Home is Home

I'm back home from the Maun International Arts Festival. It's our only literary festival in Botswana with any staying power, so I'm always keen to be there to support the organisers, Poetavango, a performance poetry group based in Maun.

Despite late funding and the elections, they managed against quite incredible odds to pull off a wide ranging festival that included workshops on prose, theatre, poetry and music, and another one for kids at the library. There were shows most nights: comedy, people with disabilities, poetry and jazz, the book exhibition opening with the launch of Chimurenga Chronic in Botswana, and the final big event on Saturday.

The invited poets, because still at heart it is a performance poetry festival, were taken up the Thamalakane River to visit a traditional village and to learn about some Setswana culture. It is a wide ranging Festival run by a devoted and hard-working team, all volunteers. A group I respect completely.

Now I'm back home and back stuck into my work, hoping I'll stay put for a while. We've had lovely rains and the trees have leaved out and the grass has gone green and the birds are singing and I'm happy back in my little office, back to my words and sentences, back to my stories. Away is good, but it also shows you that home is pretty nice too.