Day 7: The Fete De La Musique (French Music Festival)

(Author's note: I apologize for constantly being behind on these blog entries, my goal is to be caught up within the next three days, and because work is very repetitive I might combine entries during the week and reflect on only the interesting occurrences of my weekdays.)

Dumela borra le bomma!

Saturday started off as an adventure right from the get-go when we had the chance to try sauteed cow stomach for breakfast. It was a sickly green color, and the only way I can describe the texture is chewy, which doesn't make it sound very appealing and, to be honest, it left my stomach in knots and I found it very hard to pay attention to the morning presenters. We had student organizations, including Students Against HIV and AIDS and the Face the Nation campaign, both of which rely heavily on the message of abstinence as a pillar in their campaign. Although I concede that ultimately abstinence really is the only 100% effective preventative method, I just can't help but think that for the most part it is falling on deaf ears because it is on the completely opposite side of the sexual spectrum from what is the societal and cultural norms here. I feel like it would be more effective to change how people have sex than to tell them not to because if people want to have sex then they will have sex.

Following the presentations we had lunch and got on the bus to go to the Fete De La Musique at Botswanacraft, a French music festival where none of the artists were French and none of the music was in French...I guess it is an attempt by the French government to build a relationship between France and Botswana because there were posters and fliers with a giraffe body with zebra stripes walking next to the Eiffelle Tower and it said "Speak French!" In any case, the music was really cool and there was a very diverse variety of musical styles. The first band was a group from UB called Mogwana, which did a very traditional style of dance where the music consisted of them singing and clapping and using either bones on other things on their feet that when they stomped or slapped their ankles made noise. It was very elaborate and mesmerizing to watch.

After the first act I decided to check out the inside of the craft store there and was amazed at the wide variety of artwork including jewelry, elaborate wood carvings and all sorts of neat gifts. I did do some shopping, but because of the audience to this blog won't share what I bought. I got back in time to see Apollo Diablo, a local rap group that makes a point not to curse during their raps and talk about real issues in their lyrics. Below is a picture of the band:
After them I fell into sort of a daze before I was rudely awakened by the familiar sound of blaring guitars shredding through power chord after power chord. Sure enough, Crackdust, a metal band from Gaborone took the stage. They were four guys dressed head-to-toe in black and after casually tuning their instruments the singer came to the mic and said, "This next song is RETRIBUTION!" and proceeded to yell from his throat for the rest of the half hour. Other gems from crackdust included "pity the undead," "tainted in blood" and my personal favorite "born of the sorcerer." It was the oddest thing watching Motswana stare in horror at what was described as "the most extreme rock band in all of Africa" and when I asked Karabo if he had ever heard anything like it he said no. Apparently though metal is catching on in Africa, especially in South Africa. Crackdust has a website (http://www.crackdust.com/) and are on myspace (http://www.myspace.com/crackdust) and will be actually playing at the Carnal Residue Metal Bash this Saturday at Prisons Mess (which I'm afraid might actually be a prison) in Gabs (short for Gaborone, I'm picking up some of the hip lingo. ie. joburg=johannesburg) and I'm thinking about going just for the hell of it.
The rest of the evening was very relaxing and a bit chilly as we listened to a rock band and a jazz band and then called it a night at 7:30 pm (I know, we're lame, but you try getting up at 6 am consistently and we'll see how much you want to party that evening.). I'm really looking forward to tomorrow and our day off where I'll finally have time to actually relax and reflect on my time here because so far its been a whirlwind of activities and new experiences and I need to just decompress.

Ke a go rata thata!

Miss you and love you all!