When last we heard from Dia she was riding in a "combi", a small bus, with a few dozen other people, some of them fellow Peace Corps volunteers, crossing the border from Botswana into South Africa, en route to Swaziland. Swaziland is an independent kingdom of barely one million people. This weekend tens of thousands of music lovers will gather there to camp and dance and sing at the tenth annual Bush Fire Mountain Music Festival.
More than 30 musical acts will perform including "Blitz the Ambassador", "Bomb Shelter Beast", and, my personal favorite, the "Correctional Services Choir". This is not the type of story we usually hear about Africa on the news. Yet, there is this. Last year CNN said that Bush Fire was one of the seven African music festivals you have to see. Seven.
Among the music lovers joining Dia will be her cousin, Walter Bayer. Walter teaches in a school in Lesotho, and this is the first time the two will be able to get together since they started their assignments last year. The two of them grew up around Adirondack campfires on summer trips that my parents would organize for the whole family. So this weekend, while we sit around our Memorial Day bonfire, I will get a very large smile thinking about two global adventurers from the same family, far across the ocean, hopping and bopping at the Bush Fire Mountain Festival.
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