Welcome to Day 82 of the South African lockdown. It’s both freezing-cold and raining in Joburg – a very rare occurrence. It’s also Youth Day, a South African public holiday commemorating the 1976 student uprising in Soweto.

Over the weekend I went with my friend Michelle to Krugersdorp – an outer suburb on Joburg’s West Rand. (You may remember Michelle as the proprietor of the Junkie Charity Shop, and former human to the Melville Cat.) Michelle was donating a large potjie (Afrikaans for “stew”) pot to a feeding scheme in Krugersdorp, and she asked me to come along to take photos.

The cold front has finally descended and the low temperatures have turned my brain to sludge. We had a high of 9 degrees Celsius (48 Fahrenheit) today. This morning it was a blustery -2.

For the last couple of Thursdays mornings, I have intended to get myself to Heritage Baptist Church and the Melville food distribution by 6:00 a.m. The food parcel recipients have been lining up as early as 4:00 a.m., and the whole process is more or less finished by the time the sun comes up. I’m supposed to be documenting the program. But last week I arrived at 7:00 and basically missed everything.

It’s Day 76 of the South African lockdown, and I have now blogged on 71 of the last 79 days. (I started my Lockdown Journal three days before the lockdown began.)

This past weekend was South Africa’s first weekend under Level 3 lockdown, during which we’re allowed to move around more or less as we please within provincial borders. So like many South Africans, I got out of the house – for real – and went to the African Accent spaza shop in Katlehong.

Yesterday I took pictures at the Melville food parcel program again.

I arrived at the church a few minutes after 7:00 a.m., just after the sun rose. I was nearly too late because the bulk of the 365 parcels had already been distributed by the time I got there, and the line outside had completely dissipated.