Christmas in Bujumbura

The traditional Christmas morning family photo taken of us by Jodi.




I feel like we passed an important landmark in our time here in Burundi. This was our first Christmas here! We have been here a year and a half now, but last year we spent Christmas in the US after the birth of David, and returned here just after New Years Day. So what is it like? --you may wonder.

That is a bit of a challenge to answer as there are some similarities, but I cannot say whether that adds to or subtracts from the strangeness of it all. Burundi is a Christian (mainly Catholic) country, so there is a recognition of the season--Advent preparations, etc. Burundi has also borrowed many European traditions including the arrival of St. Nicolas and Christmas trees in many homes in Bujumbura. In shops one can find a Christmas tree on display, and on the street corners men hawk decorated plastic Chinese Christmas trees that they carry around over their heads. (Real pine trees are illegal to cut in Burundi because of problems of over-harvesting them in past years.)

There is about all of these preparations though, the evidence of poverty. The scrawny artificial trees on the street are mainly decorated with pieces of colored foil, and the offerings in stores do not differ from any other time of year. Then there is the heat. I am realizing how so many of our Christmas carols (like The Holly and the Ivy, Deck the Halls, Jingle Bells, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, even Silent Night) imply a coldness about this time of year, and though I played carols frequently throughout the last week, it just felt anachronistic, like I was having Christmas in the middle of summer.

This is not to say we did not have a really nice Christmas, but it was certainly different in the way it felt. I have often lamented the extreme commercialism and ever lengthening shopping season that precedes it, but a completely non-consumerist Christmas left much to be desired as well.

One thing I will say, is that things did not slow down work-wise quite as much as I had anticipated. It seems that people were working most everyday right up until Christmas eve, and even Christmas Day from what I could see.

On Monday, we had planned to take a much needed day off and it began well enough when we took Oren to his swimming lesson and had a swim ourselves. I had to do some business in town with Nathan, then had language lessons in the afternoon. Tuesday was another work day as well primarily taken up by bill paying.

I will remind you all that paying a bill in Bujumbura involves going to each company and paying a cashier. There is no online banking, or even mailing a check with a statement. So withdrawing cash, then paying the electric bill, phone bill, garbage collection, post box bill will take most of the day. We also were making fairly regular trips to the Immigration office this week to get new visas for the SALTers before they left for a week’s vacation in Tanzania. This is always a stressful process and the complete disorder of the immigration office does not inspire confidence that passports will be processed on time, or even found at all, once they are surrendered to the immigration officials, who always seem extremely put-out by even the most normal requests and inquiries.

Wednesday was a bit better. There was less to do as far as work and I had the opportunity to do some Christmas shopping. This was really the first occasion, and since we were having an MCC staff Christmas party that evening where we had selected Secret Santas, I was not shopping a moment too soon.

The party was a really nice gathering that evening and was probably the most Christmas-y feeling event of the week. We had decorated the house with the meager supply of Christmas paraphernalia we had on hand. One item worthy of note was a gingerbread house made from a kit. This was brought out by my parents when they were here several weeks ago. It has become a tradition for Oren to build one and we had assembled it Tuesday night.

One thing I will say is that gingerbread houses are meant for a dry winter climate. After building it Tuesday night, we found, on Wednesday morning, that the carefully decorated candy-covered roof, had melted and poured down the sides of the house because of the humidity. After that we stored the house in the freezer until the dinner party on Wednesday. It made a very nice centerpiece for our dinning room table that night.

Oren is someone who loves to build a gingerbread house as well as eat it. It took a lot of convincing, to get him to save it for at least 24 hours. (He was ready to eat it after it was built Tuesday night, and then begged to have it for breakfast on Wednesday morning.) Normally I would have wanted it saved longer, but because of the melting problem we did take it apart and eat it for dessert on Wednesday during the party.

I think it was great for the SALTers, the Ressler-Horsts, and Jodi to have a team Christmas gathering. (Jodi had come down that day as well to spend Christmas break in Bujumbura.) It was the first opportunity for Nathan and Lara to meet her. We had a fun evening singing Christmas carols, eating, chatting, then opening our Secret Santa presents. The kids had a lot of fun playing together around the Christmas tree as well.

