Simunye Fair

Ashley and I have finally left Big Bend on an evening! Last night was Simunye Fair, an outdoor festival where there are traditional stalls during the day and DJ’s and African music on the night; obviously we went for the nightlife.
Still waiting for our kombi at 8:00pm in Big Bend I felt like we were never going to get there. How wrong I was. I heard our kombi before I saw it; over the speed bump it flies with green LCD lights plastered along the front and strobe lights rotating around the insides, lighting the whole thing up like the outside of a council house at Christmas. African house music was playing so loud it was making the kombi bounce up and down on its suspension like some car in a Snoop Dogg music video; all finished off with a sticker right on the front that says “School Bus”. This was going to be a good night.

We pulled into ‘Fresh’ before leaving Big Bend to buy some drinks for the journey; so £1.50 down and a couple of bottles of Smirnoff in my hands we climbed back onto what can only be described as our ‘pimped out’ kombi and settled in for the rough 1 ½ hour ride on Swazi ‘roads’ peppered with pot holes the size of kiddies swimming pools. (Honestly, no one here drives on their side of the road. Lines mean nothing and you basically drive wherever the hell you want or wherever there is the least amount of holes, dead animals or local people stood in the road trying to get into your car for a lift... which is usually into the path of an oncoming monster of a sugar cane truck). 

Eventually we roll up to Simunye Fair and jump out of the kombi; it drives off to park in the massive car park FULL of kombis that all look exactly the same - that was an enjoyable hour at 4am trying to find it again -_- Not helped by the fact that when people get tired they go and sleep in random kombis, so when we finally thought we had found it we carried on looking because there were 5 people sleeping inside that we knew we definitely didn't come with!

Simunye Fair is awesome. Anything alcoholic was only £1, so we knew straight away that we were in for a great time! ;) There was also live music, not that we were familiar with it but it was a new experience! In Swaziland everyone seems to be really into what they call 'house music'; it's not at all like the house music we get back in England, it is VERY African and has a lot of African drums as the bass but they than have lots of DJ's with names like 'DJ Toxik' and 'DJ Crystal' so you can imagine the sort of thing that we were listening to!
Have a flick through some of this if you're are all interested http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X0GNX-FiM4

Being at Simunye Fair was very similar to being at a music festival back home, apart from the boys here tell me that I am a good dancer (which is not true, but all they seem do is stamp a lot, so maybe I am alright at 'African dancing'), and they don't seem to understand you when you say you don't want to dance with them/get with them/marry them! I've pulled the 'I don't have a phone' excuse hundreds of times, told them I have a boyfriend (but unless he's Swazi or you're married you're basically single and up for grabs). I even tried to put this one guy off by saying I was only 16 to which he said "oooh too young then!" but still persisted anyway. These Swazi's really are triers I'm telling you. It's pretty funny though, some of the lines they come out with, wow, only in Africa!
So I did a bit of stomping, and a lot of shouting in broken English and it was time to leave. Finding the kombi was an absolute nightmare as the driver gave us his phone number but had his phone off, well done. So at 6am in the morning we arrived back in Big Bend and walked back to hostel. The sun was already out and it was warm, if it was a weekday we would be waking up in 30minutes! However breakfast on weekends is at 8am and that was definately too early, we both slept in until lunch time and I felt like my old lazy English self again! 

It was an enjoyable night, and I can't wait for House on Fire! (Another music event.)

Kate xx

Saturday Adult Simunye Country Club Fair