Since the very first day we got here, locals have been like, “Oh! Have you heard about the Spring Festival coming up? Its so great you’ll be here for it!” and Im thinking… awesome. Big spring celebration, sounds like a great time to be around town. Apparently it brings in unprecedented levels of tourism to the area and people come from all over Limpopo. Even some people from Jo-burg come! This must be some great event!
At some point I was warned that it probably wasn’t like the fairs I was used to in America. SO okay, I erased the tilt-a-whirl from my imagination, and moved more into the livestock and baking contest kind of fairs. No biggie. I was still assured it would be a good time and it was great I’d get to see it. Even when someone finally admitted that it was just people setting up booths in the town hall, I kept my hopes high. There would be excitement and lots of people. One (of the two) local taverns advertised a Spring Party for a week. I was jazzed.
Well, the Spring Fair has happened! And I hurried down to the town hall see the booths. Okay… the pride and joy of Haenertsburg, nay, Limpopo tourism is… a craft fair. Not a good craft fair. Not even an especially big craft fair. This is more like those weird Christmas craft fairs in the gym they take elementary school kids to so they can buy gifts for their parents (I personally went for soap-on-a-rope shaped like a football for my dad and Christmas earrings for my mom). I’m not kidding. Besides the tables of homemade soap, jam, watercolor landscapes, and the occasional baked good, there was a woman who really believed in the power of pyramids and wanted to share this with anyone who would listen and had adorned her booth with some plywood pyramid frames to show you what she really meant. Another entire table (which I never actually saw manned) was devoted to those metal umbrella things you put over food when you eat outside to keep the flies off; each one painted white with glued on fake flowers. I was disappointed to say the least (although I still attended the spring party along with a couple dozen other tavern regulars). It wasn’t a total loss, however. The highlight of my fair experience was a personal hula hoop lesson from some people who had come to help their mom at the “pay point” and had finagled their hippy way onto the schedule. I was the only person who came, by the way.
South Africa… more like a Dutch retirement community than you might have guessed
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