Musical Tour Around the Globe With Safari Time

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Having a child can be the most wonderful time in a parent’s life. The joy starts overflowing even before the little goober arrives, with parents imagining what their child’s first words will be, who the child will take after, and sharing the traditions, songs and childhood games passed on to them by their parents, when they were children.

Hanna Ryder experienced that joy, albeit by proxy, as a loving auntie to her sister’s 6-month old bundle of joy.  At her local library in Glasgow, where she lived at the time, Ryder discovered kiddie classes being offered for free. This is hardly an astonishing thing, as such services are offered in public libraries all across the UK.

However, when Ryder herself was expecting a child, she would soon realize these simple joys she had come to rely on for her niece back home would not be available to her. This is because she and her husband had since moved to Beijing. And without family and friends from back home, Ryder was hard-pressed to find a network in which her child could meet and interact with other children, and where she herself could meet and interact with other mommies to be.

But that is far from the reality for mothers and babies in Beijing, as Ryder would later discover. “I expected something like that to be in Beijing, but it wasn’t. I looked for things like Jamboree, but nothing was working,” explains Ryder. Thankfully, she did get connected to a local group called ‘Bumps to Babes’, geared towards moms-to-be, which organized babies into groups according to the Zodiac year in which they were born.

Even though this provided an important avenue for interaction and stimulation for her child, she noticed one flaw in the system. “One of the challenges with Bumps-to-Babes and such other networks, is they are very much just for the moms. There are a few dads in there, but they also don’t include Ayis or grandparents,” elaborates Ryder. As a working woman, it was important for Ryder to know in the event of her absence, her Ayi would be able to equally participate in the activities organized for the children.

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So Safari Time came to be, first hosted at the now closed Bookworm. The name Safari – Swahili for journey – is not only meant to represent the various nationalities who usually attend sessions organized by Ryder, but rather personally, it is named after Ryder’s own son, Safari. Safari Time was created with an aim of fully exploring the cosmopolitan nature of Beijing, and the richness of diverse cultures which aren’t fully tapped as resources in the education and entertainment of children.

For parents looking for an engaging way to stimulate their toddlers, Chinese parents looking to offer their children a multilingual start to life, and dads looking to spend some quality time on a Saturday morning with their kids, Safari Time offers it all. And for parents who might be struggling to learn Chinese, it might be an awesome way to not only pick up a few key Chinese phrases but a few more in Japanese, Swahili, French and whatever other nursery rhyme Safari Time families might share.

Sing along with Hannah Ryder and her adorable son, visit their website at www.safaritimes.com.

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Photos: Safaritimes.com

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