Bushfire Music Festival

    Bushfire is a music festival in the hilly, wealthier part of this country that claims it is the biggest and best music festival in southern Africa and among the best in all of Africa. They've been holding festival since 2003 and claim 25,000 attendees this year. Certainly people we met there this past weekend who had come in from Mozambique or South Africa kept saying they thought ½ of J'Burg, Pretoria, or Maputo (capital and commercial center of Mozambique) were there. Of the 70-odd Peace Corp volunteers in Swaziland probably 40 were there, and many PCVs from SA, Moz and Lesotho. At least 2 SZ PCVs were accompanied by friends visiting from the US, who had planned their visit around Bushfire. For those of a certain age and entertainment orientation, it was a major event.

      Most of the PCVs from SZ camped in an area just on the edge of the festival grounds. They reported that, even after the main stage performances wound down at around 3 or 4 Saturday morning, they could hear a “drum circle” going at it until dawn, and did not get much sleep. We stayed in the village of “bee-hive” huts at a game park only 4 or 5 miles away.

    It was great fun to connect with our PCV friends and to be part of a festival scene. The group ahead of us is preparing for departures starting in July, and we had some thoughtful discussions with some of them. There were lots of the delicious beers of southern Africa and some good food although both nights we hit the pizza hard. The weather here as winter comes on was fine – sunny and 70s or low 80s during the day, but getting into the 50s at night.

     It was also fun to sample the music but I'll just come right out and say that Katherine and I found ourselves kind of bored with a lot of it. We should try to be more open to new influences, I know, but cut me some slack on, say, a group called Akale Wube, which describes itself as “a Parisian band devoted totally to the grooves of 60s and 70s Ethiopian music.” Huh. Now we did really like a fabulous Spanish singer Fuel Fandango who says she performs “organic dance music” and I was surprised that I really liked much of the music of a big deal South African guitar player and singer Dan Patlansky despite his description as “renegade psychedelic angst and raw emotion.” Jimi Hendrix channeling Springstein with a dollop of Led Zeppelin; good fun, especially with our friends and with some pineapple beer (uh huh. Pineapple – quite tasty), and with the sliver of the waning moon and Saturn quickly following a gorgeous sunset. Some Moz traveling companions helped us enjoy Nigerian jazz by a band from Moz, and a Colombian also staying in the game park introduced us to a band from his country.

     The US embassy was a sponsor of a rapper (Nomadic Wax Collection) whom I found utterly incomprehensible and others we've encountered since then were similarly unmoved.

    We made it till 10:30 Friday night and only 8:30 Saturday. It was fun, but we aren't the target demographic. The air was full of evidence of inhalants that might have heightened our appreciation of the music. Or not. (Dagga, a strong marijuana, is a major export crop here.) But we limited ourselves to a little beer and wine.

The advantage of staying at the nearby game park was that on Saturday morning we wandered around and caught a basking crocodile

a white-throated bee-eater

and lots of wildebeest, impala, zebra and a few nyala.

   Each of our children called Saturday afternoon, which is obviously a high point. Katherine has that kind of secret smile for hours after she talks to them.

     Starting with Easter break 6 weeks ago we've had lots of travel and events. That changes and, except for a few celebrations (“Christmas in June” to “ring out” the PCV group that's leaving; July 4^th at the Country Director's house) we are at site and teaching pretty steadily for the next 2 ½ months, till a 2 week trip to Victoria Falls and Botswana at the end of August. Plus we are helping get the High School library going (which is going fabulously – I'll report on that shortly with pix – but, in 2 words – unbelievably gratifying) and male and female condom demonstrations at the High School – we've lugged 450 male condoms and 200 female to site and we're storing them in our tiny hut, and every student is going to install a male one on one of our plastic penis models, and all the girls will install a female one on female models. We got permission from the High School principal and he's completely behind it.