Halloween Happenings at Layla House

There was a grand celebration of Halloween last week at Layla House. Our hard-working volunteer crew spent weeks preparing and supplied us with the pictures below. The text is by Molly Mellbom, a student at Oregon State University. If you are traveling soon, please express your thanks to this great group of young people who are teaching our kids so much!

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Halloween at Layla is so much more than just candy and costumes on the 31^st of October. For us volunteers, the planning, brainstorming, and organizing began the first week of October and lasted until around 11 p.m. on the night of the 31^st. Planning for a holiday such as Halloween at Layla House is not, as I discovered, for the faint of heart. Think about this: How does one go about preparing and costuming over 100 children? Think about that again: How does one go about preparing and costuming over 100 children in Ethiopia? In America, you could just hop in your car and head over to any one of the millions of Wal-marts or DollarTrees around and you’ve got yourself a nice little Halloween party. Here, our main resources were the storage room, the craft room, and the volunteer office at Layla.

We decided that all of the little boys in groups 2B and lower would be bugs with wings, antennas, and bug masks and all of the little girls in these groups would be fairies, complete with wings, tiaras, and magic fairy wands. We fashioned the wings out of notebook folders and poster paper and everything else out of millions upon millions of pipe cleaners (to those of you reading this who have generously donated things like this, thank you SO much!). In addition to costumes, every single child in groups KG through 5 made a “trick-or-treat” bag for candy.

We wrote down names and groups on everything and kept it all organized, by group, in the volunteer office. Our office looked a little bit like Santa’s workshop with a “Halloween” twist. We also had all of the kids in groups 1A through 2B color pictures of pumpkins, spiders, and candy corn to be used as decorations around Layla. In America class, we taught groups 3 through 5 about the history of Halloween and how it has changed over the generations. On the Thursday and Friday before Halloween, we brought in pumpkins for these groups to carve. Most of the kids were a little hesitant about diving in and touching the pumpkin “guts”, saying things like “gross” or “we eat pumpkins, we don’t cut them” but after a while, they got pretty into it.

T----, K----, and E---- of group 3 carved the most creative pumpkin – a rockstar, complete with a nose and tongue earring. During the week before Halloween, we encouraged the older kids to think of their own costumes and the ongoing theme among the boys seemed to be characters from “Lord of the Rings.” Many of them wanted to be Orks, but we also had a few elves, including both Z-- and B--- as Legolas. On Saturday morning, we volunteers showed up at Layla and found that all the boys had had the girls braid yarn into their hair to make it long and more “authentic-looking”. They had also made swords and bow and arrows out of various materials. Our very own, Patrick, got into the theme too, dressing up as Gandolf the White. All in all, I’d think it’s safe to say that the older boys took the show in terms of costumes and originality.

After spending an entire month planning Halloween for the kids, Saturday morning was our final push to make it the best Halloween Layla had ever seen. On Friday night, all of the volunteers, including Ivy and her son Alazar, spent time at the volunteer house putting our costumes together and making plans for the haunted house. In the end, along with Gandolf the White, Ivy dressed all in green and glued googly eyes all over her face, calling herself an “eyepod” and we turned Alazar into the cutest little Lion Ethiopia has ever seen. Alex fashioned her own ninja costume complete with wooden num-chucks, Jessica made a pretty awesome witch hat and topped it off with her scariest witch cackle, I dressed as a black cat, and Amanda dressed as a “Gumborous” which means someone with a “pot” head or more literally, someone with a big head. So she wore a cooking pot on her head and the kids absolutely loved it. Our newest volunteer, Andrea, arrived on Friday night, but still got into the Halloween spirit by painting her face like a zebra. Big kudos to our local friend Russ, who dressed up as Tarzan and bought most of the trick-or-treating candy AND helped set up the scary music in the haunted house.

