Bring Your Fire

Last week I took my first ever vacation in Peace Corps. And what a vacation it was!

I spent two days travelling to the pick up point where I met the others going on vacation with me. These two days included taxis, hiking, and even hitch-hiking. It was long but surprisingly efficient.

Waiting for a ride with Yaya and her sister:

I met up with Yaya and her sister, who was visiting from the US, on the first day and we travelled together from there. Eventually we got to the meeting spot with several hours to spare, which was a surprise, and we waited for the bus to arrive. That night it did and we boarded the bus along with almost every other volunteer in my cohort. We drove through the night and through two country borders. First we crossed out of Lesotho and into South Africa, crossing that border at midnight on Thursday night. The only things we saw in SA were the gas stations and the McDonalds where we stopped for refueling (the McDonalds was for refueling the volunteers, not the bus). By mid morning on Friday we had driven all the way across SA to the border of the Kingdom of eSwatini (formerly known as Swaziland). We managed to get all 55 of us through yet another customs check and we were nearly there. The daylight driving was nice since we had missed nearly all of South Africa in darkness.

It was fascinating to see another African country, since most of us never had, short of the Jo-burg airport in our way into Lesotho back in September. eSwatini is at a much lower elevation than Lesotho and to be honest, looks a lot more like Africa. This comparison is slightly absurd, but let me explain. When most Americans think of Africa, they think of savannas and rainforests, flowered trees and greenery where you might find a lion lurking. But Africa is a continent! It has as many different biomes as North America. Africa has the Sahara; it has the rainforests of the Equator; it has volcanoes and mountain ranges; it has river deltas; and it has vast coast line. Lesotho is it’s own special little climate zone because of the high elevation found in our little mountain kingdom. We have very few trees, at least in the highlands where I live, and a lot of grass. We have snow (sometimes). With our exposed faces of red rock and the occasional patch of pine trees, Lesotho frequently reminds me of Utah or New Mexico. eSwatini looked a lot more like what I had grown up picturing Africa to look like. Another startling difference was in the quality of the infrastructure in eSwatini. The GDP of eSwatini is about double that of Lesotho, going from roughly $1000 a year to $2000 a year. And boy did that make a difference. There roads were better quality- there were even street lights in some places. And the buildings looked nicer. They were often taller and more solidly built, looking less like they would fall over in a strong wind. It was a noticeable difference, even from the window of moving bus.

Finally we arrived at our destination- a music festival. Welcome to Bushfire. We had camping reservations on site, so we unloaded from the bus and set up in tent city. Most of us wanted to take naps before then festival started that evening, but contrary to our own freezing home, it was hot! Too hot to want to lie in a stuffy tent, so we wandered and got food and drinks. We girls all put on glittery makeup for the first and probably only time as volunteers.

Camping buddies!

Tent city (outskirts):

One of the best parts of our wandering was meeting other Peace Corps volunteers. Of course everyone in my cohort, Lesotho 88, is basically family, but we weren’t the only country who’s volunteers decided to come to the festival. We met volunteers from PC South Africa, Botswana, eSwatini, Mozambique, and Namibia. It was very exciting to compare Peace Corps experiences and talk about the differences between of countries of service. Also just fun to finally see another American you haven’t met before. By the way, with all the volunteers, visiting music fans from around the world, and white South Africans, this was the largest group of white people any of us had seen in 8 months and it was quite strange actually. Also, there were dozens of languages being spoken at the festival and in the campground. I caught myself automatically responding to things in Sesotho sometimes and having to remind myself that the people I was talking to probably didn’t speak it. The local language in eSwatini is called Swati and the predominant language in Botswana in Setswana. These come from the same root language as Sesotho does; they are called Bantu languages. But Zulu and Xhosa, among others, are commonly spoken in South Africa and do not share the same roots. They are in fact nothing like Sesotho and so speaking Sesotho to a Zulu speaker is like trying to speak Spanish to someone who speaks Russian. In the case of Bushfire, there’s a much higher chance that you both speak English, so we tried to stick to that.

The festival in the day, facing the main stage:

The festival at night from the campground (photo taken by another volunteer):

Now the music festival itself. The artists were primarily from eSwatini or South Africa, although there were a few folks from Botswana and Lesotho as well. There were four stages. There was the main stage for the big groups, a big comfortable lawn out in front for picnic blankets and the like. There were pop groups, local tribal music, and Sunday morning they had a nice round of jazz for a couple hours. The festival opening was here with a local dance group that did some throughly impressive high kicks. I was standing right in front, so the first picture is mine and the second picture is from a festival photographer on the stage. You can see me standing in front wearing bright red pants.

