Blogs from Saint Francis Bay, Eastern Cape, South Africa, Africa

“Out of suffering comes the serious mind; out of salvation, the grateful heart; out of endurance, fortitude; out of deliverance, faith. Patient endurance attends to all things.” – Teresa of Avila “A lockdown? This word is seldom heard or mentioned and conjures up an image of a maximum-security prison being placed in lockdown to keep unruly inmates under control. But here we are, restricted to our homes, trying to understand “social distancing” and many people trying to figure out what it all means.” This is a paragraph out of the very first Covid-19 blog written and published on 29th March 2020. It never crossed my mind that, 18 months later, it would still be a case of banging away on the keyboard for this 48th blog edition, trying to make sense of this pandemic which has ... read more

“Be fast, have no regrets…If you need to be right before you move, you will never win.” – Mike Ryan, epidemiologist at WHO in March 2021. The last C-19 blog was posted on 3rd August, which is almost a month ago. Not surprisingly, when it comes to C-19, a whole lot has continued to happen and this pandemic is still blazing its destructive path across the world. One of the cravings we humans have in the midst of this unprecedented disaster, is the burning desire to pursue anything or any activity that resembles “normal life.” This can take on many forms. In our case we opted to escape to the amazing charms and allure of the Kruger National Park. Ten days of pure bliss; no TV news, no newspapers, mostly poor cell phone signal and no ... read more

“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am – not stuck in the middle, but hovering above the entire farcical spectrum, weeping as I behold my fellow man’s devotion to political illusion and self-destruction” – Robert Higgs What a week it’s been and it’s not all about the appalling events which have unfolded in South Africa. More of that very sad story later. Covid-19 is proving to be a monster pandemic unleashing a script which seemingly has no end in sight. Consider the following; in England, Boris (I need a haircut) Johnson, loosens the shackles on Covid-19 restrictions on 19th July as promised. Roughly about the same time, Boris has to self-isolate after his health minister contracts the virus. At more or less the same time, the delta variant confirms its ... read more

“There are no desperate situations, there are only desperate people.” – Heinz Guderman Who would have thought as the month of June 2021 winds down that Covid-19 would by now not have disappeared? On the contrary, as we move into month seventeen of this catastrophic pandemic, this pesky virus has mutated into a monster by way of the variants constantly evolving and the scary reality that the most recent of them, the Delta variant, spreads far more easily and rapidly than any of the others to date. There is little doubt that for many of us there is a numbing acceptance that we are a long way off of getting the better of this virus and thus seeing our lives return to normal. The numbers don’t seem to matter anymore given that there is a sort ... read more

“The World seems to slouch onward into its uncertain future like some huge inarticulate beast, too much attained by wounds and ailments to be robust, but too strong and resourceful to succumb.” – Richard Hofstader Writer’s fatigue or Covid-19 exhaustion are the two likely factors which have curtailed the updating of the Covid-19 blog notwithstanding that this pesky virus needs to be updated to read Covid-2021. Who would have thought that this unprecedented pandemic would endure for so long and take on so many different variants? The last blog was published on 29th March 2021 and read by 71 people. Interesting that no comments, chirps or message reactions have been posted by readers since December 2020 so I suspect Covid-19 fatigue has set in and we are all suffering a new variant called Covid-19 gatvol. Just ... read more