Meister Market

For the last ten years, the tiny, hazy town of Ghanzi, Botswana has been home to the boundlessly unique Overthrust Winter Metal Mania Festival.

Over the course of two days in May, the local community hall becomes a haven for metal enthusiasts from all over Africa and beyond her borders.     

It's the one weekend where some of the continent’s most devout metal heads shed their 9 to 5 skins and adopt attire better-suited to their devil-may-care tendencies.

Contrasting textures of leather and feathers are layered atop tasselled chaps while metal cowboys howl under the amber streetlights. 

Spikes protrude from dog skulls stuck on the breastplates of the most invested as mock standoffs allow for attendees to swing rifles between each other.   

This is a brash affair of shoe polish-black leather get-ups and a cacophony of cowbells dangling off weighty metal chains.

It's a hell and hair-raising experience, with a united community spirit at its core, that’s not for the faint of heart.

- Tecla Ciolfi