The Salem World Beat Festival

I swear, eventually I will talk about my job at Salem’s Riverfront Carousel (maybe) but until then I have to tell you about the nifty stuff that happens during my time there that is completely unrelated to my job. The Carousel is comfortably situated at a huge riverfront park which is the main local for huge events that happen downtown. Conveniently enough, most of these events happen during the weekends and I work on Sunday. This means free entry, parking, and the ability to look very official. You see, whenever an event is going on and I’m working, I automatically get staff/volunteer shirts for the event and access to all the different parts. I also wear a radio for the Carousel, so I look REALLY cool with an earpiece on. The Carousel has its perks.

This last weekend (6/30/2007 – 7/1/2007) was the 10th annual World Beat Festival at Riverfront Park.



Click here for the program/brochure for the event


It’s a huge festival that takes up the entire park with dancing, music, food, venders, Dragon Boat races, weddings, crafts, and all sorts of exciting things. I tend to focus mainly on the food just because there is so much, it all smells so good, and I’ve never tried most of it. I ended up eating something called Lukku Chicken from the Horn of Africa booth. It had lemon chicken, curry, rice, beans, and some kind of cabbage side with yellow sauce stuff on it. I also bought an elephant ear and an African iced tea. To aid you in visualizing all of this, let me show you where a few key things are in this handy-dandy map I found.



As you can see, my place of business was pretty centrally located, providing me a couple of opportunities to flee and check out the sights. As I said earlier, I get to wear official stuff and look really cool at these types of things. I took a couple of pictures of myself with my phone to show you (I know, that’s really something only 8th grade girls should do, but I didn’t have my digital camera!)

Check out the earpiece in the right ear:


And, now for a shot of the cool shirt and microphone


Yep, very official.

Every day at work is different, there’s a lot that goes on in the park. I’ll keep you up to date with whatever goes on down there, especially the types of food I get to eat!