As my home country, Germany, is in the middle of Carnival, I felt a little homesick for the first time. Carnival is a colorful festival where people dress up in costumes and have fun together. It is a very old tradition, and originally, people dressed up in scary costumes to chase away the evil winter spirits and celebrate spring with songs and dances. Some people also say that the carnival was there for people to have the chance to feel free and enjoy themselves before the period of fasting begins. In some parts of Germany, some people still use “Fastnacht” when it comes to carnival, which basically means “night before fasting.” So carnival usually starts on the 11th of November, but the main festivities find their peak in the week before Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday marks the end of the festivities as well as the beginning of the 40 days of fasting, which will continue until Easter.

Feeling a little sad that I couldn’t celebrate this year, I thought I’d have a carnival party with the children at the orphanage. I told Jule (a volunteer who works at a school) about my idea. She was so kind to come on her day off to help me.

First, we transformed the children into all sorts of animals while German carnival songs played in the background. We ended up surrounded by tigers, dogs, and butterflies, some of them with little flowers on their hands or hearts on their cheeks. After that, we showed them a video of a carnival parade in Germany. The children noticed the similarity to their festival, Dasara. During Dasara, there is also a procession where decorated cars drive through the crowd. Or dance groups show their skills. Afterward, we played some games like stop dancing and musical chair. Then we just enjoyed the music and danced together.

We hope that the children had as much fun as we had and that we were able to bring a little bit of our culture closer to them.