IN LOCK DOWN WITH LIONS Day 6

My chest is tight and I have a cough, it is more of a throat cough than a chest couch, it only lasts for an hour or 2 in the early hours of the morning and is accompanied by sneezing. It is clearly only the beginnings of an ordinary cold. But I am not at all happy with this situation. 

I have not come into contact with many people in the past 6 days as the whole country is in lockdown. 

On the last day out before Lockdown, we went to town because we had just read on the farmers’ group that all farmers should get a signed letter from the Farmers’ Union declaring us to be farmers and therefore engaged in critical activities. We had to present our copy of the letter to Advocate George Galloway at the Farmers Co-op where he would be sitting to sign from 10am to 11am on Thursday. But first we had to type and print our individual letter which was amended to specify our work as being that of "Lion Carers".

In order to type and print, we had to go to our local computer shop as they had inadequately fixed our laptop (which took them 5 weeks and it came back incompatible with Microsoft office or HP smart). So we had to use their internet café computers. This meant sitting alongside strangers, at a 10cm elbow distance. Working opposite strangers whose rented screens sat back to back with ours. Keyboards clicked as many different hands typed whatever important words they themselves required for urgent documents going into this period. When they finished, they sent their document to the printer and grouped at the counter to wait for their pages. New fingers took over the vacant keyboards in the cycle of humanity needing to type and print before self-isolation could begin.

We breathed a sigh of relief when we left the printer shop and headed over to the Farmers co-op to join the queue of farmers all waiting to have this important permission slip signed in the hour in which all the farmers could get it signed. It was a jolly gathering of khaki clad folk.

After all that, we looked forward to semi isolation, except that we first had to collect a dead cow at the Botanical gardens in Harrismith and do some food shopping for ourselves. The Botanical Gardens is the name hung over from a bygone era, where once there were beds of flowers and gentle paths winding through hedgerows whose names were displayed on maintained notice boards, now there is dry veld growing in and over smashed green houses. The ‘Gardens’ are set within a greater area, 6000Ha in size, of beautiful mountain, forest, gorges, dams and seasonal waterfalls which is a proclaimed Game Reserve. The reserve encompasses the Platberg mountain which is the backbone of Harrismith around which an entire town’s activity could be based. Think outdoor activities, restaurants, craft village, camping, corporate bonding weekends, artist getaway camps, picnic sites, plant growing, game viewing, farmers’ markets, educational bushskills and eco-schooling.

The Municipality of Harrismith who owns all of this, leases the Game reserve to a handful of men who keep a few horses there for their polo needs and who rent out the game reserves’ grazing to cattle farmers. The private gate guards are employed to bill cyclists to have the privilege of riding on the municipalities land and to make sure no Harrismithians swim in a botanical garden dam or picnic under a willow tree on a hot summers day even though the Gardens themselves are not included in the lease.

We are asked to pay the entrance fee to go in and remove the carcass, but this is quickly wavered when we say that they can deduct their fee from our carcass clean-up fee.  

Having collected the cow, with close-up, personal assistance from the herdsman, we headed over to Spar to stock up on some food for the humans at LLA. But the line just to enter the store went around the corner. Person standing behind person in what we can now think of as an old fashioned queue, like flowers in a botanical garden, now a thing from a bygone era. Last week we chatted to people in lines at tellers, but now, scandalized, we drive on by, tut tutting.

.

Six days later and I am writing this from inside of my very isolated tent on the side of an isolated mountain. I should be low-risk. But I think of all the contact I have had. We collect carcasses to feed the lions, so we drive out to farms on which the carcass lies. 

To get off of the sanctuary we drive through the little town of Swinburne (Montrose), there we stop for diesel. The attendant chats to us as he always does, he hands us the credit card machine which I use and hand back to him. Another attendant comes over and takes the portable machine, he begins typing the next driver’s details in as he slowly walks over to hand it to him. Line runs into the Shell store to buy a coke zero and see what food they have to eat on the go. She comes back biting into a freshly bought pie.

