Mashindano!

The day was based around fun activities for the kids, but we didn’t expect how much the adults would enjoy these games that reminded them of their childhood. There were 3 main games held on the beach in Shella.

MAGARI YA MITI

Magari meaning car, and miti means stick. This is a game often seen being played across the continent and one that requires some creativity and a bit of recycling. The princlipe of the game is a circular object, or tire, often the rim of a large plastic lid or old bicycle wheel rim, that is propelled along by a stick usually a piece of thick wire that can be bend into the right shape. However at the festival some of the kids got very create and brought their own recycled plastic cars on sticks. So for this active we held 3 different races, two magari ya miti races one for the boys and one for the girls, then one Magari ya Plastic race for the recycled cars that were made. Thank you to Forodhani for sponsoring this race. The prize for the winner was our Bahari Yetu Festival goody bag, filled with stationary plus a Festival T-shirt, followed by a Bahari Yetu colouring book with colouring pencils donated by Elke Korschen for second place, then a PACE book, full of activities from the Tusk Trust Pan African Community Education programme.

ZIDAU ZA MWAU

Also know as Zidau ya pingo, referring to the little model dhows that are made and sailed by kids to help learn the ways of the wind and angles of the sails. This race was also divided into two, as there were dhows made from drift wood and dhows made from flip flop. The captains were required to set their sails in order to go round the dingy positioned slightly off shore, then tack and make it back to the beach. The trick is to set your sail right to get the most direct line, keeping up with the Zidau by swimming behind it to be able to tack and return to shore. Thank you to Jua House for sponsoring this race and to those who donated prizes. Peponi Hotel donated the first prize of an hour for session for 2 on their laser or kayak the winner also got the Festival goody bag, second place got a Festival t-shirt, and third place got the PACE activity book, thank you Tusk Trust.

SAND SCULPTURES

For this competition groups of 5 kids came together to create a sand sculpture of an animal from the sea, and they had to do this in under 15 mins! We had dolphins, an octopus, a starfish, and lots of turtles. This activity was sponsored by Aman, Sandy and Jemima also came to help judge. The winning team got a acro-yoga class with Fred and a Festival goody bag each, next team won a delicious cake donated by the Jua House Bakery, and the sculptures were so good that there was a draw for third place, so 10 creative kids got a bag of tasty chocolates donated from Natural Lamu.

Aside from the fun activities on the beach that morning there were others that took place around the stalls, like the scavenger hunt. For this kids had to visit all the stalls to collect a letter, each of these letters formed the name of a marine animal, so they needed to visit all stalls to get the jumbled letters and find out the animal. There was a Banka ya Miguu stations, where kids could make little palm frond airplanes, that use their propeller and the wind to move along the ground. These other activities were sponsored by the Lamu Environment Foundation.

A big thank you to all the supporters of these activities as well as those who judged the competitions, especially Taimia, Fahdi and Mohamed Swaleh who conducted the activities on the beach and Shanga who took the wonderful pictures. The festival was organised in conjunction with East African Ocean Explorers.

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