Christmas at Maji

Our Christmas here was pretty nice indeed. A couple days before Christmas Harper and I made cookies to hand out to various people at the hospital, and it was almost like home except we could only do one pan of cookies at a time so the process was twice as slow. That and we didn't have cookie cutters, so they were just balls of cookies, but they still tasted delicious.

Christmas Eve there was a fair bit of cooking going on again, and it was stuff that could be made in advance, like little hot dogs rolled in dough and mince pies. The turkey that was walking around Maji for a couple days also met it's fate and was sitting in a pot ready to be cooked the next day.

Christmas dawned and we went to the early service at Arche Chruch. It was in Swahili and I understood about 4% of the words which was a bit disappointing. Lyn was sitting next to me though and she summarized very well what was going on. There were a lot of singing groups and various choirs (I think 6 in all) and a guest speaker who was "the best we've heard in the Congo" (claimed by a couple people) who was succinct and to the point and did not repeat himself or beat around the bush.

Breakfast was on the table after church but the people were scattered, so I grabbed a bowl of granola like stuff and walked around the garden thinking and enjoying God's beautiful creation. Throughout the day help was offered in the kitchen and the cooking came in spurts. Lunch was down by the lake and featured a potato salad with canned crab meat (which was delicious) and potato chips. There's a new store in town that might deserve a post to itself later, but we got some potato chips there and they tasted particularly delightful with the potato/crab concoction.

I was going to go swimming when I found out lunch was ready, and by the time we had finished eating, it was cloudy so I decided to put it off. Spending an afternoon relaxing and doing nothing in particular was a great Christmas day. Finally I just gave in and went swimming even though it was cloudy. The water was really warm and now I can say I've swam at Christmas time. When I was in the Philippines it was warm enough, but the opportunity didn't present itself.

Christmas dinner came around and there was another muzungu present as well as her Congolese husband. Besides them, it was Joe, Lyn, Harper, and I and lots of delicious food. There was the turkey, stuffing inside the turkey, some prune stuffing, and some apple stuffing (instead of making lots of one kind we opted to just make a little of a couple kinds), mashed potatoes, green beans and carrots and cauliflower, rice, a peanut sauce for the rice, a bread sauce for the turkey, sausages cooked with the turkey, gravy, wine, passion fruit juice, and water. Other liquids were available as well, but we never called into use the beer or sodas. After that mass of food was gratefully picked over by all inhabitants of the table, we moved inside for tea and desert. Sweet mince pies, a stellon (I don't know how to spell it, but grandma Schowalter makes them every year and they are delicious), various kinds of chocolate, tea, hot chocolate, and the little hot dog things wrapped in pastry. It was a rather good second course eating, drinking, and talking.

The night ended with a huge lineup of dishes in the kitchen for the mamas the next day (I might have felt bad, but some of the cookies Harper and I made went to them, so I figured we were even) and 6 rather full people heading off to various stages of bed readiness. I was awake for a while talking to Megan online and listening to some Mannheim Steamroller Christmas music Matt sent me in an e-mail. All in all, it was a pretty darn good Christmas given the circumstances of being away from home.