We arrived at Layla around noon on Saturday to set up the haunted house in the group 4 and 5 classroom. It was a challenge keeping the kids from sneaking peeks into the classroom, and although some of them saw the inside before it was completed, I think that they were still pretty surprised. Around 5 p.m., we headed back to the volunteer house to put our costumes on and eat some food. We came back to Layla around 6:30 and began handing out costumes and treat bags and commenced with painting faces. I am not quite sure when the trick-or-treating began, but when we finally started, the kids were so excited that Ivy could barely keep them all in the cafeteria. We led them out, by groups, to four different bedrooms where volunteers were waiting with candy, including sugar-free candy for M--, our boy with diabetes.

In the last of the four bedrooms, Alex handed out toothbrushes and floss. Each volunteer was greeted with an enthusiastic “TRICKOTREAT” by all the children and even some teachers and house mothers participated. After getting the kids all sugared up and wild, we headed to the haunted house and Ivy led smaller groups of children, by group number, through the haunted house. Only about 2 or 3 children from the younger groups made it through the entire way. We were even able to scare a few of the older kids by popping out of corners or grabbing ankles from underneath tables. Even the house mothers and guards were bold enough to go through the haunted house. The house was replete with spooky music and noises, ghosts, skeletons, spiders, and icky things to touch, such as cooked pasta. Candy corn awaited those still alive at the exit.

When we finally got all the willing participants through, it was time to clean up! We cleaned up all the decorations, saved a bunch for next year (THANK YOU, SUSAN PD!!), and cleaned up all the smushed spaghetti noodles and candy corn and packed up our tired little selves into Ivy’s van and went home around 11 p.m. Before Halloween, all of us vowed to make it the best Halloween the kids at Layla had ever experienced, and I think we succeeded. I hope all of you had just as wonderful of a Halloween as we did at Layla!

A Special Layla Field Trip

Layla House is very fortunate to have some good friends in Ethiopia! Recently, one of them donated enough tickets to take all of the older children to a concert by Teddy Afro, an Ethiopian superstar. Below is volunteer Patrick Smith’s account of this special field trip.
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It paid off in the end---our days of secret planning and organizing to pull off a very special field trip for the Layla kids. The teachers and staff were able to keep their excitement hidden and the children were nearly oblivious until just before departure. Our planning was worth it in the end, and kept hysteria to a minimum within the compound in the preceding days---goal one, accomplished.

For those of you who do not know, Teddy Afro is essentially Ethiopia’s Michael Jackson, a charismatic reggae star revered by nearly everyone. His first concert, after two years in prison on questionable charges, was here in Addis in October. In the weeks leading up to the show, it was the talk of the whole town---billboard advertisements, radio station announcements, and great anticipation by every fan on the street.

After our valiant efforts to keep the destination of the field trip hidden, it is finally announced, and the children excitedly board the rented buses. For all of these kids, this concert is their first, and will undoubtedly remain in their memories for many years. .After indisputably the most joyous ride this bus has ever experienced, we all walk single file, roughly one adult for every child, head-on
into a mob outside the gates. Our sponsor led the group through a herd of Ethiopians being treated like sheep, and then mumbles some words to the guards around the gate, and we begin to file slowly through the broad doors past the jealous gazes of people without tickets.

As we take our seats, it crosses my mind that perhaps concerts in Ethiopia may not be exactly like American concerts and eventually, my assumptions prove to be correct.
Nearly two hours later, after multiple trips to the bathroom and kids getting hungrier by the minute, a Hummer pulls onto the field---Mr. Afro has arrived. And with him, the sun descends, the sky darkens with clouds, and rain begins to fall. This fact does not dampen the moods of the kids, or the crowd, when after years, the burden of anticipation is eliminated with the appearance of Teddy upon the stage. With the first notes (and I am not adding this for dramatic effect, it really happened) lightning strikes in the distance, and the roar of the crowd overcomes the stadium and the music.

I look around to see the joy in the faces of the children, and of the equally ecstatic staff. Everyone seems to be singing, while some are dancing too. I can nearly feel the joy radiate from the already tired and hungry children. I look beyond our group and see a dancing stadium, and beyond that people have climbed up the stadium lights and nearby unfinished buildings to see their hero. We stayed for two sets but by that time, the children were tired and starving and so we headed home. The rest of the concert crowd though danced and sang until the wee hours of the night.