Lockdown Levels
Firdous Hendricks, Cape Town South Africa
It’s 1am – I’m exhausted.
I sit lopsided at our dining room table wrapped in my lockdown uniform of tracksuit pants and fleece hoodie. What was once a space for connecting over hearty home cooked meals, is now a display of carefully organised piles of home-schooling for my 5 year old juxtaposed with the chaos of my work calendars, files, to do lists, notebooks, cold half full cups of tea, happy meal toys, bits of cut up paper (my daughter is obsessed with scissors), charger cables and tomato sauce.
I fight to keep my eyes open – This is the first moment I’ve had to myself in over a week but it’s a luxury that I’m too tired to fully enjoy.
I spent my day (every day) juggling counting games, art and phonics with endless work emails, zoom meetings, team WhatsApp groups and curriculum writing. My head is constantly occupied with inventing new, innovative ways of working – I create structures and strategies in the shower, while I cook, dream, eat, my brain is firing relentlessly. Our students are going hungry and if I don’t find creative ways for us to operate, people will lose their jobs. But beyond my spreadsheets, there is a voice calling from the pit of my belly.
I am trying to stay on top of meals and some active playtime with my only child. She has not seen another child in months and she’s lonely. I’m worried that she is having too much screen time. We just got her a new puppy. I’m potty training him but I have a doggy poop phobia so I side eye him every 10 seconds to make sure he doesn’t have a go on my carpet. It’s only been a week and he has already ripped up its edges. The voice in my belly has filled my chest.
I understand that I need to prioritize our mental health, so I find reasons to laugh and joke. I work hard to present joy, strength and a sense of control; I don’t want to transfer my anxiety onto my child. We spend time in the mountain and with the ocean, we lower our masks and steal breaths of fresh air when nobody is looking – nature has gifted us with some mercy.
Last night the president addressed the nation again – we now have levels of lockdown and we’ve gone from level 4 to level 3. Industries are starting to open up but our numbers are increasing and the hotspots are in our most vulnerable communities. Since the start of lockdown there has been a surge in gender based violence. Mzikayise Malephane stabbed Tshegofatso Pule in the chest and hung her from a tree. She was 8 months pregnant. Cigarettes remain banned while the effects of alcohol abuse put strain on our already struggling healthcare system, police brutality, black lives matter, social media – I am triggered. I’ve tested positive for Covid-19. I am mostly asymptomatic, so is my partner and child but I’m nervous about who we may have infected. I am constantly stressed about doggy poop.
Still, while my head reels, the voice is calling me. She is a character that came to me in a dream and became real in the pages I wrote during my mentorship with IWP. I have not had time for her and she is calling. Through the noise she is pushing to be written. Its 1am and it’s the only time I have for her but I’m exhausted and I find myself staring blankly at the dining room table. It’s just as overwhelmed by the past 18 hours as I am.
Eventually, I give into my eyelids. I close my laptop; pick up a few things from the floor to restore some semblance of order. I take the puppy to go potty and go to bed. At night I dream of her. She is disappointed that I didn’t make time – tomorrow, I promise her. Tomorrow.
Resources and Readings:
I started writing a story about a girl from the Cape Flats in Cape Town South Africa who discovers the unwritten stories of her ancestors as she journeys from her home to the corner shop. The stories she collects span across decades, from the height of Apardheid in the 60s to the slave trade in the early 1600s. The stories are all fiction but rooted in the oral history passed down through generations in my own community.
The challenge in writing this story is that the stories of our people have mostly been silenced, erased or exists through a white colonialist gaze. Creating the characters’ worlds took a bit of excavating and a bit of listening into collective, inherited memory. There were many nights that I sat and wept about what I had discovered and what had not been told.
Below are just a few of the resources and books that helped me along the way:
South African History Online - https://www.sahistory.org.za/
Iziko Slave Lodge - https://slavery.iziko.org.za/
Cape Town History - http://capetownhistory.com
Media Diversified – Slave narratives from Dutch colonisation in Indonesia -https://mediadiversified.org/2016/08/25/slave-narratives-from-dutch-colonisation-in-indonesia/
Regarding Muslims – from Slavery to Post-apardheid by Gabeba Baderoon
What Remains by Nadia Davids
Softness of the Lime by Maxine Case
Cass Abrahams Cooks Cape Malay by Cass Abrahams
