December Rites (part 3): Folk dances, Grandparents, Christmas

Family Christmas with grandparents wearing tailor-made Bujumbura themed Gitenge shirts for the men.  Rebecca's dress was also from the tailor.

As the dust of Christmas revelry settles, I am finally able to sneak away from familial activities to log some of the events of the past week.  Indeed the rituals of December seem to build to a crescendo in the week preceding Christmas and this year, perhaps because it is our last here, seemed even more full of gatherings and merry-making then any year previous.

Starting from last Friday and working forward, I would have to say that the preparations and execution of our annual Christmas folk dance was the most time consuming activity of the past week.  The kids finished the week of school on Friday and by that time many of their compatriots had gone or were planning their departure from Burundi for the holidays.  Many of the Europeans from the school return home over Christmas as do most of the Ecole Belge teachers. 

The kids did really well in school socially this year and it is hard to believe the first trimester is already over.  My last ballet classes of the semester on Friday finished fairly inauspiciously with only 3 of 20 girls showing up for either one.  My disappointment was short-lived though as the plans for Friday evening at our house were elaborate.

When I arrived back at the house that evening, we had 5 service workers over at the house.  Teresa and Julia were down from Kigali, and Melody was down from Gitega.  Patrick had come from Bukavu.  (Actually Teresa and Julia came down with Patrick as they had popped round for a visit to Bukavu before heading to Bujumbura.)  Matt Alan also stopped by the house as well to greet his fellow SALTers.  We shared dinner together Friday night and the service workers played card games in the evening. They had all come down to join us in our Christmas folk dance scheduled for the next day.

I had an ambitious project that same night to complete a gingerbread cathedral.  Last year Oren and I had used his magnet blocks as a pattern to build a very impressive church and we wanted to do it again this year.  Unfortunately the building part of the project went late into Friday night so Oren was not able to help much in the design phase.  I used Joy Johnson’s method of gluing the pieces together by dipping the edges in molten sugar and completed the design before midnight. 

The next morning Oren, David and I were up by 6am to do the icing and decorating.  It was literally the only time during the day we had to work as the rest of the morning was occupied by yoga followed by mad preparations for our folk dance and offering of the arts.

The kids did a great job decorating the creation.  I really wanted it for the party as the half-life of gingerbread houses in Burundi is about 12 hours because of the heat.  It was my hope to display it, then have it eaten on the same day.  This was to be one of our ‘artworks’ for the party.

Rebecca and I had also discussed with Melody some ideas for songs we might sing as Melody and Rebecca are both trained singers.  We decided on a few Christmas carols, ‘Lo How a Rose E're Blooming’ and a “Come All Ye Faithful” medley with another song from the Mennonite Hymnbook (Sing the Journey) that can be overlaid.   After yoga, which was quite a large group, we began to work on the two songs.  Several other members of our team joined us, including Patrick who had brought his ukulele and after a few run-throughs we were ready.  The SALTers went to the beach at that point and our family stayed and got the house ready for the dance.  This primarily involves pushing all the furniture out of the living room.

Rebecca and I prepared several Christmas themed square dances, including “Strip the Willow” (in honor of the Carrs who used to do Ceilidhs here).  In general we had more traditional dances and no line dances this time.

Our family also did a few rehearsals of the carol “The Friendly Beasts” with Oren and David so that each one of us did a verse.  I was the donkey, Rebecca the sheep, Oren the cow, and David the camel.  We had masques to along with the song. 

Guests started arriving between 3 and 4 and by 4:30 we did our presentations of the arts.  The gathering this year was a bit smaller, probably due to the fact that it was done a bit closer to Christmas itself so many of our ex. pat friends were out of town already.  It was a very nice group, mostly from the mission community.  Among the families were the Wisdoms,  Guillbauds, Millers, Ivaskas, Van Aardes, Carlsons, Andersons, Peter and Linda Taylor, several other families from the Kings School, Ena and her son Carl and of course the MCC team of 5.  Perhaps one reason it seemed like smaller gathering this year was because we were lacking the Withrows with their 5 daugthers who have been at all of our dances for the past 4 years.  (Travis and Co.--We are happy you are all finally reunited in the US for Christmas but you are missed here this year.) 

Our musical offerings were appreciated by the group as well as a poem shared by Jodi Mikalachki.  There were also many other Christmas food offerings from peoples home countries that were brought to share at the potluck that followed the dancing.

