As part of our continuing “Pandemic Diaries” series, we publish situation reports from our colleagues and correspondents all over the world. In this latest diary, we hear from Laurice Taitz-Buntman in South Africa, the publisher and editor of “Johannesburg In Your Pocket City Guide.” And she’s been a guest on our CBS Radio Show, Eye on Travel.

Today, I went for a masked run in search of cappuccino. In South Africa, we have been under a severe lockdown for more than 50 days. And in those 50 days, the middle-class pleasure of stopping for a coffee and some conversation has been removed. Until two weeks ago, all restaurants were closed.

Our restrictions have included no sales of alcohol or cigarettes, and no access to anything but ‘essential goods’. We all have our own version of what’s essential, but this is the South African government’s version. One story that emerged was that the neighborhood adult shop was allowed to open under Level 4. Sexy underwear fell under the essential category, sex toys did not, the shelves resembling a crime scene, with the equivalent of police tape wrapped over them. Unfortunately, minutes from cabinet meetings are not for public consumption. We can only wonder how that subject arose.

South Africans cope with humor. For every official announcement, there is a barrage of WhatsApp messages filled with spoofs and comedy, light-hearted to resistance to what is an extremely serious situation.

Until a week ago, eCommerce was restricted. Under Level 5 of our lockdown – the first five weeks – you couldn’t even buy a book.

Exercise is now allowed outside the home within a 5km radius, between 6am and 9am, and restaurants are open for deliveries from 9am to 7pm, part of Level 4 of lockdown. We await an announcement of Level 3 with little sense of what that will mean.

Tourism is shut down; our borders remain closed with only repatriation flights allowed. At Johannesburg In Your Pocket, we have continued to publish our weekly newsletter for our readers, and instead of encouraging people to explore the city, we help navigate how to survive on a cultural diet without leaving your room. We have taken it upon ourselves to showcase and promote the efforts of small businesses in fashion, the arts, hospitality and to find ways to keep people engaged with a city from which they are largely isolated.

At 8am, the normally gridlocked streets leading out of our suburb are still quiet, the loudest sound that of a cyclist whooshing by. Everyone is masked. It’s mandatory. I pass the main intersection, running past the pristine golf course, which last week put out an appeal on behalf of its caddies whose survival has been severely affected by two months without work. At the intersection, a masked beggar waits, his cup held out on a selfie stick.

Running through the autumn streets is tinged with sadness as the glorious summer days came to an end during this lockdown. While still sunny, the days now have a brittle quality, the brown crackling leaves cover the normally neat suburban streets.

South African flags are draped on the security fences of many of the homes in my suburb. It’s been a custom since the start of our democracy in 1994 to wear our national pride for the really big events, like winning the Rugby World Cup, and mourning the loss of Nelson Mandela. These flags appeared when our President took the decisive step to impose a state of disaster to cope with Coronavirus. So many days later, and without a real sense of what comes next, the flags no longer stand proudly.

The suburb I live in is a bubble, one of many in Johannesburg, where middle class people have managed to isolate themselves with grocery deliveries, drinks parties on Zoom, high-speed Internet access for home schooling and work, and online pursuits from private yoga classes, to cooking with the country’s top chefs.

Having started my career in news, I am still hooked on the stories that take place outside of what I can see, and each day more aware of the enormous desperation growing in our country, the real hunger for the most basic items, the growing joblessness, impoverishment and suffering of millions.

On our company Instagram account, the direct message social chatter has been replaced by an almost weekly appeal for assistance, from a school for refugee children who will need masks once they are allowed to return, to a young woman whose community needs food parcels. This has become part of our job. It has made us appreciate the incredible generosity that abounds in our society as we have found organizations and volunteers to assist, and also created a daily awareness of the bitter and undermining cruelty of inequality.

Outside the coffee shop, the staff await, tables set up with hand sanitizer, credit card machines. We wash our hands obsessively.

I wait in a queue, each person stands one meter from the person ahead of them, the distance demarcated by stickers on the sidewalk. The coffee cup is delivered into my hand by a gloved hand. It feels like a criminal act to linger.

I walk a block back into the suburb. I am mindful of the time, and that if I am not back by 9 am, then one of the neighbors on my street, who on the first day that we were allowed exercise stood behind her wall and yelled, “Where is your mask?” as I ran by, might be waiting…