Just like any other Christian based household, our Easters were always about family coming together but most importantly about attending church services and celebrating the resurrection of Christ. My Easter celebrations before COVID-19 were filled with lots of activities and outings. It was one of the times of the year that my family and I looked forward to and deeply embraced.
Before COVID-19 during the Easter weekend we always attended the Friday church service, which was Good Friday; as a family and even people who lived out of the province would come down to celebrate with us. Church congregations from all over South Africa gathers together and celebrate in one place, but this year a lot has changed and has been adjusted to adhere to COVID-19 regulations.
This year I spent my Easter with close family to keep the Easter spirit alive. We have decided to only attend one church service which will be on Sunday. After church, we had an amazing family lunch. For Easter, we always used to eat the traditional colour dishes (5 colourful vegetables) and everything was cooked from scratch. This year due to the hit our finances took during the lockdown, we decided to settle for some braai meat, a few salads, store-bought juice and unlike before COVID-19. We will have a simple dessert dish to serve.
The food prices have gone up now due to the inflation rate and the country’s economy and the hit it took due to COVID-19. A small bag of potatoes has gone up by at least 10% at most major retail stores in order to recover their finances. COVID-19 has impacted my shopping by having me only pick up essential goods and items that are necessary for my day-to-day life. I now buy what I need first and if I have money left over I buy non-essentials such as high priced snacks, and all the things I think I might want but end up not needing. Despite the high cost of food, I haven’t had to skip meals as I evenly portion out my food to make it enough for that month.
COVID-19 has impacted my family food security immensely. I have had to adapt to no longer including my “wants” on the grocery list – I just stick to the basic necessities, food items we can’t cope without. Being on a diet was not an option as we had to eat what we had.
Our family has started vegetable gardening and we have a chicken depot (chicken coop) at home to help reduce expenses and provide us with proper meals. We grow vegetables such as cabbage, potatoes, herbs, onions, garlic etc.
What I eat every day has changed a lot. I used to just buy the meat and vegetables I needed but because of the price increases in things such as the chicken and the beef and some of the groceries that we buy, now I get them from the garden at home that we started last year because the food prices just escalated to a point where we said, “oh my god, this is just not right” so we decided to do a garden and my dad decided to buy two chickens so they will just keep on giving one another, so we’ll have more chickens. But from last year we had two chickens and now we have 16 chickens in the chicken depot.
That is how we manage to avoid a lot of expense, but we’ve seen a lot of it, like some of the small portions, like if I need to buy veggies, it’s a challenge, but now since we have a garden, we have fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, so we just pick it from the garden. So that is one of the good things about doing a vegetable garden at home and also doing a chicken depot.
It was quite challenging last year during the first lockdown, but now it’s okay dealing with day-to-day things. Our diet and how we eat healthy meals during COVID-19 has changed and we have to give up a lot of things. We sometimes skip breakfast, then we will just eat your normal egg or egg with mayo with bread, and then cook supper – maybe you would eat a chicken curry or beef curry with uPhutu (maize porridge), chicken curry with a small salad. We have to be creative and just play around to make meals with what we have.
