The Joy of Life is Love

Today is Nyerere Day in Tanzania, a day to celebrate the country’s first president, Julius Nyerere, who led the country from the start of its independence until 1985.

To celebrate the day, Max and Elly donned their sunglasses and we headed to the Arusha Festival but that turned out to be a bust, despite all its hype about being a great family event. I was looking forward to blogging all about our exciting day out, but instead all I’ve got is this awesome picture of Max in his sunglasses. Enjoy!

My Pinterest boards are chock full of ideas, most of which I’ll likely never get around to trying. But today I managed to pull off a successful Pinterest project: homemade play dough.

I used this recipe and found it to be really easy, both in execution and clean up. It took me about an hour from start to finish making four colors–red, orange, light red and green.

The dough looks strangely gelatinous (is that word?) when you first mix the flour in with the liquid ingredients.

But then you turn it out onto a floured surface to start kneading.

It didn’t take long for it to start looking like play dough.

I was having so much fun making the play dough I caught myself wishing that Max and Elly would wake up early from their nap so we could start playing. I quickly talked myself out of that nonsense and kept working. Just as I was ready to knead the fourth batch, Max and Elly showed up in the kitchen; they had, in fact, woken up early from their nap.

My intention had been to use the play dough for afternoon play time, but since they were there and the dough was ready we got started right away.

It didn’t take long for Max and Elly to get the hang of working the dough.

Elly used the rolling pin and kept saying “napika chapati” meaning “I’m cooking chapati.” (Chapati, Indian flat bread, is one of Elly and Max’s favorite foods.)

To keep with her cooking theme, we picked off a bunch of little pieces of the green dough so Elly could cook mchicha (greens). I’m so glad my sister Connie saved my toy cookware set in her attic so we could bring it back to Tanzania with us after we visited the U.S. in July.

Since we were pretend cooking, we also did some pretend eating. But judging from Elly’s concerned look, she wasn’t totally sure Max understood the concept of pretend. (She was right in being concerned; there was more than one moment when I had to remind Max that “siyo chakula!” (it’s not food!).

Since this recipe included cream of tartar as a stabilizer, the dough should theoretically last quite a while as long as I keep it stored properly. It was so much fun to make I’m ready to add some more colors to our play dough supply. I’m adding more food coloring colors to my shopping list.

Now that we’re well into our second year of living in Tanzania, I’ve vowed to participate in more local activities. Doing so will help me better appreciate life in Arusha, and it will be good for Max and Elly to get out of the house occasionally and have some new experiences.

Today we went to the Arusha Day for the Animals fundraising event at a local coffee shop. The event featured a bounce house, face painting, games for kids, a playground and a few friendly dogs for kids to play with. I thought Max and Elly would be really excited about the dogs because every time they hear a dog bark in our neighborhood (which is multiple times a day), Elly’s eyes get big and she pats my arm or leg and says repeatedly, puppy, puppy, puppy. But instead, their attention went immediately to the playground.

However the puppies did register in Elly’s memory of the day. When we got home and were finishing up bath time, Elly was jumping around their room saying, “Puppy ruka! Puppy ruka!” She had combined the bounce house and the dogs at today’s event and was saying “Puppy jump! Puppy jump!”

As a special treat for our outing, I let them each have their own pop. I’m not sure why, but they both have recently taken to calling pop “juice.” So they enjoyed their “juice” and took a few more runs down the slippery slide before we headed home.

Fortunately the activity of the day was a counter affect to the added sugar in their system and they managed to be asleep in record time. And, as a bonus, we now know of a great playground not that far from home that we can enjoy!

Certain things are precious commodities here in Tanzania. Chocolate chips are one of them. I’ve never seen them sold in stores, not even the grocery store that caters to the expat community. So I had one friend in the U.S. buy this huge bag at Costco and another friend carry it in her luggage when she came here on a work trip. I’ve been nursing this supply for months now; nibbling on a few now and then when I needed a chocolate fix, using some of them in a recently discovered eggless cookie dough recipe. Future plans include a batch of good old fashioned chocolate chip cookies–probably during my Pinterest-fueled plans to have a Christmas cookie baking marathon in a few months (even though I’m the only sweet-eater in the house).

Max is a big fan of chocolate chips and this is actually the second time he’s managed to pull the bag down off the top of the chest of drawers in my closet. Why didn’t I learn the first time?

While I was frantically trying to salvage the fallen chocolate chips, Max and Elly were eating them by the handfuls. I’m glad Daddy is around tonight in case there are any upset tummies to manage.

And in case you are wondering, I still totally plan on using these chocolate chips. I changed the “Five-Second Rule” to the “Two-and-a-half-Minute Rule” and got them all picked up and put back in the bag. And this time I put the bag deep in the back of the drawer where Max (hopefully) won’t find them.