Halloween isn't a thing in Kenya, but the boys still love some of the traditions we have in the States and they especially love the excuse to dress up in costumes. So we do a small version of Halloween here in Chogoria, just with our family and just in the house. Nothing to draw attention.
Firstly, we carve pumpkins. They fall apart and/or mold within 48 hours max because of the warm weather, but it's a tradition the boys beg for anyway, so we do it.
This year we also made cinnamon sugar donuts, which is more of a Fall thing than a Halloween thing, but it was a perfect way to add some excitement to the day. I doubled the recipe this time so we could try freezing some for later. The fresh donuts were positively scrumptious!
And finally, costumes! Caleb really wanted to be a skeleton, so Eli used masking tape to put bones on his dark clothes and I printed off a paper mask and added elastic string to it. Voila! Homemade skeleton costume complete.
Originally, Kai wanted to be a scorpion, the animal. We were struggling to think of how to make a homemade scorpion costume with the little homemade materials we have on hand, but he (thankfully) changed his mind and decided he wanted to be Scorpion, the Spider-Man villain. That was much easier to work with. So he put on whatever green clothes he had and we made a tail out of toilet paper tubes colored green and covered with clear plastic tape along with a green balloon hanging off the end. We couldn't do a stinger on the balloon without popping it, so the stinger failed to make an appearance. But oh well. With the goggles on (thank you, Wild Kratts toys!) Kai looked pretty good.
Upon hearing that Kai had changed his mind to Scorpion, Asa also changed his mind to be Spider-Man. And thank goodness. Because Asa originally wanted to be Ghidorah. I didn't even know what or who that was, and when I found out I immediately tried to convince our son to be anything but Ghidorah for Halloween. When I told him that would be a really hard costume to create, he said, "It's okay. I can only have one head instead of three." Yeah, because that makes it so much easier. Yeesh! Thankfully, by some miracle, Asa realized it would be super cool to be Spider-Man if Kai was going to be Scorpion, because then they could pretend to fight each other. Whew! We have a Spider-Man costume in the closet that still fits him. Easiest costume ever.
And then we turned on the Ghostbuster theme song and Monster Mash on repeat while the boys trick-or-treated in the house. We did this in 2020 when we were the only Americans in Chogoria and there was no one else around to appreciate this American tradition, and the boys loved it. So we repeated it and these kids didn't blink an eye as if this was the funniest sort of trick-or-treating experience ever. They were truly so happy and so grateful for the assortment of candy we were able to cobble together. A visitor did bring us some American candy recently, which we saved for this occasion, but otherwise I just ran into the store in town and hoped for anything Halloween worthy. What I found was enough, and the boys were elated and thought this was how all Halloweens should go. I will say that growing up outside of America has really helped these kids have a great appreciation for the small things, and I am so thankful for that!
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