Lo, a host of golden sunflowers lights up the expressway

They’re big, bright home-grown African creations and the hope is they will blow the corona blues away.

Shuvai Ndaba’s flowers, made of recycled tins, lit up the verge on William Moffett Expressway near Eastern Cape Motors on Tuesday, day five of the Covid-19 lockdown.

Ndaba, 21, was sitting on a rock in the grass behind the display, painting one of her craftworks with one eye on her toddler Bright, 18 months, and chatting to her brother Silent Chitsaka, 20.

She said she was aware of the lockdown but it had come with insufficient warning and she and many like her who lived from hand to mouth did not have time to put aside any money.

“As it is I am here today just to paint. There are hardly any cars and if one stops and a client wants to buy it will be hard to say ‘no’ because I have no money.

“But in terms of the lockdown I cannot sell.”

Ndaba said she was from Masvingo in Zimbabwe and had spent two years in Johannesburg before coming to Port Elizabeth in September.

“I was jobless there and this business came to me and my husband in a dream,” she said.

“My husband saw the houses that were being built in Fairview and said, ‘they have no art, they will need art to decorate their yards’.

“So I began my business here in the hope that my flowers will go to Fairview and in fact all over.

“My ambition is to have a nursery one day filled with art and flowers,” she said.

Still based in Johannesburg, her husband collects discarded tins and drums, cuts and beats them into the shape of flowers and then trucks them down to Port Elizabeth where his wife first varnishes them with anti-rust and then paints them.

Then she displays them on wooden latte and bamboo fences produced by a friend of hers with whom she shares the site.

She said the lockdown was the right way to tackle the virus and she agreed that there should be a prohibition on all big gatherings.

“I am painting hard so when the lockdown finishes we will have many flowers to sell.”