Lockdown Diaries

Currently, after six weeks of lockdown, South Africa has 6000 Covid cases and 100 deaths. Mpumalanga, the province we live in and which is almost four times the size of Wales, has 30 cases and no deaths. Compared to the likes of the UK or USA that doesn't sound too bad, but the lockdown we have been under has been one of the strictest - we have not even been allowed to exercise outside of our premises.

These restrictions have obviously affected Mercy Air's ministry as we are not allowed to fly locally, let alone into Mozambique. We have even placed our aircraft of ground cover only, to save on insurance.

Like most other people around the world Cathy and I have sorted our general filing system, gained more disk space by purging the 'my pictures' file, tidied the cupboards, cleared out the garage and attended to the garden etc. Similarly, one of the occupational hazards of living on a farm, even a moderately small one, is that there is always something that needs attention - most things waiting for that mythical day, 'when there is time to do it'. These last few weeks there has been no excuse and slowly, one by one, these odd jobs are getting ticked off. Here is a small selection:

Windsocks are out in the wind and the sun and over time become quite tatty.

Perfect time then to put new ones up at the top of the airstrip...

..and on the hangar roof.

For ages now we have wanted to extend the line of poles up the airstrip, and we now have 320m worth to keep the cars and aircraft away from each other. It was quite a big job involving 25m of white pipe, a bit of old scaffolding and a sledge hammer!

Our farm staff are at home as they are not allowed to travel to work. But grass, trees and bushes still grow and need cutting, and the off cuts need to be cleared. Time to remember how to drive the tractor and take it all to the dump.

Even though Mercy Air's aircraft are 'grounded', there is still a need to be met locally as many people  are feeling the affect of being without work and are beginning to go hungry. Mercy Air has been helping with food drops for a number of other mission organisations who work in the local rural areas.

On other occasions we have asked our farm staff to identify needs in their immediate community and have made up and delivered food parcels.

The contents

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Delivery

Some of the beneficiaries who were very grateful.

Swenky, our farm 'Induna' arranged the one drop. Afterwards he took us to his church and to be honest I was expecting something basic, but a bit more comprehensive.

Nigel and Swenky

They have been meeting here for eight years under eight poles, three corrugated roof sheets and some old shade netting. Very slowly they have been building a wall, but at R5 (21 pence) a breeze block, it is taking a long time.

Erin, one of our Mercy Air staff is making masks, it's now compulsory to wear them when out in public areas. She has already made over 100 and is making at least another 120 for Msholozi clinic! Cathy has helped with some cutting out.

Erin with some of the many masks she has made

Cathy continues to work at ASM's primary health care clinic three days a week and of course uses them there. The patients are each given a mask and distanced appropriately whilst waiting to be seen.

Here we are modeling some of the latest trendy designs.

As we said, the lockdown had been strict in south Africa and we are very fortunate to have the farm to extend into. Even though it only measures about 900m square we have taken full advantage and managed to ride most evenings.

We set ourselves little goals such as riding round all the tracks in one go. Turns out there are 11.8 km of them.

Then someone thought it'd be fun to ride between every row of macadamia trees in every field. Turns out there are 66km of those!

Thank you.

Paul and Cathy