Halloween...Ugandan Style!

Halloween is one of my favourite holidays back home, and I was sad that that I was going to miss all the excitement this year while here in Uganda. But to my excitement, we decided to have our own version of Halloween over here. It was definitely different than what it would have been at home, but I still loved every minute of it.

We started off the celebration by carving our pumpkins. The difference between the pumpkins In Masaka and those at home is that the ones here aren’t orange; instead they tend to be different shades of green and white. As we began to carve the pumpkins we discovered that the carving process might be more of a struggle than we originally had thought. Especially in the pumpkin that I had gotten, the pumpkins were full of very orange goop that dyed my nails and fingers orange, and even washing them several times my hands still remain orange. The outside of the pumpkins were also covered in this sticky sap that stuck to my hands, and I still can’t get that off either. The pumpkins also had super thick flesh, and this meant that instead of carving the pumpkins we had to stab them in order to get any type of puncture into them. Sitting there carving my pumpkin, I felt like I was in a ‘Slasher’ movie. We finally finished the pumpkins and ended up with a great variety of designs. There were scary pumpkins and happy pumpkins. Some of the pumpkins even had ears. It’s amazing how to the creativity of kids comes out when they are given projects like this to work on.

Everyone got into the Halloween spirit, including Kristen and myself. After some influence from the kids, we decided that we would dress up as well. But with very limited supplies we had to get creative. So with a headband and some construction paper ears, we transformed into cats. The kids were just as creative and they all looked amazing. We had a pirate, a butterfly, a flower and some princesses to top it off. Everyone was really excited that we got the chance to dress up (including myself).

Because we live in a compound, there isn’t much opportunity for ‘trick or treating’ to happen. So we decided to make our own opportunity. Ahead of time, Carina and Sue had talked to the girls up at the TGC and made a deal with them that if they would hand out candy to the kids they would also get some for themselves. So we headed up to the college for some very successful ‘trick or treating’. It was a lot of fun to see how excited both the kids and the girls were to participate. The kids got lots of candy and were showered with attention. All in all, the night was a very successful rendition of Halloween, Ugandan style.

Happy Halloween everyone!