Last weekend was the Kuru Dance Festival in Botswana, an annual event run solely for (normally) just the San from around Southern Africa to showcase their culture. The idea was that I would be taking along one of the cultural groups as a work trip…..unfortunately after spending approx. 200 quid on temporary passports, they didn’t get in L so it turned into a pleasure trip instead. Myself, Paddy, Ghada, Ghada’s sister & the two peacecorp, Jay & Lily, all crammed into the bakkie instead and headed off for the border last Thursday afternoon.
Fortunately even the Americans were let into Botswana, and we finally reached the game farm at about 9pm Botswana time. Unfortunately we then discovered the ‘far’ campsite was pretty well named. After a further 20mins drive through the bush we finally reached some open ground with a toilet block.
We spent the morning baking under any shade we could find (winters most definitely over) whilst Lily & Jay amused themselves taking photos of phallic shaped birds nests. For some reason we were told the festival started at 12noon, so we drove the 20min trek back up to the (near) camp and bumped into our VSO friends Laura & Saskia who had wisely chosen to camp there instead. Of course the festival wasn’t starting until 6pm, which meant that 1) we could have travelled during daylight on Friday morning and 2) we had six hours to kill. Cue a road trip back to Ghantzi, the nearest town.
All in all it was a successful trip to town. Ghada, under the orders to find something to protect us from the sun, managed to find three kids umbrellas complete with emergency whistle attachment?! And Laura, Saskia & I managed to find alcohol J I think Paddy might still have been stuck in the back of the truck…Best of all,on the way back to the farm we were treated to the (extremely) rare sight of a wild leopard sprinting past our car in broad daylight.
When we arrived back at the farm, the festival admin was in full swing, and the gate police were out …checking for alcohol. I rolled down the window & greeted the guard cheerily, waiting for him to wave us on…and the guard says “have you got any alcohol?” and I reply really un-convincingly, “er, noooo, I don’t think so..” at which point he suggested he check the back just in case I might be lying though my back teeth. Fortunately it seems the sight of Paddy in there was enough to put him off, and we were waved on cheerily.
We managed to sit through about 2 hours of monotonous dancing (with all due respect – some fool decided to lump all healing dances together which…are all the same) before breaking for dinner and drinks round the fire. For 10. My catering was for six, but a few extra cans of tomatoes seemed to eke the food out for all of us in the end.
Next day went by pretty quickly and the dances were amazing. The Hambukushu tribe were performing for the first time & they were spectacular. Their dance basically consisted of three guys on hand drums (big enough they required being tied around the waste and wedged between their legs) a load of ladies not doing very much, wearing a hotchpotch of western clothing, and then one guy dressed up to the nines (you can imagine the pre-performance conversation: Ladies= “so wheres our festival costumes then” Alpha male= “ er, I kind of spent the whole budget on my outfit?”. Really, it was a great outfit – kind of like the african version of a one man band – a hula style skirt made of beads rather than grass, a bead shrug style arrangemnt across the back, a cow bell belt, and to top it off a mohawk headdress. Beautiful….and v musical. He basically shook his booty, bells and marracas for all he was worth to a fast paced deep tribal drumbeat. I loved it! Somehow even with a skirt he managed to wreak of testosterone and have all the ladies come flocking around his ankles. The African male.
That was the highlight of the festival for me – that and finding the way back to the main track after an hours un-planned ‘game drive’ not panicking at all as the sun went down…We drove back to Namibia on Sunday morning and I enjoyed a week without any driving before heading out to Jo’s fiancees farm this weekend.
Jo is an ex-vso who’s engaged to an Afrikaaner who’s family live just outside Gobabis. So she invited me for the weekend whilst they were visiting his parents for his dads b’day party. I drove over Saturday afternoon, and sat out in the sun with Jo drinking beer, whilst the Afrikaaners painted a vivid picture of male female stereotypes. The boys were all out hunting bar one left in charge of the braii/b’bque, whilst the girls were in the kitchen. Apart from Jo & I who were sat around drinking J Jo’s fantastic company – very bubbly and funny, so we had a good old chinwag before the party got started later in the evening.
The cooking was fantastic and the family were extremely welcoming, so I felt very lucky to be enjoying their food on their beautiful farm. I was pleased to find not all farms include a kitchen full of tractor parts and meals which come with added cat hair, like the last one I visited.
Later in the evning we drove over to the ‘spare’ ?! farmhouse about 5km’s away where us ‘youngsters’ were staying the night. It was then that Jo and I discovered that the ‘African male’ was not all he seemed…..or at least the Afrikaans version. Turns out the favourite beverage of the Afrikaans hunters is….something which tastes suspiciously like sherry, and which we promptly renamed as ouma (grandma) juice just to make a point for them J Not only that, but on occasion, they let slip, they enjoy a (in their words) candle lit aromatic bath!!!!!!!! That was it, cover blown, no amount of drunken Spring Hare shooting later could restore their masculine personas for Jo & I. We baited them mercilessly before retiring to bed at the ungodly hour of 12 (they managed a whole hour more but I think they were only trying to prove a point….).
I left Jo a hunting widow on Sunday (still trying to prove a point….) after a great Sunday lunch and a film on comfy chairs! Then last night I had the pleasure of Amanda & Craig vsiting on their way back from Botswana and today after waving them off, I’m enjoying a day of nothing!
What I learnt:
1. Putting a picture of a man shooting on the label of sherry does not disguise the fact it’s a ladies drink
2. Even collecting water from inland crocodile free boreholes comes with danger…when a solar panel drops on your head (poor bandaged Oba)
3. A knee length black slip under a thigh length leather skin skirt doesn’t quite work…..
4. One of the Hambukushu ladies loved New York. According to her t-shirt.
5. The sight of an ostrichs backside is not a pleasant one.
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