2 June 2016: Bushfire

                I just came back from the Bushfire music festival held in Malkern’s Valley, Swaziland, (just south of the capital Mbabane) in a multipurpose, mostly outdoor space called the House on Fire. It was three days of music, food, camping, and seemingly endless sunsets, and I was oh so sad to leave.

                The journey started with a fellow volunteer and me hitching from Mafeteng to Bloemfontein, SA to pick up a rental car. Thank the lord my new driver’s license came in the mail a few days earlier, because if it didn’t, the whole carload of us would have had to scramble to find some other means of transport to Swazi. After passing through Maseru (with a quick stop to the PC office to grab said license!), we got a ride to Ladybrand, SA. Failing to get picked up on the road by anyone going toward Bloemfontein (I never get picked up by South Africans in Lesotho either), we admitted defeat and headed toward the town’s taxi rank. We quickly found out that the only place the taxis were going was back to Maseru! In a last ditch attempt to get a hitch and not have to backtrack back to Maseru, we headed back for the main road, but not before I went to a gas station to confirm which direction Bloemfontein was. In an insane stroke of luck, the guy filling up his SUV who I was talking to happened to be going straight to Bloemfontein with his wife and daughter to see his son play in a rugby match there. The couple happened to be really good friends with two other Lesotho PCVs a few years ago, so they were more than happy to give us a ride. They were really nice, even helping us hunt around for the Budget car rental and dropping us off right there. After we got the car, we promptly went to the mall where we got some first-world food luxuries of Cinnabons, chai lattés, and “Mexican” food. It was so magical.

                Soon enough, we had to drive back to Lesotho, as we would be picking up the rest of our car crew and heading out the next day. True to my new “pay it forward” philosophy, at the border we picked up a ‘me who was going our direction. Our group had all assembled at one girl’s house to stay for the night, and we got up well before dawn the next day to start the long drive to Swaziland. We drove and drove and drove (driving on the left side of the road and on the right side of the car), ate more luxuries like biltong (awesome dried meat) and Mcdonald’s, and after about 10 hours, we made it to a border gate in the south-west of Swaziland. Some of the crew stopped at a shop to buy sim cards and airtime. The only provider here is MTN, and I guess they make the most of their monopoly by charging out the wazoo for data. 100 megs cost about 100 Emalangeni (Emalangeni being the currency of Swaziland, tied with and interchangeable with the also-accepted South African Rand), where in Lesotho it costs about half that, and in SA it costs even less.

                So anyway, we start driving through Swaziland from this border post, and all we can see are trees on trees on trees, perfectly planted in endless, beautiful rows. The road was very twisty and full of pot holes, but after about an hour and a few stops to ask where we were going, we found the festival. We parked and stood in line to check in for camping, the whole time being offered roasted corn and enormous avocados by little boys trying to sell to all these tourists. After quite a long wait, we finally got into the grounds and set up our tents. Another huge group of Lesotho PCVs had hired out a few taxis to take them from Lesotho to the festival, so while we waited for them, we started to wander around the grounds and started to explore the wonderfulness that was Bushfire. Here are the highlights:

                FOOD! “Bring your fire,” the slogan told us, and I can only say that the hottest fire burning was the fire in my belly for the famed food that vendors were selling at the festival. Until you’re deprived of seemingly ordinary food options for a year and a half, you will not understand the utter bliss that I found in the food selection here. First of all, and one of the main reasons I came (I’ll freely admit) was for the corny dogs. My inner Texan was so happy. Along with corny dogs, the guys running the booth (also all displaced Texans) also made fried Oreos. Heaven. Obama was even there, showing his full support for the most American food-on-a-stick that exists. At one point, after buying, or going with other people to buy, what some would call an excessive number of corny dogs, one of the guys asked me how many corny dogs I had gotten over the weekend. Not enough. There are never enough corny dogs. My mother will attest to the fact that even since college, when asked if I needed anything sent to me, I always replied that I needed her to send me corny dogs. She probably thought I was joking… Judging by the length of this paragraph dedicated to corny dogs, you might think that was the only food sold. But you’d be wrong. There was also pizza (with sauce for once), pita tacos, smoothies, yogurt and muesli and fruit for breakfast, Chinese food, crepe things, awesome cheesy wraps, craft beer, and Indian food, just to name a few things. [Typing this out in my barren village, I’m making myself sad it’s all gone, so I’ll stop here.]

