Exodus Live Infinite Word Festival

While Edna was visiting, we went to a poetry slam, which took place at the Maitisong theatre at the Maru a Pula school, which is about 2 blocks (long blocks) from our house. We had attended a poetry slam there at the end of our first week in Botswana and loved it, so we had the date of the next one booked in our calendars. The Exodus Live Infinite Word Festival includes some excellent poets and performers, all of them from Botswana (except for one African American who now lives here and some guest artists), and it's both entertaining and a great insight into local culture, politics and viewpoints. The poetry show also includes musical performances, comedy, and sometimes short theatre productions. Here are some photos of some of the artists who performed at the show.

This photo includes three of our favorite poets in the Exodus group. (L to R) Abimbole Cole (the African American woman, and a truly excellent poet), Joshua Machao, and Mandisa Mabuthoe. Here, (L to R) Kefhentse Kefhentse (who is charming jazz and skat vocalist), Mandisa Mabuthoe and Tebogo Gaetsewe bring the house down with a rousing song. They are all great singers and Tebogo should be recording solo albums, she's that good. I wish I knew what song they were singing and that I had recorded a video of this performance because it was one of the highlights of the night. It was fantastic! Poet Mandisa Mabuthoe at Exodus Live. Poet Moletlanyi Tshipa is a crowd favorite, at Exodus Live. He's a physicist who writes poetry about rather mundane things,but his ability to rhyme words with a jilted meter that arrives at the rhyme unexpectedly, along with his charmingly accented English make him my favorite poet in the ensemble. The first time we saw him perform, we had seen/heard poem after poem about life's hardships, boy meets girl, girl meets boy, sexual and domestic abuse, lovers dying of AIDS, the general strife (that's an inside joke for Rebeca)...and then this guy comes on stage to raucous applause, his dreads wrapped in a tam, starts with the line "Some may laugh while others scorn...because I like to eat my corn" and then launched into a poem about vegetables. During this Exodus Live performance, half of his poem was in Setswana, so we were unable to enjoy it as much. However, it's great to hear poems in Setswana because...well...why should Batswana write poems that speak to other Batswana in English? Poet Lesego Nswahu Nchunga at Exodus Live. Before the intermission, a group came on stage to perform some traditional singing and dancing. It was like a breath of fresh air to hear and see this as American-style R&B and Hip-Hop music seems to be all anybody here wants to listen to. The singing was absolutely beautiful and the dancing was entertaining as well! One of the best poems of the night (sadly I don't have a photo of the poet or know his name. He did preface the poem by apologizing to the audience for the cursing he was about to do) was a social and political diatribe in the format of (I am paraphrasing here from memory): "F*ck the Nobel Prize winning geneticist with his racist statements (a reference to Dr. Watson, who despite winning a Nobel for the discovery of DNA, has single-handedly proven that winning a Nobel Prize does not mean you are free of bigotry) and F*ck CNN for reporting it. F*ck the BBC and their Anglo-centric biased view of the struggles in the world, always acting like they know what's best for Africa. F*ck the UB student (University of Botswana) with their piercings and their apathy. F*ck the Indian businessman who complains that you don't work enough while they sit on their ass and watch you work , withholding your pay til the end of the month and if you ask for a raise, they won't give it to you because business is bad, as they say, though their accountant would state otherwise".

It was the first time I'd heard both outward and inwardly reflective criticism of the society here ("the general strife", as Rebeca would say) and it was a great insight to a lot of things here for us. We loved it and so did the audience!

The headliner of the show was a poet from Zimbabwe, named Sam Farai "Comrade Fatso" Monro. He was EXCELLENT! By far the best poet of the evening, but also the only professional poet who has performed across the globe, on the BBC, KPFA (Pacifica Radio) and other international media outlets. He writes about the social and political situation ongoing in Zimbabwe, which as you probably know is a social tragedy and a political nightmare.

The audience did not respond to him as well as to the other performers. I don't know why because he is clearly very talented. Perhaps it's because he's from Zimbabwe and people here are generally prejudiced against Zimbabweans (much like people in the US are prejudiced against Latin American immigrants). Maybe it was because he was white and there's something about white Africans speaking about struggle and hardship that wasn't convincing to the audience. I don't know, but I definitely sensed that the audience was not so into Comrade Fatso, even though our little group all agreed that he was by far the best performer of the night. He came with a Zimbabwean musician, Josh, who played Bass and who was phenomenal, playing with a style and speed like Victor Wooten. The audience was mesmerized by his playing, as was the back-up band on the stage, who were literally gaping and collapsing with disbelief as Josh played a solo. I have a video of some of his bass playing, but it's too big to post on the blog :(

After their performance, a rapper from S.Africa came on stage and basically started doing his thing, which was essentially lip-synching his own songs to a back-up recording. It was pretty lame, given that there were live DJs and live music and poetry performances all evening. In any case, it was 1 am, the show had started at 8 pm, Edna has just arrived from France within the past 24 hours and we were too tired to appreciate this type of performance so we went home. Overall, it was a good show, though we did not understand over half of it because we don't speak Setswana (yet...we're trying little by little ) or Kalanga. Still, we will be there for the next Exodus Live Poetry night, cant' miss it!