AfrikaBurn 2016 — X — A reflection.
It is Saturday afternoon. Aeons of Karoo dust have the replaced the layers of the default world that have been shed: people, thoughts about the past & future & that one email you should’ve replied to before you lost cellphone signal. It’s all gone.
The relaxed feeling of disappearing into Tankwa Town is at its peak just as it all is about to end. As the sun sets, looking out over the Karoo, you get a tiny sliver of the magnitude of this space on Earth. In its current form, erosion of over 150 million years have weathered this semi-arid desert to its current form: beautiful in its emptiness.
As the timelessness of this flat place spreads to its horizons, one’s mind wanders closer to when the first humans walked these plains: the ancestors of the Khoisan. Traditional Khoisan music was coming from the lighthouse behind me.
It’s apt that one of the core principles of AfrikaBurn is radical self-inclusion when the people that first walked the earth of Tankwa Town harbours the oldest and most diverse genetic haplogroup in the world (the “Y-Chromosomal Adam”). For one of the driest places in South Africa, the stories seem to be abundant as an eye of a river: gushing forth.
For the past few days, the temporary Tankwa Town (with more than 11 000 citizens) once again for the 10th year in a row, amidst a seemingly permanent landscape, added more of its own stories to it. It’s the largest regional Burning Man event. Only ~70 new, wonderful days of stories over millennia.
Behind me, just as the sun dropped below the horizon, a group of burners converged to have a burn wedding. The lighthouse, where I sat, was built by a group of Americans, Swiss & South Africans.
A burn priest, quoting the prophet Biggie Smalls, brandishing what looked like a copy of Lord of the Rings, he married the couple! 3 continents of people converging in this heterotopia at the tip of Africa, to celebrate a new union. As expected of burner priests, he proceeded to walk around to the DJ booth and drop the first tune of the night.
Listen: Henry Saiz — The Rider. https://youtu.be/OYL9GOfXsb8 [for some reason, YouTube embeds aren’t working on my Medium atm]
And so with new friends & old, a night of lights, fires, stars & music swept us in. It was the amazing last evening of another amazing burn.
This year, as the last, I find myself thinking back to so many experiences weeks after it. From the novel ones such as weathering a dust storm, lying in a forest, seeing a burning T-Rex (called Lizzy) run across the Binnekring, to meeting new friends & growing closer to old ones. It’s always a tapestry of experiences, and considering my attachment to the Karoo & Africa, it makes it 10x more wonderful.
The beauty of the place, like the arid Karoo itself, is what you make of it. If you drive past, you’ll just want to keep going. If you stop… listen & look up to the vast amount of stars, you’ll see it drip from the silent sky as Antoinette Pienaar so eloquently writes in Kruidjie Roer My.
Yes. For some, it’s only a party in the desert and a chance to dress up. Yes. It does look like a bunch self-righteous hippies (& hipsters) trying to tell you how to have “authentic experiences”. Yes. There will be those okes, having a laugh during the silent burn of the temple. Yes. It’s bizarre to think how unrepresentative AfrikaBurn still is compared to rest of South Africa. Yes. It is quite strange that thousands of litres of water are being carried to consume in one of the driest regions in South Africa during one of the biggest droughts in recent years.
It’s not without its faults & criticisms, but if it isn’t the way you want it, YOU must fix it. Weren’t enough art this year? Make shit. Felt annoyed by some people? Tell them to be lekker and share a beer. Feel lack of inclusion in the default world? Talk to people.
It reminds you that life will always be what you make of it. More and more one should try to see that which is beautiful in all things, and then hopefully one day you will be the one that makes things beautiful. Thanks for another great year. x
