Birthday Boys

The end of April and the beginning of May bring a special day for the boys in our family as we celebrate their birthdays. For Tim, if you find a museum it's guaranteed to be a hit, and it was! After picking up some tips from some of the ex-pats here, it was recommended to us to visit the Musee International Du Golf De Guinee that is situated on the main boulevard towards town. The museum consisted of the private collection of the trader and African arts expert, Mr.Rene David from Switzerland. He returned his collection to Africa and it has been added to by his wife Mme Enam David. Today, the museum happens to be the most popular one in Africa with pieces from different cultures of Africa. Our tour guide for the visit was Amoudji K. Junior who spoke excellent English so we were able to learn alot about the different masks, statues, jewellery, drums etc that we saw on display and get little more of an understanding of how and why these things are used in the African culture. Tim of course was in his element and we have the 100's of photo's to prove it!

(a tribal mask/gown)

(480 year old statue of a portuguese explorer)

(Ancient African drum, the old fashioned cell phone!)

We finished up at the local Lome fast food restaurant, Al Donalds, for lunch. Decor was a bit basic but the food didn't taste too bad. We had to give them 10 out of 10 for creativity for copying the MacDonalds sign.

Then Nathanael's birthday followed at the beginning of May. Somehow the museum wasn't his choice, but a Bob the Builder party sounded much more fun. So we got creative and did lots of googling to create a fun party for 9 kids.

(Nathanael in his Bob the Builder outfit)

Classic games included, pass the parcel, pin the tool on Bob and a "build a tower" scavenger hunt. They enjoyed a builders lunch of hotdogs, cement drinks, traffic light jelly/jello and hard hat birthday cake and went home with lots of Bob the Builder goodies that we had been organised enough to get when we were home in the UK last January. (ebay is our friend!).

(Kids making toolboxes)

The greatest idea we found was making t-shirts with all their faces on a Bob the Builders body, a great keepsake. We got the t-shirts at a bargain price of 50p and used iron on transfers.

All in all the kids went home happy and Nathanael still talks about it and we survived to live another year before we have to organize another one.

(the hard hat cake)