(John McCann/M&G)
Zipho Ndlela* wears a “cute mask” that her husband bought for her to keep safe while she’s at work. She is a respiratory therapist at a hospital in Gauteng and her husband is a doctor.
Both are in the eye of the storm as the country battles Covid-19.
Ndlela says she has accepted that she might be infected with the disease, given the nature of her job. But she has decided to keep a positive attitude and reminds herself that it is just like any other disease she can catch at work.
Her “biggest fear is infecting my kids”.
She has two boys, aged three and four.
“That is the scariest part about this whole thing.”
Ndlela and her husband take precautionary measures to protect their children from any harm, but she says one can never be careful enough.
She taught her children long ago that they cannot come to her when she returns from work until after she has taken a bath. She has had to drum that message into them recently. But children are children.
“The youngest one forgets this rule sometimes. And when I come back from work he comes running to me ‘mommy, mommy’. So I have to remind him that mommy is dirty and he must not touch me,” she says. “Now, I really, really have to be extra careful.”
She says she now sneaks into the house so that the children only see her after she has taken a bath and is wearing fresh clothes.
“I even keep a different pair of shoes in my car. When I get home I leave the shoes I was wearing at work in the car and get into the other pair.”
Ndlela says she and her husband cannot quarantine themselves or the children because they are young and still need their parents.
Since President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the lockdown during the week they could not take their children to their grandparents in the Eastern Cape. And as healthcare workers they are not allowed to take leave during this time of Covid-19. Ndlela says her colleagues who were on leave were called back to work.
She also struggled to get someone to look after her children when schools and creches closed early as one of the measures to help minimise the spread of the disease.
For two days she asked children of neighbours — 12-year-olds — to look after her children while she and her husband were at work.
“It was quite draining,” she says.
Before Covid-19, she did not need a nanny because her children attend aftercare. But she has had to find one with speed. And luckily, the person she found has been willing to be locked down with the family.
But this has meant extra expenses. They still have to pay school fees, and now have to pay the nanny and buy more groceries to accommodate the extra person in the household.
“It has been quite a stretch financially, I won’t lie,” she says.
Ndlela says to keep sane the couple has debrief sessions at night and they discuss what it is like to work during a pandemic. “Already I have a cute mask that he bought me to protect myself,” she laughs.
They also have conversations about what will happen should either of them get infected with Covid-19 and what they will do with the children.
But until then, Ndlela says they have left everything in God’s hands and will continue to serve the country to the best of their ability.
“As a healthcare worker you made a decision that you want to help people. You know the consequences of being a healthcare worker. If anything comes, you just have to be strong,” she says.
“Me and my husband will survive. We are survivors,” she says as she lets out a hearty laugh.
*Not her real name