Cleansing us of bad and good thanks to the lockdown
Strangely it has been the bigger companies, we are told, who have not put their workers first by not applying for UIF benefits to assist workers or in some cases not paying them at all
It is indicative of the days that we live in that it takes a funeral for folk to come together.
The grief of the day was lightened by a gathering of friends who, due to the lockdown and on-going virus crisis, have not socialised with each other for almost three months. And it was a day that Paul, whose life was being celebrated, would have smiled at.
He liked to see people happy. Strange days indeed, as Jim Morrison once wrote.
And the eclectic gathering brought with it some pithy observations. Like the one that the virus has been a horror show for sure but has also been a bizarre cleansing ceremony. Those keen for a tipple have had to do without or go to great lengths to get (at extraordinarily evil prices) or make their own. Smokers have searched high and low for a ‘loose’ and grumbled at paying R70 for a packet of cheapies that the guy at the tuckshop once sold for R15.
So many have been cleansed of their vices – albeit forcibly. The lack of fastfood saw many would-be cooks turn to the
Internet to come up with homemade recipes. This is highlighted by how long visitors to mainstream recipe websites spent online before and during lockdown. Before lockdown, the average time spent on mainstream recipe websites was 7 minutes vs. 10 minutes during lockdown.
So people found that they can survive without calling for takeaways and the guy on the mo-ped. Families were also cleansed of parents running around to social gatherings.
Forced to stay at home, they even dusted off the Monopoly and chess boards for family nights. That cleansed them of those no family nights that so many households have to endure in a ‘normal month’.
One comment was that how clean the town has been since the ‘hard lockdown’. But since the onslaught of level 3 lockdown rules, the litter is back along with the people. It as is if someone just flipped a switch. There are still no park parties (yet) but the town is just as dirty as it was on March 26.
But there has sadly also been some cleansing of a different sort. It has taken this virus crisis to expose what many already knew but did little to solve.
Hundreds of our rural schools (and some in town too) do not have access to water. Suddenly the authorities, who for 25 years must have discussed this issue, are running around on June 7, the day before the two Grades were due to go back, trying to access running water. That’s a real expose.
Also exposed are those employers who have not been supportive of the ‘we are all in this together’ mantra that has been trotted out.
Strangely it has been the bigger companies, we are told, who have not put their workers first by not applying for UIF benefits to assist workers or in some cases not paying them at all.
The smaller companies, The Bowman, has been told seem to have gone a step further in ensuring their workers received full pay regardless. As was said at the gathering referred to earlier: Yes, we are all in the same boat but some are in yachts and others on leaky rubber dinghies.
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