Sand festival cleans up Senga Bay

As preparations for this year’s Sand Festival continues, organisers on Wednesday morning cleaned up Senga Bay, where they are hosting the venue of the 2015 edition.
Over 3000 students from five schools as well as villagers swept the road and surrounding areas from Senga bay to Livingstonia Beach.

The festival’s founder, Lucius Soldier Banda, said the clean Senga Bay initiative has become part of the norm for the festival.
“Every year, two weeks before the actual festival, we clean the area in readiness for the actual event.  Culturally, when we are expecting visitors in Malawi, we clean the house and that’s exactly what we are doing. We welcome our international visitors as well as locals,” he said.
Commenting on the festival, he said everything is almost done in readiness for the three day feast.
“We have quite a huge number of international artists coming and all have confirmed. It seems this year’s is all about convincing people that international artists especially Busy Signal are coming. We are actually counting days so buy tickets,” he explained.
Sunbird Livingstonia hotel manager Nedson Chikuta said this year, the clean up Senga Bay exercise will continue even after the festival.
“We have asked the chiefs to mobilise their communities to continue cleaning up the area which remains one of the most visited areas in the country due to tourism. We have therefore started cleaning their areas every Wednesday.
“As regards the actual festival, he said preparations are at an advanced stage with works on setting up lights starting up soon, while food stalls are done,” he said.
About 4000 revellers are expected for the festival this year which takes place from October 30 to November 1.
Jamaican dancehall star Busy Signal is the main international act and will be joined by local artists including Black Missionaries, Lulu, Skeffa Chimoto among others.