father christmas visits grabouw again...

santa (johan) and his little helpers!

during last week we made the necessary changes to our heavy duty trailer once again converting it into santas sleigh. the plan was to tow it into the community on thursday afternoon but with a little unseasonal drizzle we postponed it until friday afternoon.

this was the third year that we have taken santa into our community and this year johan, our maintenance man, was chosen to play the role as father christmas, following in the footsteps of my dad who played him last year and our wonderful norwegian volunteer, trondor played him the first year we were here.

kids chasing father christmas and his sleigh

we decorated the bakkie, toyota hilux, with tinsel and balloons, fitted a new speaker system which enabled us to play some traditional christmas hits at a louder volume than we had been able to do previously. johan was joined by some of our longer and short term volunteers in the sleigh where they 'gave' out sweets to the excited children that we passed by.

kids in the community, followed by a local taxi
trying to sneak in on the celebration!

its great to see the reaction of both the children and also the adults as they saw father christmas coming past their homes. this year we took a slightly longer route to enable us to reach more children, the joy on their faces was a sight to behold and the sweets were an added bonus.

if you would like to see a short video of last years venture then please click on this link which will take you to youtube, or if you would like to read more about our previous years stories then please click on these links for 2010 here and 2009 here