Grahamstown Arts Festival

The second stop of the Davis Sisters' Grand Tour of South Africa was Grahamstown. Grahamstown is a sleepy, quiet college town in the Eastern Cape. It boasts one of the oldest colleges in South Africa, but its real claim to fame is the Grahamstown Arts Festival. Every year at the end of June and beginning of July, artists from around the world flock to grahamstown for two weeks of music, dancing, drama and art exhibits. The population of the town triples during these weeks as tourists follow the artists, booking accomodations months in advance. The festival is a lively, crowded occassion, but also is incredibly fun. As both Allison and I have artsy tendencies and as I have heard rave reviews from South Africans and other Peace Corps volunteers alike about the festival, we decided to spend a few days in the vicinity of Grahamstown to soak up a little bit of culture.

Grahamstown was absolutely clogged with merry-makers. It reminded me of state fairs in the United States, minus the rides and cotton candy. In relacement were stages for performers, stalls for visual arts and food stands that did not serve the fair staples but instead every type of ethnic and cultural food found all over the world. They were even selling kudu burgers (kudu is a type of South African antelope) that Allison and I decided to indulge in. It was rather good. We spent our time in Grahamstown with several other volunteers, sampling foods, browsing the art stalls, and saw a play, dance show and jazz concert. The festival was full of fun and had its own unique quality that I believe appealed to all who visited it. It certainly appealed to me, and I could have easily spent a week there just to soak up the art from around the world.