Page 58 - Rural Voice III - Responding to a Pandemic

Nelspoort Food and PPE distribution
Food parcels distributed
180
COVID grant funding given to LDA’s
R 50 000
The impacT of covid-19 on The nelspoorT communiTy
The biggest impact of COVID-19 was the hunger of children, who stopped getting meals from schools when they closed. In lockdown level 4, the schools started again to supply food.
We still feel the impact of lockdown. About 40% of people work at the Shell Ultracity 23 km from Nelspoort, as petrol attendants or restaurant staff. During lockdown, they were at home, and afterwards not everyone returned to work due to staff cuts. Farm workers were locked down on the farms. We were lucky in that only seven people in one family were infected with COVID-19. We visited them with vitamins, lemons, fresh ginger, garlic and honey, which we made as an immune booster.
projecTs and The programmes in response To The covid-19 pandemic
A week or two before lockdown, SCAT gave our first R10,000 for COVID-19 relief. With 350 houses in Nelspoort, the LDA had to consider how to make the funds stretch. We made buckets of homemade sanitiser, with spirits and water. We also provided 30 food parcels, which contained bread flour, maize meal, a packet of spaghetti, macaroni, two tins of baked beans, two tins of fish, a tin of beef, two packets of yeast, bags of rice, samp and beans, and lentils. We managed to get a donation of another 30 food parcels from a contractor, and the municipality gave us the rest. We worked the whole day of lockdown, 26th March – assisted by six teenage volunteers – to distribute the food and sanitiser to every single household in Nelspoort.
We also played an active role as monitors, especially at funerals. We sanitised the funerals, did the registers, and took temperatures. We had one COVID-19 funeral in Nelspoort, and only four people stood around the grave. There was no singing, because no one could come to the graveyard. It was the coldest funeral I have ever attended. We said this must be the first and last COVID-19 funeral in Nelspoort, because we are not used to saying goodbye like this.
58
RURAL VOICE III: RESPONDING TO A PANDEMIC