There was a semi-indoor stage inside the only building in the Venue, a really cool piece of architecture called House on Fire. (Go look it up it’s really neat!) This stage had some music but was also used for some plays and even a puppet show for all the kids at the festival.

There was a stage for music you’d usually find at a club, sand under foot for dancing, and rotating cast of DJs. I danced with my friends for a couple hours on Saturday night and had a blast.

Firefly stage:

And last there was the Barn, which was part outdoor bar and part barn converted into an art gallery. Smaller coffee house kind of groups played here and they also opened in up in the afternoons to visitors. One of our PCVs got up and did stand up comedy!

Enjoying the shows:

Bushfire also had a market place selling jewelry and clothes and other pieces of art from local artists. And there was some truly beautiful stuff there! By the end of the festival most of us were sporting new accessories purchased at market. There was also a set of stalls that had large plywood backings on them. Artists spent Saturday doing full size pieces of art. We watched them painting and constructing and then on Sunday they were left completed for photo backdrops. Each piece of art had a message; some were about racial tolerance, some about HIV/AIDS, and some about climate change and pollution. Each powerful and unique. The stalls themselves were about many of the same things, groups promoting LGBTQ+ rights, funding kids going to school, HIV awareness, things like that. A lot of them are subjects that are not openly talked about in this region, so I thought it was particularly cool for the festival to be promoting such groups. I personally liked the stickers one group was handing out that said “Rainbow Fire”, a twist on Bushfire’s motto of “Bring your fire”.

PCVs playing HIV Limbo, a game we teach kids during Grassroots Soccer about the risk of getting HIV in different scenarios. The more likely to get the disease, the lower the bar:

The last notable feature of the festival was the food. They had what they called the Global Food Market and they certainly got that name right. There were maybe two dozen stalls selling everything from Chinese dumplings and curry to fruit smoothies and corn dogs (yes, all the Americans went for the corn dogs at least once and yes, they were worth it. So were the batter dipped deep fried Oreos at the same stall.) There was a stall selling ice cream. I haven’t had real ice cream since September. For a group of people who have eaten largely nothing besides corn meal, potatoes, and pasta with the irregular dose of pizza, a global food market was amazing! We all lost our minds a bit, and at least 70% of our budgets went entirely into food. Another 20% was on alcohol and the last 10% was for souvenirs and such. We know our priorities.

PCV Anne worshipping her burrito:

Basically we all had a wonderful time! We danced, we sang, we ate, we were social instead of hermits, and we got basically no sleep. This last is especially true for me since I did not sleep on the bus on the way there. I have never been one for sleeping while in transit. For example, the 15 hour flight from JFK to Johannesburg, I slept maybe 2 hours total. I say this to enforce what a miracle it was that I actually slept most of the bus ride back to Lesotho, another overnight that landed us back in country very early on Monday morning. Who knew all it would take was a week of no sleeping, a weekend of partying, and a Benadryl for my grass allergies to knock me out on a bus. Now I know.

Knocked out volunteers:

We got back a lot earlier than expected actually and so I decided to make a run for home in one day, instead of the two day trip I had planned. By shear dumb luck, I actually made it! I caught a bus from the capital back into the mountains and thus avoided my usual taxi curse on that road. I even fell asleep on that bus. I got my taxi home from there and voila, made it across three countries in one day!

By the time I got home Monday night, I had been traveling nonstop for 25 hours and I think I might have been tired enough that I started hallucinating on the bus to the mountains. Since I hadn’t been planning on getting home until the following evening anyway, I asked my principal if it was okay for me to have a sick day on Tuesday. Because she is a fabulous person, she said “of course” and I went to bed with no plans for getting up early. I slept for 13 hours which I think is about the same as the combined amount of sleep I got since I left on my trip the previous Wednesday. Needless to say, I was very tired. But also extremely pleased. I had an awesome time and nothing catastrophic happened to me or any of my friends. Nobody lost their passports or their wallets or got injured or anything. We nailed it!!

Bushfire was my first music festival and from what my friends say, probably the best organized I will ever go to. We had wristbands with chips to load money into so that you weren’t carrying around change. It made everything fast and efficient. There were also roving groups of medics, police, and trash-picker-uppers who diligently kept everyone safe and the festival grounds clean. I was impressed and I had a great time. Fantastic first festival to go to. We definitely brought our fire!🔥