First Christmas in Arusha

Lighting Advent candles on Christmas eve.

Now that the building intensity of activities and events around the end of Advent and Christmas have recently past, I can sit down and recount the highlights. I am happy to say that after only four months we were involved in quite a number of holiday activities at our church and in our community.

One of the highligts of the season has been the arrival of Rebecca's parents, Dave and Jean Sack! They actually did not arrive at the same time though. Jean proceeded Dave by about 5 days, getting here on Monday night (a week ago). Her early arrival was timed to help us with childcare as the kids are out of school and Rebecca and I still had a week of work left to do.

Jean and Dave Sack

We have been fairly creative with the kids including having them do some supplementary Swahili lessons to help them with school. They were surprisingly willing to do this despite the fact that it was 'Christmas vacation'. They actually have about 4 weeks off, which seems like alot, but perhaps this is because some families travel a long way during the holidays.

Rebecca met Jean at the airport Monday night and she got to our house at around 10pm. The drive from Kilimanjaro airport to Arusha is quite far. Rebecca got a cab and rode back with Jean as driving at night is somewhat stressful since roads are not well lit and there tends to be a lot of traffic all the time. Jean was fully loaded with suitcases full of presents which, by pure luck, she was not asked to open in customs at the airport. (They do tend to look and charge duty on every item that looks new.)

She recovered from jet lag on Tuesday and by Wednesday was ready to spend the day with the kids. It seemed to go well, (athough I was at work) I came home to find Oren reading a book and finishing some over-vacation homework. David was playing a board game. They were both very excited to have her come.

Another stategy to keep the kids occupied during this work week was to set up the trampoline we bought from a departing missionary family. It was really the big Christmas gift, but setting it up a bit early seemed like a good idea since the kids have quite a bit of free time right now. It took a family effort to build it and we set it up right behind our house in view of our kitchen window. It is a very nice, large tramp with a much coveted safety net--not a standard feature of most trampolines set up in Arusha. Once it was built the kids have been on it for hours at a time. They tend to like to use it as a 'Gaga Ball' court even more than for jumping.

Wednesday evening, we had choir rehearsal brought Jean and kids in tow. We went well overtime to get all of our pieces ready, especially ones we had barely touched as we had needed a lot of time on the more difficult specials. We did feel that they were satisfactory by the time we left and planned to cram in one more hour, an hour before the service began on Friday. We took Jean out for Indian food as is our routine after the choir rehearsal. She thoroughly enjoyed the ritual having spent many years in Bangladesh. The Indian food here in Tanzania is excellent thanks to the enormous South Asian influences on Swahili culture.

Men's trio during service,
Erwin, Paul, Neal

Friday evening was the real highlight of the week. The long-awaited Lessons and Carols service at Arusha Community Church took place. This is the service for which Rebecca and I have been preparing for the past 2 months with our Wednesday night choir rehearsals. It is quite a popular event and had an enormous turn-out. There was a brass ensemble before the service, as well as a childrens choir, and us. It is always surprising to me to see an event here that draws a large expatriate community. I think what is surprising is the contrast it is to Burundi where I probably knew almost every American or European in the country, as there just were not that many. Here in Arusha, at an event like this service, or even the Christmas fair the week before, I feel shocked to see so many expats. This is largely because Tanzania has a number of industries and business opportunities that draw people from all over the world, tourism chief among them. So expats from very diverse economic sectors are here, and extend far beyond the standard, missionary, NGO, and diplomatic communities.

The service was very moving and a joy to be part of as a member of the choir. The pieces we struggled to learn, like the Magnificat and acapella Christmas "Halleluja" (a al Leonard Cohen/Pentatonix) all came together splendedly. The church was also decorated with greens and looked very Christmas-y. That is in contrast to most of the rest of the city in which Christmas is a far less commercial holiday. It did feel a bit odd to be sweating a bit in the church full of people. The cooler season is in June-- August. December is one of the warmer months of the year. Both Rebecca and I came home quite dehydrated and exhausted and had trouble getting up on Saturday morning.

We spend Saturday at Gymkhana with the kids. David and Oren have added squash to their list of activities there as they do have a squash court. We also took a short dip in the pool, which despite the warm weather continues to be abnormally chilly. We had dinner there while Rebecca did some worship music prep. at the church. Rebecca made a second trip out to the airport on Saturday evening to once again meet the KLM flight from Dulles (via Amsterdam), this time to pick up her Dad. Dave Sack also arrived after 10pm with a bad cold, and went to bed. He spent Sunday lying low as well and had to miss going to church with us.

Sunday (Christmas eve), after church, was spent in nearly continuous cooking activities. We made our traditional gingerbread house. (We even brought the magnet blocks toys that we always use for patterns.) David designed the church we built this year. The kids deorated it. Afterwards they helped Jean make her Christmas morning cinnamon roles. I ended it all by making a Christmas eve thai curry dinner which worked out very well. Because we have no dishwasher, time not spent cooking was spent washing dishes. (David also caught his 6th chameleon that day.)

We had family time in the evening, finishing our advent devotional book and talking about the meaning of Christmas. There were many, many, presents under the tree as Dave and Jean had brought stuff from all members of our extended families in their suitcases. Oren and David were very excited and had a very hard time going to sleep. We finished the night up by watching "The Polar Express".

They were up at 6 am on Christmas morning and could hardly wait until 7. We did get everyone up by 7, had some cinnamon rolls, then had our gift unwrapping. Oren was probably the most ecstatic over the gift giving and receiving time as he got a much desired Jurassic World Indominus Rex toy. He still loves dinosaurs. Both kids also got a number of lego sets. David is quite a builder and has been working on sets the past 2 days.

In the afternoon we had a fairly big Christmas dinner. We invited our friends the Halters. A family with 2 kids. They also had 2 grandparents visiting. We also invited Neal and Christy Miller, some friends from church (former MCCers). There were 14 of us in all. Rebecca had bought a large Christmas ham from 'Meat King' a local butcher. We had many of delicacies including a delicious homemade rasberry chocolate cheesecake (brough by the Halters) and the gingerbread house.

The adults talked, the kids played on the trampoline. It was a very nice way to spend the day. Our first Christmas in Arusha is a milestone, and I feel that we have integrated well with no lack of activities in which to participate after only 4 months here.

We have 2 days left in Arusha (including 1 work day) before we head off for a 5 day vacation on the coast. I look forward to reporting on the fun we will have there. Heri ya Krismasi na Mwaka Mpya.