A girl we are with strips down to her bra and panties and goes off into the
desert to paint people fluorescent. Ten skips later two men in jester hats stop the bra and panties and ask for their faces to be painted. She obliges but comes over after, crouching in the dust, and complains why people are making such a big DEAL – it’s just flesh.

There is no money allowed here at AfrikaBurn. It’s an art festival in the desert - the African, smaller, more isolated version of Nevada’s Burning Man. Installations and trucks-turned-dance-floors are spread out far in to the distance. The concept is noble: each person brings an offering, either slices of free cherry pie, face painting, or a promise to perform Counting Crows covers at dawn. Over the festival you give to whoever you please. You are asked to expect nothing in return for your generosity and not to bury your litter in the desert, but take it home.

The result - 110km from a tarred road - isn't a hippy lovefest exactly, but a truly overwhelming haggle for social strokes. Once I realize that there really is nowhere to buy a Coke I start to see that this is a weekend of survival. At first my brain ramps up to memorize a girl's name and concoct transparent compliments for her matchbox earrings. She says she'll be giving out espressos later. I practically bow in response. After the apocalypse before savagery, but without cellphones or television, there will be a period of extreme politeness. Knowing that there’s a culture of altruism changes how you act, but insincerity isn’t rewarded here. It doesn't pay to be scheming. I am, however, aware that a certain type of behaviour is optimal and my access to fun will be entirely based on mimicking this and being liked.

While the semi-naked girl is missing, dehydrating, we play a game of soccer wearing binocular helmets. We see spazms of scenery, but not our opponents or the ball.

We visit the Boerwors Curtain - literally constructed of sausage.

We eat cake at the Alice in Wonderland tent. You have to appreciate that this was constructed in the desert – all materials dragged for hours out of a major city. You can hop over chairs off the main drag to the dance floor, but to appreciate the exhibit properly you go through a door and down a wooden passage and get presented with the famous room where Alice shrinks. There’s even a diminutive door for you to open in the corner. On the other side a man dressed as a caterpillar in shades is pushing around a couple of records. A girl dressed as Alice is passing out tiny glass bottles. There are handwritten tags saying “Drink Me” tied around the rims. I take a slug. The children have gravitated here. Entire families are at AfrikaBurn with the mothers making pancakes for anyone who walks past. These aren’t the crackhead families you get at trance parties, but wholesome camping types. Smart alecs like me are eating this Mad Hatter cake ironically – between sips of beer – but the kids are here for the sugar, end of story.

Out on the horizon is the festival’s effigy. We go to sit inside its orb, lined with flammable charges in preparation for the grand bonfire. There are a few other people inside, cooped out of the midday sun. We chat, knowing that we have to walk a grand distance to speak to anyone else. There was a rumour of cellphone reception being up the top of the Lego man, but that’s been debunked. So we appreciate the ‘90s notion of needing to keep our friends in sight in case we lose them and marvel at the sense of space – there’s nothing threatening that you won’t see charging at you for five to ten minutes.

People are interesting, of course. It doesn’t feel like you’re schlepping through the tedium of strangers’ lives just to get free stuff. But this is partly because your attention is divided, you’re preoccupied. While listening you’re hunting for the chance to needle in your own kooky personality. And you won’t even realize that this is what you’re doing. If being generous is the meat and potatoes, your own pithy, inoffensive quirk is the gravy that will help you through. A silly hat, juggle sticks, a pair of sparkly pants, nudity.

Though, among the scattering of naked men I saw over the weekend not one of them looked happy. They rode their bikes seriously around the camp. A man with his cock out always looked to be involved in an earnest conversation with another man who never broke eye-contact. They never jumped or ran or stood in pairs.

You want to be liked and remembered and here it’s okay to openly seek that, as long as you do it in a private, creative way. “I’m flying this dragon kite because it’s fun… and so people will notice me.” You don’t need to worry about looking the fool because everyone is caught up in their own pantomime. Socializing appears to more absorbing with these short-term goals. It gives your actions added purpose, especially as they have to appear spontaneous. Sex, or love or friendship are such massive unwieldy projects – but when there’s the prospect of a weed brownie for your trouble it makes you less intimidated to gun for the love, attention and admiration we’re all after. That’s the sad secret – we can only show off and be gregarious or generous when there’s an excuse of winning quick prizes, not because of them.

The old guard - seasoned burners - have trailers with glossed over slogans from the year before. They are frightfully generous to the point of neglecting themselves, and like stay-at-home-Mums you feel that they are motivated by the hope that you’ll follow their example. This isn’t just about painting a few faces. But the rub is by acting in this nonchalant way and relenting to this incredible faith in karma they garner huge festival respect. There must be satisfaction in building two scooters into a pair of furry bunny slippers: stitching foam and pink cloth so the riders look to be sitting in the heels. But there must also be satisfaction in strangers whooping, photographing and lauding the creativity. Reputation – spread over these four days – can turn a seamstress into a superstar. “Of course we’ll be here again next year. And then it will be even better.”

I drove but I’m not the one who notices our flat tyre. One of the Vikings takes control of removing our wheel. They don’t expect anything from us in return but attendance to their spit-braai of hot tasty meat later that evening. These folk are truly generous countrymen.

Initially there is a barrier you need to overcome at being able to accept handouts from strangers. You can feel guilty at their feet if you know you can’t repay them in kind. The other extreme happens in the Viking camp: when people see that validation isn’t necessary, that there isn’t someone around to collect every smile and thankyou. When there is no assessment people become looters. While you might talk to someone at mid-day about their curious belt-buckle for five minutes and get a couple of cherries, at the Viking camp there erupts a pocket of anarchy. It could be that handfuls of salty meat encourages a barbaric nature, but they over-catered, got drunk themselves and ignored that there needs to be a transaction for this to work. Without it people start hording – anxious that they won’t see times like this again. In anticipation of a meat and beer famine there’s a steep societal decline. One man has his cheeks stuffed with meat and a beer in each pocket as he runs off into the night to swallow and drink alone in the desert.

You need to bring your own water – litres and litres for cleaning, drinking and cooking. And it’s the one thing people aren’t all that ready to part with. Because, what if? We are in the desert after all. Strangers will give you weed, cooler box space, but they’re never sure just how much water they might need.

On our careful drive home with no spare tyre – past the abandoned cars in ditches – we stop. There’s a promise of a swim. I trot out with the semi-naked girl (she has resumed the bra and panties) and we walk out into what we think will be a lake. But it never gets deeper than our ankles.

I’m not trying to deny that I had a wonderful time. After three days I realized that parts of my brain in normal life are criminally underutilized. We were never bored because there were always more page impressions or followers or likes to gather. It became second nature and I saw it as such a clean way of interacting. Ironically, once you push through this social sparring it feels like you’re reliving the childish thrill of being creative regardless, for the sake of fun. Until you realize children do everything for recognition and a pat on the head.

After ten minutes we’re still walking in sludge, not deep enough to feasibly wash our feet in. We walk back to the car and use a litre of unused drinking water from the boot to clean up.

AfrikaBurn takes place in South Africa on the 27th April to
2nd May 2011.