OYSTERHOOD is reclusiveness or solitude, or an overwhelming desire to stay at home.
Three weeks. That is what I thought last year on the 27th of March when starting the Oysterhood Diary: record the lockdown daily as it happens for three weeks, the announced initial length of the hard lockdown in South Africa. A year later, here I am. Like the possessed olive thrush trying to defeat his rival in my window’s reflection for the past two days (maybe longer?), I seem to be doomed for failure. I was thinking of making this my last Oysterhood post, but I am not sure how I will feel tomorrow. The lockdown is long from over. The pandemic nowhere near its end. I think I have become more resilient, despite of – or maybe because of – all the upheavals of the past twelve months. I am still miraculously healthy, or at least almost as healthy as I was before the pandemic. What doesn’t kill you, makes you … Yet, something is dead: a way of being.
And there are, of course, the nearly three million official Covid-19-related deaths worldwide; millions of others who loved them traumatised, grieving.
No matter what else, it is impossible not to be exhausted from the constant onslaught of terrifying news, having to be always vigilant, trying to somehow make it through the day, and the night, with the shreds of one’s dreams clinging to one’s soul.
In desperation, hope has torn out a few of her feathers. What if they don’t grow back?
Glinka and I put in a good day’s work today and finally got to the end of the last big project we have been working on. Some polishing remains to be done, but these are tiny details.
In the evening, my love and I went to one of our favourite restaurants in Cape Town to celebrate his birthday which happened while we were nowhere near a fine dining restaurant.
Be kind. Wear a mask. Support local.
“Physical distancing remains one of the key strategies to curb this pandemic.”
— NICD
Karina Magdalena 