This past weekend I attended "Copperfest"- an annual festival held in Tsumeb, a desert oasis town in central/northern Namibia that I knew very little about aside from the fact that it celebrates the copper industry in Tsumeb, Namibian culture(s) and is an all-around good time.

To make the 400km trip, I rented a car with four other volunteers (which turned out to be only marginally more expensive than hiking there and back-and a lot less exasperating) to make the most of the brief weekend jaunt out of our villages. In addition to the autonomy and convenience that renting a car provided, we wanted to take this opportunity to take pictures of some of the amazing/ridiculous shebeen names along the way. (Shebeens are small, one-room concrete "bars" that litter the north, serving alcohol and playing obscenely loud (and tediously repetitive) music). Some of my favourites include: Jackie Chan ; Riverdance ; Never Again Pub ; Thanks Twice ; Gangsters Paradise...and many more. About half an hour into the drive we spotted a jackpot smattering of shebeens off to the side of the tar road, and we pulled over to do slow drive-by's with our cameras at the ready. All was fine until we made the mistake of stopping. We did not consider our Yaris' 2-wheel drive compatibility with the loose northern desert sands. We were stuck. And with each acceleration and attempt to become unstuck, we became stucker. Thankfully, almost immediately, village men appeared from inside the varying shebeens to come to our rescue. Two men were even carrying a wooden plank-a door-to help coax our stubborn Toyota out of our sandy plight. "Fifty dollars!" The first man spat out at me as he approached my open passenger-side window. Soon there were ten to twenty men surrounding the car shouting out different rates for their assistance in getting ourselves out of the sand. We weren't sure just how stuck we were, but we knew for damn sure that we weren't going to shell out any of our hard-earned volunteer-stipend cash for anything without at least trying to do it ourselves first. With Rachel behind the wheel, the four of us including Norene, the 75-year old pistol of the group, tossed off our flip-flops and readied ourselves, palms on the boot of the car and our bare feet braced in the glass and rubbish littered sand. We pushed. We heaved and hoed and grunted and groaned. The now a fairly large congregation of men surrounding us enjoyed the show with their hands in pockets-or on their knees doubled over in laughter- and continued to shout out their going rate for helping five helpless "oshilumbu" women out of the sand. The going rate was anywhere between N$20 to N$50+. It wasn't the cost, it was the principle of the matter. I would rather call a tow truck than give in to these men. My pride was on the line. Finally, after a few minutes of futile exertion, Norene, Emily, Erica and I buckled down and put all that we had left into one last collaborative push...the car was moving...the tires spinning as Rachel tried to grasp at some traction to continue with this forward motion. The smell of burnt rubber polluted the air around us. We kept pushing, and she kept going, until we could no longer keep up with our hands on the boot. She was off-determined to get out of the sandy entrapment- and we chased the car through the road-side village shouting, cheering and fist-pumping all the way. People in the neighbouring shebeens came out to witness the spectacle of three white girls and an elder white woman chasing their car through the sand hooting and hollering. It was a moment of supreme accomplishment. We didn't come to a full stop off of the tar road for the rest of the journey.

Copperfest was interesting to experience. Naively we were expecting copper, of which there was not a lick. It wasn't much different from an outdoor festival, with tents scattered about a park containing advertisers, vendors selling anything from woven baskets to cheap carnival toys, and meat. Disturbingly, children were running about in mobs with frighteningly realistic toy guns, shooting plastic pellets at each other and unsuspecting standers by. I know that it's not uncommon for children to play with guns back home, but something was particularly discomfiting about just how realistic these guns were, and how every single child in sight seemed to have one. We spent the majority of our time at the festival touring the grounds or spread out on a blanket with some beer, snacks of meat, fish and potato salad and good conversation. It was, overall, a good weekend and a nice getaway from the everyday in our respective villages.