I miss Johannesburg.
Can you really be in a place and miss it at the same time?
It’s day 28 of the national lockdown and I think you can.
It’s early autumn, a season of cloudless days. The nights are getting cooler.
If there’s one consolation of being stuck inside on a nice day, it’s that Johannesburg has so many nice days, you don’t worry about missing out that much. This is not Winnipeg or Montreal where you’re desperate to soak up as much of that short beautiful summer as you can. Winter afternoons are still warm in Joburg.
I miss the parks, the Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve, with its zebra, wildebeest and springbok, the suburbs behind them.
I miss Melville and Maboneng, watching soccer in Soweto at a shisa nyama that doubles as a car wash because, for some reason, all the best barbecue spots are also car washes.
I miss day drinking while waiting too long to start cooking on the barbecue, the braai, if you will.
I miss things I did once and things I probably was never going to do again just because I can’t do them.
I think that’s the hardest part, being told you can’t.
We’re lucky, we live in a big house with a beautiful garden. We sneak illegal walks at the Westdene Dam.
But there are only so many half circles you can make around the reservoir before it too gets old.
And then what?
Maybe that’s the hardest part.
We have a week left of official lockdown – unless it is extended again – and then, we don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows yet.
I know things won’t go back to normal. It will not even be the new normal. Just another liminal state. I try not to get my hopes up. If there is one thing you can’t do right now it’s make plans.
So we wait.
Watch the data and try to read the tea leaves. Are there too many new cases for the lockdown to be lifted? Or is there some loophole, is the increase the result of more testing, better testing, a backlog in tests being processed? Will the national lockdown become more regional? And where does that leave us, Gauteng is the most affected province in the country, but also the best prepared (South Africa’s smallest province is also its most urban, most populated and wealthiest).
And what will be left when this all finally ends? I guess that depends on how long it takes.