but on contact tracing to address the possible exposure to the virus of hundreds of people in Bloemfontein. At a church gathering apparently, Pastor Ngcobo.

The government plan is to find, screen and test all the people who came into contact with infected visitors at the church. Standard best practice. Let’s hope we do it as effectively as Nigeria, when it stopped Ebola in its tracks through swift tracing, monitoring and isolation of infected people.

I’m not full of hope. I was up half the night trying to get a former neighbour to Wentworth Hospital for her routine check-up and heart meds. If she wants to get out of hospital by lunchtime she has to be there by 5am to get a place in the queue. None of the drivers pitches until I phone and explain that the passenger is in her 80s and does not have a communicable disease.

I phoned to check on her after 2. She said she had waited outside the hospital for three hours with, she estimated, about 200 other people. Let’s say that is a hopeless exaggeration. Even if it was half that, it would be an illegal gathering in another setting. Inside she waited another hour for blood tests and then three hours to see a doctor. She said the staff sanitised everyone’s hands and seated people two to a bench instead of the usual six. Is this the best we can do for vulnerable communities? Why must elderly and chronically sick people be exposed like this? I would have gladly spent two hours delivering medicine so that ten people could stay home.

Parents tell their children on the other side of the country, the continent, the globe, to come home. Congregate at airports, cross borders, carry the virus with you, in your case, on the plane, just come home. We are afraid.

Cuba welcomes a British cruise ship to dock, with passengers and crew sick with Covid. The Cubans who assist have to go into quarantine, away from their families. The UK Independent says thanks but you are still a ‘one-party state with a poor human rights record’. Cuba sends 800 doctors to virus hotspots. South Africans say why are Cubans taking our jobs?

Tweeple are still plastering nonsense about Dettol, gargling with salt, snakes.

Boris Johnson’s Dad said he was going to the pub. Well I thought that is what he said but judging from the social media reaction he might have said he was going to drive a truck into a crowded market place.

‘So come my friends, be not afraid.

We are so lightly here.

It is in love that we are made.

In love we disappear.’

Oh Cohen, to be lightly here when everything is so heavy.

April 2020