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| Africa Burn |
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| Naked Cyclist! |
And the seasons continue to transform into a quieter time.
Leaves are changing colour and every moment has ceased to be a struggle
against the sweat falling from my body. New seasons bring new change in
myself and in the things around me. The major event that has been in, on and around
my mind has been the Korea Burn Festival -Korea’s version of Burning Man. Now
if you’ve never heard of Burning Man before let me explain. Burning Man started
in America and is held every year in the Nevada desert. People come from all over
the world to this arid, dusty space and bring it to life with art, music, mad
costumes, yummy food and creative ideas. Burning Man is a world which prohibits
the exchange of money. In fact nothing is exchanged, people come to the
festival to give whatever talent, skill or sustenance they can provide and in
their turn others do the same. The idea is that IF everyone in the world were
to pull their weight and provide everyone around them with a gift or a service
everyone could live happily and in harmony without need of anything. Obviously this
idea is utopian at best and disregards factors such as greed and laziness but at
least for several days this life can be experienced, a dead place is brought to
life, and after it all, everyone leaves, without a trace of having ever been
there. 
I went to Africa Burn (South Africa’s response to Burning
Man) a few years ago, in the Karoo. I didn’t really understand the concept
before I went but it seemed like a vibe so I went along. When I was there I was
simply blown away by all the beauty, effort and of course, money, people had
put into their different gifts. There was a post office where you could send
postcards to anywhere in the world, there was a huge pirate ship on a truck one
could dance on with music drifting around the desert, scooters dressed as pink
pigs frolicking accros the plane, a mother and daughter giving out blueberry
pancakes in the morning, a tent dedicated to the teaching of yoga and
meditation, and a Wonderland that you entered through a tiny door and brought
you to world of sweets piled atop one another.
When I discovered there was to be a Korea Burn I resolved to
bring something there which would make up for my rather too large amount of
taking at Africa Burn. I started a facebook group to brainstorm ideas for the
fest but besides a smattering of souls it seemed as if no one had much interest
in the endeavor. Never mind, I figured we could summon at least 10 people to
make a little theme camp. Anyway, good ideas seem to grow, especially in a
foreigner community where everyone is so excited about doing, making and
experiencing as much as they can. After our short sojourn to various faraway
places for vacation people returned and soon the number of interested people
went from 5 to 30 and in the end we not only 10 people interested, but 40
people interested and paid up and a bus hired and a whole bunch of things to
take with us. Our theme camp was named the “Ocean of Love” as we live by the
Ocean and we all made horns and thus become “Sea Unicorns” (a fact that no one
really got besides us) and we brought lots of paint and thread to body paint
and bracelet make and a huge (and I mean huge) stew to feed the masses. Never
before did I think organization could be a smooth and simple process and I
think in most societies I have lived in this is true – you have to pull people
with a string by their teeth to make them do things. Luckily here there were
excited people that often, when they say yes, they actually mean yes and it sad
that this is such a novelty.
I woke at 430 am on the day of the fest to hear the vicious sound
s of pouring rain banging against my window. My heart sank. We had so many non-waterproof
things to carry in this storm to the bus and there had been talk of the
festival being rained out. Anyway after meeting people and soldiering to the
bus and getting things onto the bus with only a few casualties we set off
excitedly. We found the bus microphone and soon full scale karaoke was being
belted out with dancing down the aisles. The bus driver seemed to be of good
spirit and didn’t seem to mind numerous requests for toilet brakes and the
obvious ear splitting yowling of a bunch of hyperactive foreigners.
And then we were there. And even though we had possibly come
from the furthest other side of the country than anyone else had, it seemed we
were one of the first people there and the first to set up our theme camp. We
layered the bottom of our tent with mats and blankets and decorated our tent with
various sea animals and decorated ourselves with unicorn horns. People came in
and we painted them, we braceletted them and later took pictures of them in our
Korea Burn Photo Frame and even later we fed them. It was glorious to have such
wonderful people around me, a group of friends of forty lovely people, all
doing their bit, all bringing the absolute joy of giving to Korea Burn.
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| Slacklining in the Forest! |
The other theme camps set up eventually and they conceited
of one where you recited poetry for bacon (though I never actually heard any
poetry yet smelt a lot of bacon) one where you had to do a silly dance for
pizza and beer and another where a silly forfeit would get you a yummy
cocktail. A friend of mine I had met in Vietnam showed up and taught everyone a
sexy dance (way too sexy for me to handle really) and some people dug a huge
hole in the sand, filled it with bubble bath and made a sea jazuzzi, others
were painting shells or decorating t-shirts or giving out glowsticks or fire
spinning, or slack lining or playing vibey music to dance to.
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| Labyrinth time! |
I found some people playing Frisbee on the beach and joined
them for a little bit and mooched around, laughing with my friends and taking
photos of silly things. Finally it got cold and I transformed into a unicorn
for the night, prancing around the fire where they were burning “The Man” and meeting other creatures like a cat, a
hippo and Where’s Wally himself. We had
to return the next day after some forest walks and music sharing human mad whirlpools
in the ocean. And then life moved on.