Thursday, Christmas eve day, began with a bit of work. I had to go over and meet a landlord to sign a contract for a house that the Nathan and Lara found to live in! We are all breathing a sigh of relief that they have a place to live now, although they will move in after the New Year.

Oren and Rebecca also worked on making some batches of cinnamon rolls to give away as gifts (another Sack family tradition.) Oren loves to cook, especially baked goods so really enjoyed helping mommy do this. Later that evening we our family went with Bridget, Zachee, Tim and Jodi to a ‘Lessons and Carols’ service at the Anglican Cathedral in town. We then had dinner together at Khana Kazana afterwards. Maybe this will become a family tradition here—Indian food on Christmas eve.

Friday morning, most everyone slept in because of the late night out on Thursday. Oren was excited when he did get up though and it was hard to convince him not to open all his gifts before Mommy and Jodi woke up. He was thrilled to find a stocking full of candy canes and chocolate on the wall. We had also set up his little wooden train set around the Christmas tree to his delight. (He does not consider any Christmas tree complete without a train going around it.)

He and David got some very nice gifts, coloring books, a push toy, and a large snake shaped pillow that he had admired when he saw one that was owned by Jal (Nathan and Lara’s son.) (This was a locally made handicraft that Rebecca was able to find on one of her shopping trips.) David did not really understand what was going on, but he did like to play with the various and sundry things that were opened, especially things that belonged to Oren.

We spent the rest of Christmas day relaxing around the house until about 4 in the afternoon. We had been invited to an American Christmas party hosted by one of our American friends who had a classmate in Oren’s school. There were about 30 of us gathered, many from the embassy. The family had rented a bouncy castle for the backyard and there were about 15 kids present. The kids enjoyed playing together while the adults chatted on the terrace. We remarked this was probably just about every American in Burundi. Someone observed that while many Europeans went home for Christmas, most American had stayed as it is considerably further to get back to the US from here for what is quite a short break as far as school and work.

The party was enjoyable, Astrid and Travis’ family was among the invited guests as well as the Ressler-Horsts. This was not, however, a gathering a missionaries in general. Among the offerings that evening was turkey and cranberry sauce provided through a service to the American embassy which had them shipped from South Africa.

We had another relaxing day on Saturday, although much of it was spent by me preparing calendars for our extended family featuring pictures of all of us over the year. This has become a tradition in our family for me to make this. Fortunately our parents had DHLed a dvd of photos of everyone else to us, because I did not have pictures of everyone here as we have seen each other much less this year. Rebecca was working on a sermon as she was invited to preach on Sunday at our church. We did go to the park in the afternoon for a bit of a break during the day, though.

It was really good to hear Rebecca preach on Sunday. This is the first invitation she has had to do so at our church. She gave a powerful speech about peace-making based on the text in Luke about the Angel coming to the Shepherds and announcing the birth. The passage was a reminder of God’s restraint in his choice to bring us ‘peace on earth’ through the birth of a baby, rather than enforcing it with his army of angels. She pointed out that it would seem that for God, the ‘means’ to peace are as important as the ‘ends’ itself, and that ‘peace through strength’ will never succeed in accomplishing its end. True peace-making requires us to follow the example of Christ, even to the cross. “Many people have willingly sacrificed themselves in a ‘just war’ but until we are willing to lay down our lives for a ‘just peace’ we will not experience God’s shalom.” (to paraphrase one of her points.) I will see if she can post a transcript of the sermon next week.

The sermon was very well received here, as there is really not much preaching that introduces Anabaptist peace theology here. In fact, most every sermon I hear ends at the gospel message, the evangelical call to accept Christ as our savior, but never seems to go beyond that. Consequently, I fear that many Christians here are not very spiritually mature. There is a great challenge here to provide teaching to Christians about what it means to follow Christ as a disciple, AFTER one has accepted the call.

We went to the beach Sunday afternoon then had dinner with the Ressler-Horsts at the house where they are housesitting.

It is now Monday morning and we are getting ready for a ‘village live-in’. That is we are going up to Cassien’s village upcountry as a family to spend 3 days there. I will let you know how that goes next week. Wish us luck!