Harare & the HIFA

Another 2 days in Zimbabwe, the plan being to reach the capital and discover the -said to be- famous & interesting HIFA, for "Harare International Festival of the Arts".

After another interesting 1/2 day to Harare, with a kind of taxi-bus, a local bus, a 2nd local bus, then a taxi, the capital is quite overwhelming in terms of people and building vs. the last 4 weeks experience. It is big, with people everywhere moving in every direction. It is like an ant mount, more colorful though ;)


Few glimpses of the capital streets through the taxi windows...

However, to be close to the festival and pamper myself, I decided to take the Crown Plaza hotel just around the Harare gardens... that is clearly the luxurious place in the city, where even WiFi is good... The view and the pool are also very nice :).

In the evening, direction to the HIFA... quite a nightmare to get tickets, but we can get some for Baaba Maal, a famous singer from Senegal, sounds cool.

 The music and the show are quite nice, though the crowd is less dynamic than I would have imagined Africans to be. No real dancing, it's a pity as the music was quite rhythmic.

It was very good to hear the engaged singer messages though, through his lyrics (in English!) or his few speeches to the public. Clearly speaking high for Africa to change, develop, and stop doing between-tribes wars... Very good, I can only agree.

 Later in the night, after few drinks around another 2nd stage, we can connect with 2 locals men... very interesting discussions on the "normal" life in Harare and the unfortunate racism / discrimination between the tribes / blacks colors. It is crazy how every group of human beings succeed to find stupid reasons to reject slightly different physicals others, it sounds like we can never learn from the past mistakes.

2nd day in Harare, we are trying to discover a bit more this "African" art. Well, clearly it is disappointing, there is not much to see. The art gallery has about 20 painting and 4 sculptures. 2 of them being from Rodin though, clearly the highlight! 

 There are also about 10 "paintings", actually fake, of some Impressionists... so badly done, I was a bit shock it could be exposed on a museum wall, but ok, TIA isn't it? ;)

In the HIFA itself, the few artistic things to see are more to sell than for exhibition...and sellers can only remind you about this!

In the evening, we got concert tickets for the big closure event of Makoomba & friends, the famous Zimbabwe band it seems. Quite good music, but again... not much move from the crowd, too bad.

 A fun point... a fireworks is done during the last song... but just above the crowd, so you get burning fireworks dropping on you / the crowd above...  The "safety before all" has not yet reached this part of the world... ;-)

To wake up up after 10pm, there is hopefully Sniper storm, a mix of rap / hip-hop / dance african mix, to save us, quite enjoyable.