Cape Town, My City.

It’s about -80 degrees Celsius outside. It is colder than Vostok in Antarctica, the place where the coldest temperature known to man was recorded. This must mean that today is the coldest day man has ever had to live through. It’s so cold I wish I was typing with the thermo key board; it’s the latest invention to come out of Japan. Apparently, it warms you up as you type by transmitting heat through pressure points on your fingertips. What is more mind boggling though, is the fact that I’m not in Antarctica, or even the North Pole for that matter. I’m in Cape Town South Africa – can you believe it!

If you believe what’s been written thus far, you must be a ghost from the Ice Ages, or worse, an average Joe from the future. I’m just joking; it’s not -80 degrees outside, I doubt there even is a thermo computer. One thing I’m not joking about though is the fact that I’m in Cape Town freezing my fingertips off. It might not be -80 degrees Celsius today, but as far as these goosebumps are concerned, it must be pretty close to that – -40 degrees thereabout.

I’ve been in Cape Town for three and a half years [and never been on a full Cape Town tour], and I don’t remember a day so cold. In fact, this whole winter has been abnormally and brutally cold. All this reminds me of something I first knew as “the hole” in the ozone layer, and then I heard about it again in Geography class, this time it was explained as the greenhouse effect or something. Finally, it became the latest craze; almost as big as King Kong…people spoke about it; it shared advertising space with Coke and Google, the Japanese made a car in its honor, it almost made Al Gore president of the United States and because of it, Bono has a fan or two these days. Now if this was a grade two class and I’d asked the students to tell me what I’m talking about, the whole class would have their hands up, and they’d all give me the correct answer – global warming!

Forget the global warming induced gibberish I was going on about earlier on. I say global warming because I’m starting to wonder that the bright spark who traveled to the ozone layer could be on to something. For instance the other day on the news; I heard there will be no Ice on the North Pole this year. Now I don’t live in the North Pole, but I can put two and two together; it doesn’t add up. I’ve been in Cape Town since 2005 and it’s never been as cold as it is these days. Until someone gives me an explanation, or alternatively, warms me up and makes me forget about this dreadful winter – I think that maybe this global warming business wasn’t merely a Japanese marketing strategy to get the whole world to drive a Toyota Prius.

Why do they call it global warming though – talk about misinformation.

-Mokhalaka Kakudi-