“Did the shop assistant have gloves on?” I ask

“no, don’t be silly, everyone is over reacting about this thing”

The only vehicles in the usually bustling bus station belong to a single soldier, a single mask and glove clad nurse, a single traffic control person and two N3 highway rescue personnel. The staff at Montrose are behaving as if it is a normal day between buses, but the clientele has evolved into First Responders in a film.

We drive on the quiet N3 highway along with only a dozen or so heavy duty long haul trucks, “This is wonderful, no traffic” Line comments

Then we take our off-ramp slowing up to the Toll Gate. It is R47 to get through this secondary gate but I do not believe we will need to pay, I am sure that during Lock down the gates will be unmanned and standing open. But I am to be proven wrong, we come to a standstill behind a small skedonk car in which we can see so many heads that we suspect some cannot come with bodies as there is just not enough space for them in that old car. Once the driver completes the transaction and drives off, we pull up alongside of the service window, the assistant smiles broadly, she greats us, holds out her hand and asks for R47 please. I hand her R50 and look ahead to the red light, I drive out the moment it turns green, I do not take the proffered R3 in coins from her gloveless hand.

We do not see another car while travelling on the gravel farm road. It is a beautiful day. There is always drama of one sort or another to be seen in the Free State sky. The light shines in shafts through the massive billowing clouds. How does one describe their colour, for they are in part darkest grey and deep blue, but also pure white shaded in light pink. Warm yellow light beams down, lighting up the veld and cosmos flowers in sunny patches amid the somber, storm ready shadows. It will, if it does rain at all, also rain in patches. Huge drops of water will fall out of the sky with no wind or change of temperature and then just as suddenly cease to fall and we will dry up and forget that it rained.

On our way home from picking up the cow, we take a longer, but far better quality road which loops around the back of Harrismith and returns us via the outskirts of town. We are stopped at a road block. We have been out and about for hours, so are half surprised, half pleased that there is in fact someone checking up on who goes where. Driving past 42^nd Hill we passed a handful of cars full of people and wondered at their purpose for being out.

A white lab coated man in a white mask and gloves motions us to stop. I slide the window down. There is a policeman standing across the road and a man in an emergency personnel bib talking to a truck driver. Two civilian cars drive past unstopped whilst our man questions me.

“have you been overseas?”

I hesitate for a fraction of a second as I had anticipated a question regarding the current reason for being out which clearly entails the fetching of the huge dead cow on the back of the bakkie and clearly could not have entailed a trip overseas. But my mind catches up and tells me that the answer I have to give is “no”

At the same time that I say it, he says “in the last 14 days”

Now I answer more assuredly “No”

Do you have Corona Virus? Have you been with anyone who has the virus? Do you have any Symptoms? Do you have a sore throat? Do you have a cold?

No

Ok, you can go.

Today, on Day 6, the old man who lives on the farm we are on and who has been working part time for us to help cut up the carcasses and feed the lions as we are short staffed, has to go to town to get his pension. I googled how to get ones’ pension during the covid lockdown and found that pensions will still be given to the elderly as per usual. This means that all over the country, on this first day of the month, every elderly person who receives a government pension, will be making their way, in the most part by foot, to their nearest town to gather outside of municipal buildings to get their monthly stipend. They will then make use of the opportunity to buy their monthly groceries. There being no taxis and buses, they will then make their way home again with their shopping, per foot, arriving home exhausted and worn down carrying whatever it is they picked up in town.

We gave Nkinki hand sanitizer to take with him. Will he use it, will it be enough, should we allow him to come back into the sanctuary tomorrow to feed lions with us as per normal? What of his 18 family members who all live with him and rely on him?

 It is Day 6 and we do not feel the cabin fever as we are on the side of a mountain feeding lions in deep grass with long vistas which look right out across the Drakensburg.

Covid19 has altered our immediate world and not altered it at all. The dualism of people taking it seriously and those enjoying a holiday from work is as clear as it is disparate. We fall between the two, we have to continue to collect food for the lions and to build enclosures for the pumas and jaguars, but we would like to have no contact with the virus. We would like to close all possible avenues for it to enter the sanctuary, but it is impossible to do that when half of all systems still operating out there are done so unchecked, unmasked, ungloved and unsupported by replacement or improved governmental systems.