Christmas under Kilimanjaro

We closed the past year with a Christmas gift as it should be. Thanks to your donations, we were able to make several families living in very difficult conditions happy and make sure that they will have a good meal with their children on Christmas Eve. Christmas as we know and experience it in our country is a long way from Christmas in Africa. Christmas Eve is celebrated on December 25 and the most important thing is that the whole family comes together. Those members who have moved to other places in the country simply must come for the holidays! This is a tradition of the Chagga people, who inhabit the foothills and slopes of Kilimanjaro, which must not be broken! The women sit by the fires in the morning and cook, fry and stew all sorts of dishes in pots perched on three stones until the afternoon. Those who can afford it slaughter a goat or a sheep on this day. Those who can't, buy at least a piece of beef or chicken from the local butcher.  Gifts are not given at Christmas. There's no money for that. But the locals do have a custom. If they manage to save a few shillings, they buy or get their children new clothes and shoes made by a tailor for Christmas. Even if they don't for the whole year, at least on this day they should. And if not new, at least used. And that the kids are definitely waiting for it! In the early evening, after everyone sits together, eats, talks and hangs out, the kids wash up, fix their hair, get dressed in new clothes, and if they're lucky, get a few coins for a soda and head off to join the others for a unique fashion show. And you can see some really beautiful and original models :). One thing our Christmas and the local one have in common. And that is the fact that it belongs above all to children. They have school holidays in December and they really enjoy a well-deserved rest and relaxation for the whole month. 

And because our goal is to contribute to making sure that the children we meet on our journey are satisfied, we went to town and bought 15 kg of tomatoes, 15 kg of onions, 1 kg of garlic, spices, 30 litres of oil, 70 kg of rice, 20 kg of potatoes, 24 pineapples, 5 kg of carrots, 20 heads of cabbage, 25 kg of sugar, two cartons of mango juice, 25 packs of biscuits and at the butcher's we bought 14 kg of beef for the 25th.  We packed everything into a bajaji, which is the cheapest local form of taxi, tuc tuc, or rickshaw, simply a motorbike on three wheels, and set off to see our families. The journey was, as always, very adventurous and exciting. This time we even pushed the bajaji for a few kilometers in a run before we managed to get at least half a liter of gas :D. During the 22nd and 23rd of December, we visited and gifted a total of 10 families and 33 children and donated all the ingredients needed to cook the local traditional dish Pilau as well as home-made fries and coleslaw, which are part of the festive meal. And that they were really happy and so were we :).We also visited Mariamu, a family you can read about in our projects, and we brought Amrani a school bag, notebooks, crayons, pencils, pencil sharpeners and erasers as a Christmas present so that he can share them with his classmates when school reopens in January. 

Well, even though our target group is children and families, I decided to celebrate my Christmas Eve in an unconventional way. Almost every day when I walk through town, I see the same faces sitting in the dust of the streets, begging for a few shillings. Most of these faces I already know well. And there are children among them. Physically and mentally handicapped. Many adults and old people, all disabled in some way. They spend their days in the same place, hoping someone will give them something. On the evening before Christmas Eve (our 24th), we ordered 15 box lunches from a local Mama ntilia, (that's what they call the women who cook and sell food on the streets), bought 15 sodas, and offered them to those we met on the streets on the 24th of December, and for me, it was the nicest gift I could have given myself under the Christmas tree. I got to have a chance to get to know those that I only pass by every day, and even though you drop a few coins into each of their cups from time to time and bow your head a little closer, it wasn't until this day that I had the opportunity to see what incredibly strong, brave, cheerful and funny people many of them are, despite all the hardships they go through today and every day. And so I trust that none of you who support us will be angry. After all, they too were once children :).