So, this weekend was Oppikoppi. In a nutshell, this can be described as seventeen thousand drunk people spending three exceedingly noisy days in a cloud of dust. To be more specific, Oppikoppi is a music festival. Let me tell you about it.

Much like Woodstock, which took place in what i can’t help but think of as the golden days of America, Oppikoppi is held on a farm. Unlike Woodstock, it is on a mountain three hours out into the countryside of South Africa. On the drive out, we saw quite a few troops of monkeys enjoying the morning sun on the red rock outcroppings by the bumpy little roads.

Upon arrival at the farm, the first order of business was, quite naturally, to hang a Dutch flag in a tree. This was a proud representation of “Little Holland,” as we call ourselves. Also, a flag might help us locate our small tents in the sea of dust and dusty people. Also quite naturally, i, being a woodlum who is probably annoyingly nostalgic about the tall trees of his homeland, was picked to scale the tree and hang out our proud banner. And, of course, a human being perched in one of the thin, thorny trees of that dusty bramble-patch where thousands of us pitched our tents for those days is a rare sight. This was so rare that some large drunk dude with an impressively large fro decided to rumble (which i call his combination or run + stumble) over and shake me out of that prickly little tree. I held tight. It was funny. I said something to the extent of “okay, hows about stoppin’ there, pal?” The shaking continued. Eventually, it became clear that i would need some other type of dissuasion besides suggestions and language (but not suggestive language, mind you). So, i continued to hold on to the tree with one hand and broke off a few prickly, dead sticks with the other and, in a manner which would have made David the slayer of Goliath proud, i chucked them quite expediently at the growling, grunting man below. He bellowed and ran away with a thorny branch hanging in his awesome hair. After i finished the flag-hanging, i showed of my sylvan skills and smoothly slid out of the tree. A crowd of onlookers applauded as i bowed and walked the short distance back through the dust to our dusty little tents.

This is a photo that Nicole  snapped right before the  ”battle of shaking tree,”  and also right before the  battery on my camera ran  out. Good timing,  technology. Way to be. It’s  not like anything else cool  happened that weekend  which i might want  pictures of. Anyhow…

The music took place for three days on four stages until about five in the morning. There is something magical about music and there is something powerful about thousands of people all gathering together. Watching the large, orange sun slip behind the distant mountain, called “Koppi” from the top of our mountain, called “Oppi” while keeping the company of my newly found friends, all the while immersed in a powerfully pounding soundtrack is really quite close to indescribability.

The bands were awesome. I got to see a local favorite of mine, up close and personal on the woods stage one evening. You really should check out TUMI. He a rockin dude. He is inspiring, and he spits some mad powerful rhymes, yo. Them jauns is jumpin’! He’s the shizzle. Ya feelin’ me, homie? Anyways, he is phenomenal, and now from this silly little stint of my whack yo-boy lingo, i defer.

The anti-racism speech that one R&B singer passionately spilled from the stage between songs did not hit so very home with me. I think that the wounds are still fresher in this land than at my home, so the arguments against racism are more like, “the white guys aren’t all that bad,” or “black people have full rights too.” I appreciate the heart behind such speech, but not so much the exact words in which it was delivered. I guess i’ll let that singer off the hook; afterall, i suppose he is a child who was born into a war.

Later that night, my mind was destroyed (in a good way) by an Afrikaans psychedelic dub-rock band called BLK JKS. I couldn’t help but be swept away in awe by their drummer. He was a bare-chested bear of a man with dreadlocks so massive that they put the Greek goddess Medusa to shame. They sway about like striking snakes as he pounds the drums at speeds that could out-pace a machine gun.

While enraptured in those rhythms, i was thinking more about racism, and i finally came up with the words to elloquate my point of view which i have held for a long time.

This is it:

There are two kinds of people.
•They are “People” and “People.”
•Sometimes they are more specifically referred to as “these people” vs “those people.”
•More dangerously, sometimes they are divided into “Us people” vs. “YOU people!”

Do you catch my drift? It is all the same. It is all perspective. You can draw the lines and decide who gets slotted in which group on–quite literally–an infinite number of characteristics. None of them matter.

Well, of course they matter–but not in a hierarchical or hyperdicotomistic sort of way. I can say that yes, they both do and do not matter at the same without contradicting myself. You see, I am not anti-culture or pro-conformity-of-the-entire-world-to-one-way or any such nonsense like that. I love culture (and yes, i still hold it to be true that “variety is the very spice of life.” And, yes, i still make up words; look back at the first sentence of this para-giraffe). All i am saying is that if you look for differences, you will find them. Sadly, this has been done ever since the first sunrise over this blessedly cursed planet. What you seek, you will find. So, how about we look for things that we all hold in common, while still holding to our national, tribal, familial and individual identities.

All the music this weekend was outstanding. And gee-golly! i’ve never before in my life interacted with so many interesting people in such a short amount of time. Live music frequently makes me shiver. This time, the music had a lot of help from the freezing winter air at night. It was almost at the point of freezing every evening. You had to keep moving to keep warm, which brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Dance or die!” (The last time those words were used to bill an event, the ironic outcome was tragic.)

Each night at Oppikoppi, I picked my chilly way ‘home’ through the clouds of dust and smoke and among the milling people and blowing trash and gangling thorn bushes back to our tents to build a fire. There is something ancient about laboring to collecting small, thorny branches in the dark to build a fire to combat the chill. It is deeply simple. Beautiful. After roasting some bananas over the flames, as the coals glowed, i tried to make friends with the new stars that spread out above me in the unfamiliar Southern sky.

All throughout the night, unfamiliar people would wonder into the circle of warm firelight. They would arrive as strangers and leave as friends. Fire and the strings of my guitar warmed us in many ways as we all dodged the cold together. In the mornings, we all greeted the big, pink sun together as it slipped up over the dusty horizon in such a way that it seemed to chuckle and say, “silly little, people, you forgot to sleep…”

But we didn’t. We all slipped off to our dusty dwellings just as the sun’s long fingers were tapping us to remind us that as cold as the night is, it is still permissible to have swelteringly hot days.

A lot of these nights, just when morning starts to burn the sky, i drift off to sleep at what is probably about the same time as many of my loved ones on the other side of the world do the same. I use the present tense because i am not just speaking of the nights spent at that dusty festival (did i mention that it was dusty!?) but but also many of my nights spent reading in preparation for the next day’s classes. Tonight is one of those nights. I arrived home, made some tea and took a spectacular de-dusting bath & shower combo. Now, i’ll make some more tea and read for a few more hours. Then i’ll lie down to sleep at approximately the same time my as American loved ones are doing the same. (i’ll post this blog tomorrow in an internet cafe near my house.) You see, we are really not all that separate. We are simply on opposite sides of the same little ball, constantly floating through the same galaxies together all the time. We are really quite close, you and i.

Oh, and as for a little update: i snagged this photo from my friend Mandy. When everything gets so dusty, cars become billboards; this one had quite the message.