The Day a UFO
Followed the Float.

Behind a float piled with aubergines, carrots and spring onions, a UFO proceeds solemnly uphill. Ngargoretno village held its Ruwat Rawat Menoreh cultural procession on August 23. Ten groups from six hamlets followed a winding three-kilometre route, mixing traditional performance with spacesuit-like costumes and a model of the “UFO Menoreh” the village promotes to visitors.

I like the ease with which produce and science fiction occupy the same parade. The residents funded the event together and shared the vegetables from the floats at the end. You cannot take the UFO home, but the cabbage can become dinner. Had I been roadside, I too would have checked behind the float before looking up at the sky.

Posters are not the only advance notice of an arts festival. In Mtunzini, black human-shaped figures began appearing beside roads and around town ahead of Art in the Shade, held August 28–30. They look as if they have stepped individually out of the moonlight; residents finding an unfamiliar silhouette on a familiar route may have slowed down.

The festival brings work to the municipal hall, bowling club and spaces between them, with workshops in clay, art journaling, stamps and photography. Schools contribute art and music. The festival lasts three days, but the work of turning the town into its venue starts earlier. Neighbours comparing how many shadow people they have spotted feels like part of the exhibition.

This year’s grapes are crushed under bare feet, and that old scene remains at the centre of a night celebrating the town’s year. Los Santos de Maimona held the main event of its grape-harvest festival on August 22, honouring the local Eva or Beba grape and the people who work the fields.

The same evening introduced 13 young representatives, selected a festival queen and presented awards for enterprise, products, long service and painting. A crop from the fields arrives in the square with music, art and formal clothes in tow. Perhaps the first splash of juice is the town’s signal that another year has reached this point. Being the first to remove one’s shoes must still take courage.