A Christmas Story

Okay, let’s face it…Christmas in Uganda is a bit different than Christmas in the USA.  One or two decorations in a couple of shops around town, a few “Ugandanized” Christmas carols on the radio, and temperatures that are basically the same as the rest of the year…obviously, I did not experience a white Christmas this year.  And yet, although I barely realized that Christmas was coming, even during the week leading up to the big day, there is something special about it that just won’t let it pass without notice.  On the morning of Christmas Eve, I woke up with “Silent Night” in my head, even though that song had not been on any of the radio stations in the taxis I’ve recently used.  The two evenings before that, I had felt a pretty big urge to read through the stories of Jesus’ birth found in Matthew and Luke.  No, even without the sensory overload that characterizes the holiday season back in the USA, Christmas would still happen and would still have great meaning.

If you read my last post, you know that I had decided to stick around in Kalisizo for the Christmas weekend and to celebrate with my Ugandan counterpart, Max, and his family.  I had told Max that I would try to get up early and meet him at the big Catholic Church for morning prayers on Christmas Eve.  The prayers started at 6:45 am.  Yeah, you guessed it…I didn’t make it.  After rolling out of bed some time around 9:00 am, I gave Max a call, and he told me that one of his younger sons, Patrick, would ride his bike to my house.  Then, the two of us could ride back to Max’s village, Kajaguzo.  Early in the afternoon, it started raining pretty hard, and it didn’t stop until around 3:30 pm or so.  Shortly after the rains, Patrick showed up, and we rode our bikes through the mud back to his house.  I actually think the ride was a bit less scary this time, because the muddy roads slowed us down quite a bit.  Of course, there was a point at which we had to leave the road because it was so muddy, but we made it without completely wiping out or anything.  (Although, I had luckily brought an extra set of clothes, because my pants were about half-mud by the time we reached Max’s home.)

We arrived to find a pretty good number of people there.  Teddy, Max’s wife, greeted me, and then I proceeded to find seven of their kids (probably ranging in age from late twenties down to eight) and two little grandkids.  The youngest granddaughter, Leticia, who was probably 3 or 4, was kind of scared of me.  There were also three young men from the village who were at the house just visiting for a bit.  The only person missing was…Max.  Apparently, he was still in town running errands.

                                                                                                                       

Emma, Max's youngest son and our primary photographer for this post

So, I sat down outside with the young men and had a very nice conversation with one of them.  Paul lives in Kampala now and had traveled back to his home village for the holiday (that seems to be the general trend…and taxi drivers recognize this.  Fares from Kampala to more rural areas go way up before Christmas, and then the return journey is hiked way up after Christmas).  Teddy served us “lunch” around 4:30 pm, which was very good.  It was more or less a pork stir-fry, with carrots, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, and some other stuff.  After eating, I went with Paul to see the house where he grew up.  I met him mother, he pointed out the graves of his father and a few of his sisters, and he showed me the tree under which he was born.  It was kind of a powerful ten minutes or so.  He had never known his father, and this loss was obviously difficult for him at times in his life, but he was so thankful just to be alive.  As he said, some people born in nice hospitals don’t live as long as he has, and he was born underneath a tree near some animals.  It reminded me just how miraculous the birth of Jesus was, from a health standpoint.  I’m assuming that stable wasn’t sterilized and that a doctor wasn’t around.  Yet, he survived to do great things.

After visiting Paul’s house, I went back to Max’s house, where Max was still not around.  I had assumed that I would be traveling back and forth to his house on Saturday and Sunday, but it was getting dark, and I didn’t really want to ride back on those muddy roads when I couldn’t see them.  I now realize that Max and his family had expected me to spend the night, since that is just what families do, and they wanted me to feel like part of the family.  So, it worked out just fine.

Patrick, who is dressed very nicely after coming home from church

Eventually, Max arrived, and the two of us talked as the kids all huddled around his computer to play some games and his wife and older daughters cooked dinner.  During our conversation, which was lit by a single fluorescent light powered by a single solar panel, I discovered that there was a Christmas Eve church service, but that it was like three hours long.  (Luckily, we would be attending the Christmas Day service the next morning, which was only around 2 hours.)  I told Max about the candlelight services that traditionally happen in the USA, and we talked a bit about work-related stuff.  I realized that Max is pretty happy with the work I’ve been doing, and appreciates the fact that I’ve been working hard (indeed, I have been busy).  He even already started campaigning for me to extend my Peace Corps service for a third year (that’s an option after you finish two years).  Max has worked with two volunteers before me (both of them named Jon, and both being engineering students in the Master’s International program), but both of them had been engaged.  Max’s rationale was simply that, because I don’t have a fiancée, obviously I have the freedom to stay in Uganda for longer than two years.  Of course, it’s still just a bit early to be making any decisions about that.