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| Singing on the Bus! |
This project of fetching, taking and organizing was done.
And then I presumed I would have more time. Now time is a funny thing, you
always think you will have this magical “more time” when something is over but
something else just magically replaces it or more laziness sets in. I really do
feel like I am a more productive person the busier I am as I have no hours to
waste on nothing. My climbing and adventure friend Courtney was leaving so it
was all farewells to her and then Ultimate Frisbee practices (our league was to
start the following weekend) and I joined a class to (finally) learn Korean.
This is the longest time in my life that I have gone without studying, It has
been almost 2 years since I have had something concrete to study and I have
fallen on this opportunity like no other. I will not deny that I am a sucker
for reward and the opportunity of winning a glass of juice at the end of a
class for beating my fellow classmates (cannot let go of that competitive
nature) is very exciting BUT I am also simply loving the joy of learning new
things after such a lapse. I honestly feel that putting an 18 year old in
University is a waste when one can grow up a bit and realize to relish studying
like I do now and truly LOVE to learn and not simply to pass. In a way, even
though I have certificates that denote some sort of qualification I feel like
so much time and classes were wasted by my youthful mind not motivated to seize
every new piece of information and try to record it forever.
So I am swept up in the glorious words or nouns and verbs
and the mathematics of putting together and figuring out ways to remember
incredibly difficult words that have no connection to English in the slightest.
And it is invigorating to say the least.
And I could go on. Some friends and I took a trip to
Ulleongdo which is a beautiful island off the Korean Coast. One gets there by
Ferry and then the rest of our time was simply spent traipsing around this
exquisite island. We took a walk along these rock cliffs where we saw Koreans
trying to, I suppose, “catch” a giant Jellyfish. This jellyfish was colossal
and about the size of a very very large fat person’s torso. We saw the Koreans
throw a rope in and with this rope the hooked it on the other side of the
jellyfish pulled the rope up. We thought they may have been trying to get it
out of the water but instead the rope just sliced the jellyfish in pieces every
time they tried to bring it and in the end there was just a mutilated jellyfish
in the harbor and I am still sadly not so sure what the whole process was
about. 
We walked around the Island and met a lost foreigner named
Ken who joined our crew and got on a bus with to the other side of the island.
SO we figured the bus would be short as we were going to a crater in the middle
of the island yet we then realized it is mountainous and not really able to cut
through the island and had to go the other way around. An hour later on this
bumpy bus ride we arrived about another 2 hour walk to the crater but the buses
had stopped working and it was getting dark. Well I was all down for making the
dark road over the mountain and into the crater as I’d never slept in a crater
and we were trying to get the group amped for that which they kind of were but
no one was starting to walk. Then our friend Joseph saved the game as a group
of English speaking Korean girls got off a bakkie. They organized some guy from
somewhere to come and pick us up and take us the rather long and precarious
drive over the mountain.
We then started running around this place and had a slim
supper of whatever bread we could scrimmage from our backpacks and began
exploring the crater in the dark. The only other girl, my buddy Courtney,
joined me on an adventure in this strange straw house (we tried to puff it down but to no avail)
and a bit later we saw all the boys running down the road at high speed. I
don’t know how but one of our boys pressed a button on someone’s tractor and
the tractor started running and even
with a torch no one could figure out how to turn it off. We tried everything,
from button to button to turning the key that was in the tractor but nothing
happened. No one came out of any home and finally we shrugged our shoulders and
found our tents and went to sleep. The next day we could still hear the tractor
running and we continued on our wsy. We went to a waterfall and jumped over the
fence and ignored all the warning signs and bathed in the cool beautiful water.
Only later did we realize why everyone was so angry with us- we were swimming
in the towns drinking water. 
Well I hope no foreign sweat killed them and besides all
these misdemeanors we found our way to a temple where a monk came to us and
asked us all sorts of questions. He then let us ring the gong at the temple and
after taking soe great pictures he told us to wait and came back and handed
each of us 10,000w which is the equivalent of about R70 and about 10 dollars.
He told us with lots of gestures that we must have lunch with it and we tried to
refuse and unsure at what point refusing would be seen as rude we simply
thanked the monk and went to do what he had instructed- ate food with it. It
was a strange and wonderful moment and I think all of us can think of that
moment with such a beautiful feeling of happy bewilderment. 
Life sounds like a dream but honestly there has been some
real-world stuff of late. My adventure buddy Courtney left me, or left Pohang
and subsequently left a big gap in my
life, Frisbee has leveled a bit in politics, emotion and disappointment, a
child’s phone was stolen off my desk and I was told I would have to pay for it
(smart phones aren’t cheap) and winter is coming. But again all these things
help ones learning as without the security of my normal best friends I have had
to get out of my comfort zone a bit, I am learning yet again to try and relax
my horribly competitive and loud-spoken nature and the child’s phone was
returned by the thief and I am reminded that in no country, regardless of how
“safe” it is, one must always keep their eyes peeled at all times- especially
as a teacher. So again, there is so much to be grateful for in this strange
country. And even if winter comes and chills my bones I now know enough to keep
the good meaningful times rolling.
