African Winter

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One way to sum up the weather here is to give you a sample of my packing list for a recent camping trip. It included: suncream, sunhat, shorts, t-shirts, flip flops, woolly jumpers, thermal leggings, woolly hat, raincoat, umbrella ... I think you get the picture. It is autumn down here in the Southern hemisphere. This means that during the day, the sun comes out and the temperature rises to a lovely 25 degrees, and I can lounge around in the garden with a magazine and a cold drink. As soon as the sun goes down, however, I retreat indoors to don jeans and jumpers. By bedtime, it’s cold enough to warrant blankets and a hot water bottle. I can’t really compare this to British temperatures, simply because the houses here tend to be built for warm weather, which means that it often seems like it’s just as cold inside as outside, whereas at home I can light a fire or whack up the radiators if the thick walls, loft insulation and double glazed windows aren’t keeping me warm. Central heating is non-existent here, which took a bit of getting used to.

I am coming up to my third South African winter now, and it’s still slightly surprising as a European to find that Africa can be cold. The first time I came here was to the Eastern Cape over autumn/winter, and I didn’t pack a coat, warm shoes, or anywhere near enough jumpers. Neither did my British traveling companion, and we spent most of the trip wearing most of the clothes we had brought all at once. It’s Africa - Africa is hot - right?? Wrong. We were staying in a large, old, draughty house owned by elderly nuns (as you do), and spent a lot of our free time tucked up under the bedcovers doing crossword puzzles. The school we volunteered at consisted of breeze blocks and corrugated iron, and was so cold during the day that the children didn’t even take their coats off in the classroom. I started drinking tea for the first time, because it was the only way to warm up at breaktime. Along the famous Garden Route, it rained for most of the time, which didn’t diminish its beauty but did somewhat limit our sunbathing. In Cape Town, however, we were lucky enough to experience beautiful, beach-worthy sunshine every single day. I have since been told by several South Africans how cold and windy Cape Town is all year round.





During the day here in Johannesburg, I boldly mock native South Africans for complaining about the cold, boasting about my survival of British winters. In the evenings, I am the first to run around closing the windows, wrap myself in a blanket and look around in pathetic futility for a radiator that I can crank up. This is just one reminder of how ignorant you can be about a place (regardless of how many times to Google-image/Wikipedia it) until you really spend some time there.

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