Holiday Fun

Since Dodoma does not offer much in the way of events and distractions for children, holiday times continue to provide a challenge for us mums from overseas in terms of keeping little ones happily occupied. Over the Easter Holidays, several of us mums organised events to keep the children busy.

On Easter Tuesday, we hosted an Easter Holiday Club at our home, with Claire on hand as my excellent helper and with Andrew on hand to entertain Joel at the MAF hangar and in his MAF safety office, so that I could focus in the older children. Ten children took part in Easter Activities and Games. Our parcels from the UK proved Most Useful  as we used the paints and craft materials and some little Easter chick chocolates to decorate Rice Crsipie Chocolate nests.  It was a fun morning!

On other days, Esther and Ben joined friends at their homes for Movie Afternoons, where the host family put on a child-friendly film in their "home cinema", using a projector to make a large screen and even providing (free) "cinema tickets" and popcorn to make the experience like a "real" cinema!

We also joined in with a couple of morning walks around the local Dodoma reservoir. Joel enjoyed these walks too from the relative comfort of his pram- it was somewhat bumpy, as we clambered over the rocky and muddy ground around the water, but with a bit of help from other parents, we managed to get Joel's pram all the way around on both walks! It was wonderful to see the gorgeous wild flowers that are still in bloom after the recent rains- a rare sight in Dodoma, but the rains have been good this year and it was just so nice to be out and about and to see the local flowers:

The children kept busy at home too.
Esther spent a morning making Christmas decorations (!!), using the craft activity from a fab parcel that arrived here from England recently. It had been posted in October last year, but arrived in time for Easter! So why not enjoy the contents and make the decorations??! We will just save them up for December!

 Ben was as delighted as ever when some late rains fell, providing mud and mess especially for him to play outside with his diggers -and of course an ideal opportunity for Ben to wear his beloved wellies and waterproofs:

 As for Joel, the holidays were a great opportunity to get his brother and sister help him to practise his walking skills, up and down the garden- although Ben seems less confident than Joel, with his cycle helemt on his head in case they all fell over together! Joel was just beaming as they walked up and down the garden together, developing his confidence with every step:

 A busy and fun holiday for all. Now the children have been back at school for a week, albeit with a bit of a slow start, as last week and this week are both 4 day working weeks, with a public holiday last Thursday and another one tomorrow! However, once May gets going, the long 10 week school term will settle in, with a long wait until the next holidays...