Bush Fire!!
on Z for Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe), 02/Jun/2011 12:29, 34 days ago
Hot Water performing at Bush Fire 2011I was in Swaziland last weekend! There was a big music festival called Bush Fire that I attended with some friends.A ton of bands, mostly from southern Africa, participated and kept the diverse crowd entertained for the entire weekend. The Zimbabwean "legend" Oliver Mutukudzi was there performing on Saturday evening. Also, I discovered some new bands that I like :) Hot Water (from Cape Town) for example was one of those - check them out athttp://www.hotwater.co.za/At the festival there were a lot of people from South Africa and Mozambique, but also from places as far as northern Europe! I even heard some people talk about having hung out with Bulgarians :) but I couldn't find them...The festival was near the town of Ezulwini, Swaziland, and since there wasn't really much accommodation readily available around there, most of the festival attendees, including my friends and I, camped near the festival site. This was my first time camping since I was a child in Bulgaria :) so it was definitely an interesting experience, especially when we realized that we didn't have sleeping bags and the weather was getting below freezing at night... I didn't know that places in Africa could get that cold, but indeed I'm told that it even snows in South Africa.Saturday night was very eventful :) In addition to an incredible lineup of artists at the festival, it was the night of the Champion's League final match between Barcelona and Manchester United - probably the most important soccer match of the year. The festival organizers must have been aware of it because they had a couple of places with big screens and a lot of seats for people who wanted to watch the game while on the festival grounds. Not surprisingly :) my team (Barca) won! Yesss!! And it was great to watch the game with so many people supporting both sides.Overall the festival was a great time.... aaand, we partied so much,we made the Swazi paperthat weekend :)See all of my pictures from Bush Firehere.It took a reeeeaaally looooong time to get to Swaziland by road (and even longer to get back). On the way in we stopped at Johannesburg for a couple of days. We took the Grayhound from Harare to Jo'burg (this was my first time taking the Grayhound :) haha). It was a nice bus, but it took about 18 hours...It was great to see Jo'burg. This incredible, modern and rich city is very much unlike most other places I've seen in Africa - tall modern buildings, wide busy highways, expensive shiny shops, and beautiful posh suburbs. It reminded me of Western Europe or even some places in the U.S. There were of course some poor parts of the city as well, famous for being very dangerous, especially at night. By the way, fun fact, according to Wikipedia:) Johannesburg is "the world's largest city not situated on a river, lake, or coastline."While in Johannesburg I visited the newly started ONE South Africa office. I met with Nealon DeVore, a ONE employee from the U.S. who is on assignment in South Africa helping to establish the office there. I had met Nealon for the first time years ago in Minneapolis :) and it was great to catch up with him and hear about his Africa experience so far and the work that the ONE office there is engaged in.We stopped in Jo'burg again on the way back from Swaziland. The bus we took from there to Zim was about 20 hours this time! We had to wait for a long time at the border... The good part is that on the bus they were showingThe Gods Must Be Crazy IandII:) I had seen it before, but it was so much more interesting now after I had been exposed to the culture of southern Africa, and knowing that the movie is set in Botswana, just a few hundred kilometers to the west of where I was, made it so much more entertaining.