As we talked (and during the rest of the weekend) I was introduced to a variety of local alcoholic beverages.  I tried banana wine, banana beer, and waragi (I think it’s like gin) made from, yep, you guessed it, bananas.  All were significantly sweeter than the stuff I’m used to, but they were pretty good.  I think my favorite of the three was the banana wine, which was apparently made by Max’s sister nearby (I told him that I’d like to see how she makes it at some point).

I'm looking into the house from the back doorway

Eventually, a pre-dinner appetizer was served, probably around 9:30 pm.  Apparently, the pig was all used up, so we started in on various parts of a cow.  The appetizer was the liver…this was my first opportunity to eat liver, and, I have to say, it was pretty good.  The dinner consisted of a wide variety of starches and cow intestine soup.  Really chewy and hard to eat, but not bad.  After dinner, they showed me a little guest room where I could sleep, and Patrick made sure I knew where the latrines were outside.  (By the way, no toilet paper…we used leftover pieces of notebook paper.)

Teddy, Max's wife

On Christmas Day, I woke up and went outside, where Teddy and the older daughters were preparing morning tea.  Morning tea was actually a pretty big meal…matooke, beef, tomatoes, peppers, onions…along with four pieces of bread and a cup of the sweetest tea I had ever tasted (seriously, I saw how much sugar was in the mug before they added water…there was like a layer at least a quarter of an inch thick).  After tea, with a full stomach and an intense sugar high, we went to church.  We were a little late, and the inside had already filled up, so we stood outside with hundreds of other late-comers.  We couldn’t really hear what was going on (not that I could have understood all of the language anyway), but I’m sure it was a very nice Catholic mass.  After the service, we came back home, and the ladies started in on lunch (obviously, a lot of things revolve around food).  If you’ve been wondering about any presents under the tree on Christmas morning…well, first of all, there wasn’t a tree.  Secondly, during the weekend, Max asked me, “Who is Father Christmas?”  So, yeah, presents weren’t really a part of the celebration.

Leticia, a granddaughter, on the phone (or so she thinks...)

I decided that it might be a good time to break out the camera, but, since I’ve never really liked taking pictures, I decided to show Max’s youngest son, Emma (short for Emmanuel, a very seasonally appropriate name), how it works, and then set him loose.  He and the other kids took a whole bunch of pictures, and all of the ones in this post are courtesy of them.  After the picture-taking session was over, Max showed me around his property.  They grow a lot of their own food there.  He showed me banana trees (of course), sweet potatoes, maize, coffee, ground nuts, pumpkins, and sorghum.  They also raise some pigs, chickens, sheep, and goats, and I know they had a cow not too long ago, which was slaughtered.  Then we went to visit one of his friends in the village.  Whenever you make a short visit to someone’s house, it’s customary to provide some sort of drink or food.  This guy brought out a liter of Mountain Dew, and I can’t tell how excited I was to be receiving yet another drink with outrageous amounts of sugar.  Ugandans don’t really seem to make really sweet food, but they certainly enjoy their sweet drinks.

Christie, one of the daughters, on the phone (for real)

After walking back (with a slight sugar-induced headache), we took lunch (that’s how it’s phrased here…you “take” lunch, or tea, or supper).  This was the huge Christmas day meal…and I mean huge.  I was still relatively satisfied from the morning tea, but we had plates filled with rice, matooke, potatoes, posho, spaghetti noodles, greens, cabbage, and these big, slightly bitter berries that taste similar to eggplant (they’re called “entula” in Luganda…I don’t know if there’s an English word).  On top of that, there were big bowls of a kind of beef stew.

Ivan (grandson), Robinah (daughter), and Patrick (son)

After lunch, the kids got excited.  Max has a small generator that he fires up on special occasions (like, for example, Christmas) to power a TV.  There aren’t any power lines in this village, but, as I’ve said, some people have a solar panel, and some have a little generator.  Anyway, it took them a little while to get out all of the equipment (the generator, the TV, the DVD player, the speakers, etc.), and then to get the generator working, and then to reconnect everything correctly, but we eventually sat down and watched a variety of Ugandan-made, soap opera-ish movies.  Supper consisted of leftovers from lunch, which were quite substantial (I mean, they probably had like a whole cow back there in their cooking shed).  As you should know by now, dinners are pretty late here, so it was time for bed.

