Pommern - Shannon's Birthday!

Shannon's birthday (November 13th) coincided perfectly with a handful of events in the community and so we had a really great day!

First, at the Primary School the vocational school students in carpentry were having their graduation.  We were guests of honor to this event and really got to see "Africa time" in action here.  We've experienced a more laid back sense of time in every country other than America, but Africa takes it to a new level.  When they say the graduation will start at 9 AM... they really mean... 10ish or 11ish or....  After playing with the kids in the morning, helping with the tippy taps, and cooking for the fiesta, we finally got things going and enjoyed the celebration of graduation for these students.

Students dancing prior to the ceremony.

Carpentry graduates holding up the tools they received at graduation.

After the graduation we had a duck chase back at the house.  This was actually our second poultry chase (previously, chicken) as Aiden our youngest team member had made a goal of learning this skill.  Ducks are easier to chase than chickens but more intimidating than chickens because of biting possibility.  Anyway, we were successful.

In the afternoon, we had a visit by some traditional Hehe dancers (that's the name of the local tribe).  They danced with bells on their feet at the encouragement of a very old man.  At first we thought he was randomly from the village and needed a chair to watch the dancing and only later learned that he was a critical part of the dance.  Essentially, he was a real life Rafiki (from the Lion King).

Finally we had a great birthday dinner complete with doughnuts Momma Tony cooked, a cake, and a bottle of Tanzanian wine.

It was definitely a very unique birthday for Shannon and one that'll be hard to top!