Things I love about Johannesburg winter
It doesn’t have snow, and it doesn’t rain for three months, but there are some things that make Johannesburg Joburg. Here are my top three things about it which I love:
1 – Dry Bush Veld
The crunchy sound it makes when you walk over it. The yellow pale bleakness which it paints across the parks, suburbs and grassy areas of the highveld and surrounds is an acquired taste, to be sure, but my gods it’s the epitome of this area!
That's not me, but it could be any Joburg kid in winter
2 – Plovers
Guard your children!
Plovers and I go way back. When we were kids playing in the field next to the Alexandra township, or arriving at the soccer field up the road, there would always be hordes of plovers guarding their nests like bloody-crazed hellbirds from the abyss, flying straight at any child who dared wander too near. I only found out in my adulthood that they charge anyone. Children are just softer targets. Plovers are Joburg’s way of telling you to bleddy well pasop (beware)!
3 – Oak and Itchy-ball trees
Best used in anger, not defense.
The trees in Autumn and winter turn the obligatory orange and yellow, before finally getting naked for the winter months. But in Joburg, the oak and “itchy ball trees” were the most distinguishing plant feature of this season. I say “itchy ball” tree purely because I have absolutely no idea what they’re really called. But I can tell you that, as kids, we used to take great satisfaction in putting these down other peoples’ shirts and rubbing it in good, creating the kind of itchiness normally reserved for flea-bitten prisoners and hobos. Not so much fun when it happens to you, but otherwise hilarious.
And there it is! Johannesburg in winter (and as it gets into the mood for winter) is something not to be missed. I love it, and then hate it, and then miss it when the sweaty-ass of spring rears its ugly head. It’s something I loved as a kid, missed as a teacher in Japan, and relish as a Joburg resident now.
Song of the day: Something I fell in love with many years ago, Laura Veirs – Galaxies
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Your top 3 things are what would’ve made me put JHB in my list of “least favourite places”. Dry grass leads to sore feet. And shouldn’t the kid be black so as to reflect the demographics more accurately? (¬_¬ jokes!)
The plovers…well, let’s say my experience with birds haven’t been too great.
Itchy balls? Hmm. Can’t say I’ve experienced that one. Would be rather horrifying if I _did_.
Anyways, Cape Town and Kimberley are also somewhere at the bottom of my list. Too rainy and too cold. I’d much rather spend my winters in some tropical Jamaican island and drink cocktails all day long 😛
Ah, well, there you see the difference. My ideal winter is precisely the opposite of Jamaica. Something more like Alaska, where the bears and moose (meese?) outnumber the humans.
lol @ meese. They are not as cute irl as they are depicted in the cartoons >:(