Grace, another daughter, is cooking cabbage on a charcoal stove

Monday is still considered a holiday in Uganda (Boxing Day…I’m still not sure what exactly this day is for), so I also spent Monday with the family.  I took a pretty good portion of this day to sit outside with the girls while they were preparing food, trying to learn a little bit about their cooking methods and stuff like that.  In addition to watching them cook, they also showed me that mud and certain types of leaves can be used as soap substitutes if you don’t want to buy soap, and I watched them collect the oil from the meat to save for future cooking sessions.  I was also able to correct some misconceptions about the USA.  For example, they were under the impression that all of the country is developed (meaning, like, one huge city).  While there are a lot of cities and towns, I explained that rural areas were also still in existence, telling them that my family lives in a rural area and has a vegetable garden, and that my grandpa raises cattle on a farm.  These things were pretty surprising to them…

Ivan prepares to fight the camera

There were some more fun conversations with Max, too.  Positive Planet’s director had mentioned Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in our meeting the previous Friday, and Max didn’t know the story.  So, I gave him an ultra-abridged version (it’s been a while since I’ve seen one of the movie versions), which he seemed to enjoy.  He has also been trying to be able to say the name of my home state for a while (Pennsylvania can be kind of hard to wrap your mouth around), but I think he’s got it now.  I told him where the name comes from (combine “Sylvania” meaning “woods”, and William Penn’s last name, and you get Penn’s woods, or Pennsylvania), and I think that helped.  He also has a bunch of trees on his property, so he wants to start calling his place “Maxsylvania”.

By this time, I was kind of feeling like a member of the family, and they told me that they would adopt me into their clan and give me a “clan name” (Ugandans have a bunch of names…a Christian/Muslim name, a family name, a clan name, and there might be more, I’m not sure).  Anyway, I’m now a member of the nnyonyi clan (it means “bird”), and my clan name is “Ziwa”.  That word doesn’t really have a meaning, but I did find out that it’s also Emma’s clan name.  So, that was nice.

Emma also prepares to fight the camera

Meals on Monday were sort of whatever was left.  Lunch consisted of lots of matooke (there’s never a shortage of that), the rest of the beef stew, and some groundnut sauce.  Dinner was simply a big place of rice and beans, which was actually really nice, because my teeth were crying out in pain after eating all of that really tough, chewy meat.  Oh, and we also had morning tea, but I was able to prepare my own…with significantly less sugar than the previous day.

After spending a final night in the village (by the way, the stars in the village are awesome…no electricity has benefits), we took one more morning tea, and then Max and I finally had to get back to work.  I’ll tell you what…spending about three days out in the village, without my computer, and even without any books, was really nice.  I just spent all of my time hanging out with the family…and that’s Christmas.  Being with family, being with people you care about.  Don’t get me wrong, I missed being with my family back home a lot, but I did feel very content and at home with Max’s family.

And, of course, you know that’s what it’s all about.  It’s not about the decorations, the trees, the presents, the snow, or anything else.  For me, Uganda stripped Christmas down to its core: a simple family being together, and a baby boy entering the world to be with all people, each of whom he loves very much.

Tuesday night, I finished off my Christmas Bible reading with the first 14 verses of John’s Gospel, and, after thinking about the similarities and differences of the various accounts and about my experiences over the weekend, I spent some time working on another poem…

All that’s Left is Right

In Matthew, we start out to find a kingly genealogy,

The words of scriptures past outlined, fulfillment of the prophecy,

Joseph’s angelic dream recalled, his choice to stay with Mary,

Eastern Magi, a star they saw, and royal gifts they carried.

In Luke, a detailed long account reveals a physician’s mind,

A mother releases any doubt, her holy task defined,

In Bethlehem, King David’s town, no room for two or three,

And shepherds hear the angels’ sound, far from royalty.

In Mark, the shortest of the four, the birth remains unmentioned,

Baptism, rather, opens the door, to capture the earth’s attention,

While John’s majestic opening of light and truth and love,

Reveals for this small baby boy an eternity above.

The joyful tale we know so well that comes with each December

Takes more than one to fully tell, so perhaps we should remember,

Peace on earth, good will to all, one perspective may not bring,

Instead, we might tear down the wall, to hear as others sing.

The tales, like us, when stripped to the core, show something that’s the same,

Whether one is rich or poor, regardless of one’s name.

Beyond the trees, the turtledoves, the tinsel, and the lights,

Left with new life’s hope and love, all that’s left is right.