COVID-19 has impacted a lot in terms of food security as compared to HIV pandemic. COVID-19 has limited families in terms of hustles we can make to earn more in a day due to some restrictive guidelines on the ground for operationalization of day-to-day endeavours.
Due to COVID-19, sometimes if you fail to comply with its measures, you may be forced to stay without buying in a specified shop for example, “no mask, no entry”, which means if you don’t have a mask you may not eat in that restaurant or you may not buy the food you need to take home.
This has caused our diets to change dramatically. Now we have also started eating herbs as additional supplements for the day like ginger, garlic etc.
Due to changes in the price of food, we have opted to start a vegetable garden to cut some costs because of our reduced income, because as people living with HIV (PLWHIV)we can’t run away from the fact that vegetables are paramount to our body’s immunity.
In terms of access to protein, not much has changed for me, but the change has been how best you can access the protein. In terms of meat, chicken has become more expensive, access has changed because we struggle to work and ear a living. How can a person afford to buy meat and chicken because it has been a big hassle for someone to have money to think of buying chicken, to think of buying meat because of this COVID-19 at hand. We desire to eat meat and chicken, everyone has that desire to eat meat and chicken, to have good vegetables, to have fruits every day, but the challenge is, how am l going to afford that with the little earnings that I am having because there are restrictive guidelines on how I can do business in different places.
As PLWHIV, we always need to have good nutrition. We do not want to eat less, but we have been forced to in the sense that our sources of income have drastically reduced, making it difficult for us to eat well and to improve our diet.
In terms of access to fresh fruit and vegetables, sometimes, I can say it is about fear of COVID-19 transmission, it is about touch, contact, sometimes we fear to buy vegetables from people we don’t know. We fear buying meat and chicken to avoid things that are contaminated.
So to avoid contamination we thought if we could have a garden where we can grow vegetables and keep chickens. At least have 2 or 3 chicken at home that we can keep for ourselves as we cannot afford to buy. I just started to care for this garden. I love sweet potatoes leaves, I love them so much and I always have these.
We are in a cost-cutting era, we do not need to spend more but spend less and eat more. We cannot waste money on takeaways or eating in restaurants because their prices are always expensive. Sometimes, you feel like you are forced not to eat there because there is a guideline, maybe you forgot a mask and so you can’t eat in a restaurant.
In terms of our health, it might be compromised before COVID-19, but we are trying our best to stay healthy and we keep ourselves ready for COVID-19 because it is here with us. We just need to keep our immunity strong by having the gardens at home, by having the meat and chicken at home, so that we have all the food groups.
Of course, we cannot manage to have everything at home but we do what we can and try our best. That how I feel and that is how I am living now.
In the past, public holidays like Labour day were really good days and for people who are still working, I suppose they are still good days despite the fact that COVID-19 is here. For me, this year has not been that good because of financial and food insecurity which made it not that good in the COVID era
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