A short while ago Harare was treated to a little shindig that local residents have come to know as Shoko Festival. (Pronounced Showkow by the natives)

The Festival brings together people from all walks of life, as long they can afford the tickets and live in areas where the event was marketed.

The venue for this year was Alex Sports Club.  After spending weeks going through the phone book calling every Alex listed and asking for free tickets with no luck, we decided to try our luck at the door one the Festival’s opening night.  Luckily when we got there we were able to sneak in through the fence and see what all the fuss was about.

Thursday Night was comedy night . For reasons unknown to Dan & myself were not booked and instead we were forced to watch from the side-lines as the MC for the night bombed repeatedly . He bombed so much we nicknamed him Obama The Drone. (it was funny at the time) The poor guy kept feeding us a steady diet of lame joke after lame joke.  It got so bad I wanted to throw a can at him.  Not out of anger, but in the hopes of knocking him out and putting him & the audience out of our collective miseries.

Things kicked off with the Zambezi News crew who delivered a great live set. They were then followed by Q The Boss.  Sadly his jokes about engaging in getaway orgies and sex noises did not go over very well with the crowd. He also admitted he has a small penis on stage, so guess who definitely didn’t get any that night?

Next up was Chester Missing who delivered an outstanding set.  It was even more enjoyable because he kept ripping into Econet (who had it coming).  He then delivered a few more blows to the residents of Zambezi .

The final act was Loyiso Gola. As you may recall I had my doubts about how funny he really was. Based off his TV show I was sceptical.  But the man came out and delivered a hilarious set.  At one point I felt less guilty about missing my morning workout that day. (Coincidentally that marks the 3,567th consecutive day where I have not been able to work out in the morning).

Friday was another night filled with entertainment. The lovely Ammara Brown introduced a new dance that had Dan & I doing a happy dance of our own.  Tehn Diamond sparkled like a crystal (see what I did there?) and HHP killed it even though his set was put together on short notice. HHP was booked in the 11th hour to replace Nneka who pulled out due to medical reasons. Apparently she had just been in hospital; Dan thinks she didn’t want to catch his rare string of Ebola and decided to take her chances in Nigeria.

All in all the festival went by very well.  The only let down was the turn out. Perhaps there are more broke Twimbos than we thought .

All in all the festival went by very well.  The only let down was the turn out. Perhaps there are more broke Twimbos than we thought .

For more from Shoko check out our podcast with interviews from all the headline acts (well most of them - the fast ones got away before we could corner them)

Also here are the tweets we spoke in our latest podcast regarding Chester Missing and his verbal assault on Sizwe.