The South African Lockdown Wind-down

As of today, South Africa has entered lockdown level 2. South Africans can now buy booze and cigarettes (finally!), we can drink alcohol in restaurants and bars, we can go to the gym, we can visit our friends and family (most of us were already doing so but now it’s official), and we can move freely throughout the country. We still have a 10:00 p.m. curfew, and international travel remains banned.

Endings and Beginnings for the Melville Food Program

This is a quick post to announce the Melville Food Program, which I’ve blogged about many times during lockdown (see here and here and here), did its last large-scale food parcel distribution at Heritage Baptist Church today. This amazing group of volunteers, led by Tanya and Sean Gardiner, have given out more than 5,400 food parcels (around 300,000 total meals) to Melville area residents over the past four months.

Things Are Happening in Joburg City

Other than a brief visit to Hillbrow, I hadn’t gone to downtown Joburg city since before the pandemic started. Also today is the ten-year anniversary of my arrival in Joburg and I wanted to do something special. So I decided to devote the whole day yesterday to Joburg city explorations, and the whole today to blogging about it.