Actually, having a somewhat smaller group made the dancing a bit more manageable this year and we were able to learn a pretty cool double square dance that took both sets in a big circle around the room to change sides every repetition.  It was a lot of fun.  Hopefully I can make a recording of it next time we do it to save for posterity.  Strip the Willow was also appreciated and we did it in 3 simultaneous lines in the living room. 

Dinner was fabulous and and great to share with friends.  There were desserts aplenty and a good portion of the gingerbread house was devoured as well.  Fortunately I got some good photos of it.

The party ended at about 8pm and by 9 we had pretty much cleaned it up, thanks to help from our MCC service workers and Odifax, one of our cleaning staff.

This event, as big as it was, seemed almost little more than a precursor to other activities planned for the days ahead.  On Sunday I needed to go to a Baptism at 7 in the morning.  Rebecca and I had sponsored one of the youth at the church and needed to make an appearance at the Baptism. 

I should preface this a bit by explaining what constitutes Baptism in Burundi.   On the good side, among all Christians, Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, Reform, there is no doctrinal question about what ritual represents the sacrament of Baptism.  Baptism is always a full immersion into Lake Tanganyika or a swimming pool next to the Lake. 

There are no churches with Baptismal fonts and certainly no small vessels for sprinkling water.  No one has ever heard of such things here.  So a Baptism is a big deal because it always involves scheduling a place, time and arranging for transportation of candidates and witnesses.  Consequently, Baptisms are usually done only once or twice a year for a large group of people, and not for individuals.

I arrived at Petit Bassam, one of the lakeside resorts with a pool, and met the group there.  There was a small choir, 2 pastors and about a dozens candidates for Baptism.  They all changed into white Baptismal robes and stood by the pool where the pastor did an introduction in Kirundi.  The candidates followed the pastors in, two by two to be Baptized.  The choir sung during the Baptism and the whole scene was quite picturesque on the beautiful sun-drenched morning.  I can see why no one would want to give up this kind of lakeside ritual for something ‘more convenient’ involving sprinkling at a church.

We all got back in time for church to begin where I met my family.  (I had gone to the Baptism alone as the family representative.)  The service was good and Rebecca taught Sunday school.  While we were at church our volunteers made an attempt to get back to Rwanda only to find all the buses were full, so we met them back at our house when we got home.  They planned to try again the next morning.

This was complicated by the fact that the next big event of the same day was the arrival of Rebecca’s parents David and Jean Sack that same afternoon.  The kids were thrilled to see Papa Dave and Grandma Jean and they were laden with gifts from home and other family members.  All but one of their bags arrived with them on the flight.  (The last one arrived the next day.)

Without piling it on too deeply, we did have yet another evening event planned on Sunday.  Our small group was to meet for the last time this year and we wanted to have a potluck.  The occasion was to be festive but also solemn as we were going to say our farewells to Tim, Jeanette, and Isabel Van Aarde, our longtime South African missionary friends.  They have been here for pretty much all of the past 5 years we were here and Isabel and David practically grew up as brother and sister. 

They had completed their assignment here and were returning to South Africa.  (Actual departure date was to be Christmas day.)  We had a short time of Bible study then we gathered around them, laid hands upon them and took turns praying for them.  This was followed by a potluck as well with offerings from Kenya, Burundi, Ethiopia as well as spinach lasagna, and baked ziti dish made by yours truly.

Our small group with Tim and Jeanette in the center.

It was a fun evening and Rebecca’s parents joined in the festivities despite their jetlag.   Although this was pretty much the last time we saw Tim and Jeanette before their departure, it was hard to experience at that moment, the full impact of their departure.

I later described to our friend Joel Miller the sense of what it is like to be in our last year and be the last to leave among the ‘cohort’ we started with.  (It seems many ex pats spend between 3 and 5 years here.)  With the Spanners, Hoffmans, Jacksons, and now Van Aardes gone, I feel like our senior class graduated last year and left and we stayed around an extra year to start a graduate degree.  We are in the same place, but everything seems different.  I am not complaining, we still have good friends here, but we are feeling that gentle tidal pull of our time coming to an end here.

Monday was a day of preparation for Christmas at home.  Our cook was sick so we did prepare some food, the kids were home from school because of holidays and Dave and Jean were here with us.  Rebecca spent some of the day preparing music for the evening as we were going over to a “Lessons and Carols’ at Joel and Janette Miller’s home.  This is the second year they are hosting this event, and hopefully it will continue to be a tradition.

