Christmas 2010 was definitely the strangest Christmas on record. Paff and Carolyn, the other two PCVs in Karatu, came to my village for a couple nights to check things out and to have a very merry Christmas together. We met in Karatu town in the morning, wasted some time drinking sodas, and eventually piled into the car making the trek back to my village.
The ride back was cozy; Carolyn and I managed to get a spot standing to enjoy the nice view on the drive home while Paff found a bench seat and got sucked into the abyss below. We were maybe 20 people packed into the car when we left, all our bags of clothes, food, oil, and other items piled on top. Once we arrived at the turnoff to my village we somehow made it to 30-something people, people sitting, people standing on top of one another, people sitting on the spare tires, on the hood, hanging off the sides. Anywhere there was space a body would go.
We arrived at my house before dusk on Christmas Eve and after resting a bit we headed to the forest to cut ourselves a nice African Charlie Brown Christmas tree. We found a nice green leafy one along the fire line of the Ngorongoro forest and spent the evening decorating it with string and bottle caps. We stuck it in a bucket to keep it upright and laid a khanga around it to make it look nice.
Christmas morning came and we made a delicious, unhealthy, and very strange breakfast of rice pudding and some kind of chocolate/nutella/banana pancake batter. We exchanged gifts wrapped in computer paper, toilet rolls, and spare boxes. Candles, khangas, homemade drafti boards, and fimbos were exchanged. I got a jar of nutella which I finished by the end of the day.
Around noon a friend of mine from the village came by to take us on a walk. We headed to the village across the river to see the guards of the Ngorongoro forest, drink some sodas, and take a walk along the fire line. Upon entering the forest the temperature dropped and the path got steep. I stepped on some <em>choma</em> and got a poison ivy-like rash on my foot for about 30 minutes. We slowly trodded down the hill then back up to emerge to the next village over, a place I call Pastoral Wonderland, covered in farms and rolling hills for miles. After enjoying the view and the Rift Valley in the distance, we turned back.
A guard invited us to his house for sodas and we obliged. The rain came, sodas turned into rice and beans, and we were grateful for the food. Then my friend Aloyce insisted we visited a mama in the village, a fundi who made me a dress a few weeks back, and we got a third helping of rice (the first being our breakfast) — this time pilau, in celebration of Christmas.
We were ready to turn back home but Aloyce insisted we continue, after all, he had to buy carrots to send back with Paff and Carolyn. We we visited another farm, got another helping of rice to stuff down, more soda, and a platter of fruit. And finally, with a box full of produce and a bag full of trees, we turned home.
- My 2010 Family Christmas Photo. Me, Carolyn, and Paff, in front of our African Charlie Brown Christmas tree, on Christmas morning. Check out my sweet Tom’s tan.
The snow was substituted with rain and the ice skating with Karatu mud-skating. The evergreen tree was substituted with a deciduous tree from the Ngorongoro forest. The meal was rice or pilau (times four), and the dessert was nutella. The bright wrapping paper was substituted with cardboard boxes and toilet paper rolls, and the tree decorations bottle caps and string. All in all in was a good Christmas.
