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Published: December 27th 2007
Our Christmas Season this year has been a mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar. The weather has certainly been different from what we normally associate with this season. Christmas Eve here was a sunny hot day in the mid-30s. It is the rainy season; however, and on the night of Christmas Eve we had a heavy rain that cooled things off nicely for Christmas morning. Since the rainy season began in mid-November we have had a number of heavy rains and whole areas that were parched and brown when we arrived are now a spring green with fresh grass and leaves.
At school, the final weeks of term were full of Christmas pageant preparations and rehearsals. Our Standard 7 and Form 1 students (Grades 7 and 8) were tasked with writing the script for the pageant and doing the acting, which was, of course, a retelling of the Christmas story. The rest of the school from Gerry’s students up to Form 4, provided the choral backup. The students set the story in Tanzania, where Mary and Joseph were required to travel to a village in Dodoma Region for the census. Mary and Joseph both had cell phones that they
used to chat with each other from time to time. They had great difficulty getting to Dodoma as the buses were all full and of course there was nowhere for them to stay when they did get to the village. When it was time for the angel to come to Joseph to encourage him not to desert Mary, the angel, who happened to be a Muslim girl, emerged from Joseph’s laptop computer with her message! Instead of magi, there were three famous American DJs who, after visiting with the President in Dar es Salaam, made their way to Dodoma to see the baby. They didn’t like the looks of the President so they went home via Nairobi and avoided Dar on their return journey to the States. There was an unexpectedly large crowd for the pageant, which was held in a conference facility that is run by the Diocese. As is the custom here, food was provided after the performance.
At this time of year one of the projects our church congregation takes on is a collection for the prisoners in the Dodoma jail. There are 2000 inmates in the jail here. From time to time you see truckloads
of prisoners in orange jump suits. They are put to work on roadwork and other manual labour around the town. On a walk this morning I saw a group of prisoners washing the police cars at one of the police stations. This year, on the suggestion of the prison authorities, we purchased soap for the inmates, something they do not normally have enough of. The soap came in long bars that needed to be cut up so I have included a picture of the cutting of the soap.
At church, the Sunday evening before Christmas, we had a lovely candle light service of lessons and carols. It was followed by a meal in the hall organized by - you guessed it - Gerry (she just has to feed people! but I am certainly not complaining.) We attended another service on Christmas morning.
One of the interesting things about living here is meeting people who have come from all over the world on various projects and missions. We have people here from Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden, the UK, the USA, France, Australia, NZ and other places as well. We have found that particularly at Christmas this community of expats
pulls together even more than usual. It has been a very social time - dinner on Christmas Eve, brunch on Christmas Day, Christmas Dinner, and volleyball followed by morning coffee on Boxing Day. It is a great opportunity to meet interesting people many of whom have worked in places all over Africa and other parts of the world.
With Christmas behind us, we are now looking forward to attending a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, and then having a few days with our feet up in Arusha in northern Tanzania. After that we will return to Dodoma and begin preparations for the New Year and the new term.
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