                The music was spread out in a few different stages/venues, including the Barn with pallet-based furniture and chalkboard walls, the big main stage where people were dancing (or napping) in the grass, an amphitheater, and a DJ tent. Don’t ask me who performed, because I had never heard of any of them, but for the most part it was Southern African artists, who brought great, unique sounds and vibes to the festival atmosphere.

                The merch section was filled with people selling locally made clothes, accessories, etc. etc., including Edward, an RPCV, who was selling Bowshoeshoe (“bow-shway-shway”), which are bow ties made of the patterned seshoeshoe (“se-shway-shway”) fabric found in Lesotho. He trains people to make them in different villages in Lesotho, and it acts as an income-generating activity for them. Pretty cool! He also sells them on Etsy, so give this link a click if you find yourself in need of one, which obviously you do. 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/BowShoeshoe

                Free typewriter poetry on the spot. You gave this guy a topic or some thoughts, and he’d type out an awesome free-verse poem for you. He was with a group called the Melrose Poetry Bureau.

       Condomize, a UN-supported campaign promoting condom use to prevent the spread of HIV, had a tent where you could make condom-based jewelry. Swaziland is up there with Lesotho as one of the countries with the highest HIV rate, and though it’s debatable how much good giving out endless supplies of free condoms actually does to curb HIV in Africa, it was still the most unique arts-and-crafts activity I’d ever seen, and certainly helps to break the continued stigma surrounding condoms..

                The people! I got to spend lots of time with other Lesotho PCVs, mainly those in the new Education group, lots of whom I hadn’t otherwise gotten to know very well. One of them brought a slackline, which we tied up between two trees, and which was so fun, I’ve decided I need to buy one when I get back to the US. I also met tons of other PCVs from different countries, including lots from Mozambique, whose brains I picked for travel advice for when I go there in a few weeks.

                And sadly, just like that, it was over. To make it back to Lesotho sooner, we decided to abandon the last night of camping and drive through the night. I had to drive out of Swaziland, as PCVs are not allowed to drive there (and, as you recall, I’m not a PCV anymore), and took the first few hours through South Africa as well. I had a great navigator in the front seat, and she was keeping me entertained, but somehow we ended up on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere for about 40km, where we chased down rabbits and nearly hit what was either a turkey or a giant porcupine as it scurried across the road. After others took turns driving so I could attempt to get some sleep, we arrived in Bloemfontein as the sun was coming up, and we returned the car and headed for the taxi rank. On the ride back to Lesotho, we all passed out pretty hard, having slept very little the past few days. That night, I stayed with a friend in Mohale’s Hoek, then the next day I headed off for my village sweet village. I got a rare hitch with a white South African guy who is a farmer in Ladybrand but comes to Lesotho daily for work (his passport only lasts about 4 months before it fills up), and goes to Quthing on Tuesdays to take orders for frozen chicken. My good luck streak continued, as it was Tuesday, and he took me all the way to Mount Moorosi, with only a few quick stops at shops along the way to take orders. Then, on the taxi back to my village, we had to stop at a bridge where a pickup full of bricks had broken its wheel. All the taxi passengers got out to unload the bricks and drag the truck off the bridge so that the taxi could continue on the road. Teamwork!

                The aftermath of four days of not really sleeping, compounded on top of a few weeks of only barely sleeping meant that I was in an exhaustion-induced haze for almost the entire next week. I really wouldn’t recommend not sleeping. But I would highly recommend Bushfire, as it was truly a fantastic festival, and one of the greatest weekends I’ve spent since I’ve been here.