Papa Dave and Grandma Jean making cinnamon rolls

Again we had a large group of many of the same missionary families that were at our house, but with the addition of the Johnson family who numbered about 20 all counted.  It was a really beautiful evening of readings and singing and Joel Miller thoughtfully prepared appropriate rituals for different parts of the service which was held in their living room under candlelight.  Some of the highlights included short dramatic readings by some of the Miller kids of certain parts of the Christmas story.  We ended with Silent Night sung while lighting candles—the sin qua non of Christmas Lessons and Carols ceremonies.

Because we did this on Monday night, before Christmas eve. it left the day and evening of the December 24^th completely unprogrammed for us.  I can’t tell you how relieving it was to have a day with nothing specifically planned.

Grandma Jean and the kids spent the day in a cinnamon roll making project.  A grand Sack tradition.  They made several dozen, the first of which was eaten by us on Christmas morning.

For Christmas eve. dinner we opted to go out to Kohinoor, the Indian restaurant in the Quartier Asiatique.  (as an Indian food connoisseur I need to let other ex pats. know that this is the best Indian food in Burundi hands down—former chef of Khanna kazana working there.)  We had a fabulous Indian meal for Christmas eve. AND no dirty dishes to wash to boot.

We went home and did our final advent candle lighting and finished our Jessie tree before going to bed. 

Oren was up several times in the night to check his stocking.  He could hardly wait until Christmas morning.  Both kids were up a 6am and opened their stockings and played with things in there until everyone else got up.

We opened the presents Christmas morning which seemed like a bonanza to the kids with all the ‘loot’ brought from the US.  They got many of the things on their Christmas list, most notably, David’s pet turkey (a stuffed one) which he named Sherman. 

We had a lazy morning but prepared a salad for our last Christmas social gathering.  Ben and Christie Carlson, some friends of our in the coffee business here, (longmilescoffeeproject.com), invited us and several other families to share Christmas dinner together.  It was another gathering of familiar faces, and Ben and Christy had really extended themselves with delicious gourmet food offerings featuring a roasted lamb.  There were also selections of things we don’t often get here like roasted walnuts with dried cranberries and relishes of wasabi mayonnaise and blue cheese.

We had a great time together with them the Millers and Ivaskas as well as several visiting parents.  The kids, who are all classmates at the Ecole Belge, had a great time playing together as well.  One interesting note is that the Carlson’s hosted this at their new home in Mutanga Nord, the old house of our German friends the Hoffmans who left last summer.  It seems like these houses continue to get recycled in the ex. pat. Mission community.

Ben explaining Greed rules to kids.

In the evening, by candlelight (because of a power failure) we had a big greed game.  We divided it into a kids, then an adult game.  It was a lot fun, and Rebecca and I tried unsuccessfully to unload a particularly dreadful greed gift we had received at a similar game 3 years before here in Bujumbura. (Papa Dave won it back.)

We got home late and went to bed shortly after our arrival home.

The day after Christmas we took Papa Dave and Grandma Jean to the zoo to see the kids’ 'pets'.  (Kita the chimp, the leopard, snakes, etc.)  Kita was thrilled to see David and began to bang on her cage as soon as she saw him walk into the zoo entrance.  We fed her some fruit and David entertained other visitors playing ‘keep-away’ with her and a plastic bottle.

We then stopped by Cercle Nautique where 2 hippos obliged to show up and play around the boats in the marina.  It is nice when we can time visits to these places with out of town visitors to see these sites which do not happen everytime we go.

We enjoyed a family movie night last night and today are getting ready to depart for Kigoma Tanzania for a 5 day vacation with Rebecca’s parents.  We do have one more small social gathering today as we have invited several of our Burundian friends and partners who know Rebecca's parents to drop by to greet them between 2 and 5 pm.  (That will probably end around 9 :-).    

As I look back, I realize how much I will miss the kind of 'do-it-yourself' Christmas we have here.  We do re-create many of the traditions we have grown up with, but they all have to be invented again--there are no pre-packaged, store-bought versions.  I will miss the need to do it all from scratch, from services, to gingerbread houses.  In some ways I fear trying to find our role in our community back home where we can choose from a potpourri of Lessons and Carols services, square dances, and a host of other Christmas special offerings at our local supermarkets, and delivered to our homes on cable TV.  Maybe I will miss the feeling that we have something unique to offer to our friends and family.  

This will be the last post of 2013, and a record of our last Christmas in Burundi.