I woke up with fire in my belly despite a very bad night of sleep. There is a dripping tap somewhere near my bedroom window, but I can’t see it, and I don’t want to go outside and explore either.

I exercised early so that I could make some tea and thick slices of french toast for the waste pickers who patrol my area every Monday morning. I kept a good distance between us and let everyone keep my mugs because I don’t really need them.

I later worked on developing a new rotli that’s cheaper and an easy alternate to quinoa rotli. So I happily experimented with sorghum, mielie meal, spelt, teff and flaxseed flour but none of them came out the way that I wanted it to, so I ended up throwing away all of my atta (dough) away.

While I was experimenting, I connected with one of my sister’s friends from Durban. Her husband is a surgeon and she was telling how many times he would go out on call - some days up to five times because of emergent cases. She had messaged over the weekend to ask me about some Covid-19 campaigns worth donating to and as we said our goodbyes she made me promise I’d visit when I go to Durban again. That made me itch to travel. My cousin Deepa is feeling something similar because she was meant to be home in East London this past weekend.

If the pandemic wasn’t a reality I would’ve been landing in Brisbane right about now. My cousin Shameera would’ve have woken up in Australia and gotten dressed and ready to pick me up from the airport. That and the fact that speaking to my sister’s friend was about helping others, I got to thinking about how I can make more of a difference during this lockdown.

I’m so determined to make the best of my situation that I’ve resolved to make clothing packs for the homeless this week. I figured that I can selfishly clean mine and my mother’s closet and get rid of unwanted items by handing them out when I go to work again on Wednesday. So I sorted and washed all our cherished clothing and scarves and wrapped them up. I will only hand out four parcels but I know in my heart they will go a long way in someone else’s hands.

Deep down I’m a bit nervous about my mother’s reaction that more of her clothing is being dished out, but I gave some of her clothing away last week and she was pretty chilled about it. None of it fits us any way so I don’t see the point of keeping it. I have a feeling when she returns to me eventually she’s going to be a tad cross because I’ve radically cleaned her closet and re-organized is everything. She also mentioned a stash of cash in a packet somewhere but I have yet to come across it.