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Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly sequence by which NPR’s worldwide staff shares moments from their lives and work around the globe.
Johannesburg, identified to locals merely as Joburg, has lengthy been dubbed Egoli, which suggests “the town of gold” in Zulu. The moniker comes from the gold mines that made it the wealthiest metropolis in Africa.
However in spring, in October, the avenues flip purple and the town of gold turns into the town of amethyst. You stroll in a sea of violet blooms that cowl the sidewalks, and the cover of tree branches above is a purple haze.
Jacarandas, as synonymous to Joburg as cherry blossoms to Japan, are literally an import, purchased to South Africa from Brazil within the nineteenth century. There are an estimated 50,000 jacarandas — some as outdated as 100 — throughout the town. (Joburg is commonly referred to as one of many world’s largest city forests, so there are many different vegetation — like the massive pink bougainvillea you see right here throughout from the jacarandas).
After I moved to Joburg to work as a journalist eight years in the past — having by no means lived in South Africa, which my dad and mom left throughout apartheid — it was jacaranda season. The flowers evoked my youth in neighboring Zimbabwe, the place additionally they develop prolifically. Since leaving Zimbabwe at age 17, I might turn out to be one thing of a nomad, dwelling in Asia, Australia and Europe, and did not actually take into account myself any explicit nationality.
After I arrived in democratic South Africa, among the many jacaranda timber of my childhood, for the primary time in a very long time I felt a way of house.
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