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Sugar on my lap – Spice in full drumming mode.

I thought I would break up the pictures from our week at Harambee thematically, instead of by day or something. After all, it was a jam-packed week of activities, friends, learning and winetasting!

For those of you who don’t know, Harambee is a family camp in its 16th year, for families with children of African heritage. There are kids from Haiti, the US, Ethiopia, Somalia, Swaziland, and of course Canada, just to name a few. All the families camp at the Naramata Centre, and during the days, the kids take drumming and hiphop and West African dancing lessons, and the adults take parenting workshops and attend crafting and storytelling with their younger ones.

Our girls especially enjoyed the drumming. Spice was in there like a dirty shirt – she just loved drumming and their “drumming teacher” Fana right off the bat. she’s been practicing the drum every day since we got back. Sugar, on the other hand, was pretty intimidated by Fana, who has a dynamic personality and a very loud drum. The first day she often hid her face in my shirt; the next day she retreated to a second row out of the circle. But by th third day she was back in the circle and sat beside Fana, and the fourth day, she was happily chatting with him. Just goes to show how far patience and support goes.

The Miyanda dancers show.

Next year, maybe we can bring something from Eastern Africa or Ethiopia to the camp, and add that dimension espcially pertinent to lots of the younger kids.