A couple of weekends ago, we went to Africa Day at Farmleigh House. This was our first time to attend and we’ll hopefully be going every year. It was one of those days that looked like it would pour any minute, but we decided to chance it as we were already close to Phoenix Park for Alex’s Sunday swimming class. Luckily the weather held out until we got in the car to drive home (then Chris couldn’t help but sing a little Toto)
The event was well spread out over the Farmleigh grounds. In the Kidimanjaro section, there were a rides and entertainment for kids, as well as stalls from charities and African community groups. Nate loves the little car rides and always goes for the top of the bus. He was just so happy to start our day out on the rides, I knew it was going to go well. We spent a lot of time in the Irish Aid tent learning about West African drumming. I was totally surprised that Nate sat still for most of the lesson and was pretty good at following directions. We’ve been drumming on boxes at home now. His favourite thing, probably of all time, was Tutti Frutti (or Tutti Funny as Nate calls it), a clowny performance that Nate loved because it reminded him of Gigglebiz. He’s totally into slapstick at the moment! At one point, they asked everyone to come closer and Nate moved closer, and closer, and closer. I think he wanted to join the show!
Behind the house was the mainstage area, food stalls and more charity and cultural organsiations. We had some amazing Kenyan food (I’m so sorry I can’t remember the name of the place the food was from) and listened to a really fun band called the Amazing Few. The boys were totally into the music, which was so much fun. Ali is my little rockstar and loves anything with a punky tempo. They were running around and dancing like crazy. (I think a festival might be in our future) I was totally impressed that the woman on vocals had a baby (a super content baby) wrapped up in a sling during her performance. How awesome is that?! Man, my kids don’t have a hope at being as cool as that kid. As we were eating our food, a crowd started to gather behind us. We looked over and saw a woman with a huge lizard on her head (with a leash around it’s neck) and an orange snake in her hands. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t connected to the event but I could be wrong. It was fascinating and totally weird. Nate surprised me by actually running up to touch the snake. He’s a lot more brave than I give him credit for!
We left just after lunch time because that’s about all the fun the kids could handle, but it sounded like there was a lot more fun as the day went on including many more musical acts and a best dressed competition. It was really cool to see so many different types of Irish families and to see all the different cultures of Africa on display. I absolutely loved all of the traditional fabrics and dress, all the colours really popped on the grey day. Next year I hope there’s even more food stalls as it would be cool to sample cuisine from across the contentent. And I really hope there’s an Ethiopian food stall, because it’s the best!