My Christmas in Malawi

I never did make it to Zambia over Christmas with Wheka, which was rather disappointing, as I would loved to have seen how the Malawians and Zambians celebrate Christmas…. village style!! But alas, nothing can be done about stupid visa troubles! Despite my initial disappointment, I really did have a lovely Christmas! It snuck up on me rather fast though, there certainly isn’t the months of warning and crazy commercialism to constantly remind you of the fast approaching holiday! But for me Christmas eve was upon me before I knew it!
The day before I had started AND finished my Christmas shopping with ease (imagine that!). I even had time to chill out at the market finishing off my day with some singing and dancing with woman selling materials while they waited for the end of the day, and while I waited for the tailor to finish making my skirt. It really was a priceless experience, easily making it onto my favourites list… Unfortunatley I picked a bad tailor that day… the skirt had some major compilation deficits…. I think he may have sewn it together updside down, inside out, back to front and with a completely different person in mind… it resembled nothing of a skirt from what I can see…. Thinking of sewing a seem along the bottom to make a bag.

That night my friend Kristine (AVI radiographer from likinu hospital) invited me to share in Christmas dinner with her and newly arrived visitors from Aus, We sat for hours by candlelight chatting and reading magazines that Kim had brought with her from Australia. Despite the complete futility of it all, we thoroughly enjoyed reading about celebrity marriages and divorces, best & worst dressed of 2006 and upcoming movie reviews. ( I think happy feet looks like it could be very cute!!). On the Sunday I went home to do cooking, washing, visiting and some high volume christmas carol singing around my house. Lucy arrived at 6:00 to collect me for Christmas eve dinner with her family. It took my breath away as I walked inside, the table was set for about 20 people, it was amazingly decorated, and the room just smelt like Christmas, as it should with the biggest Christmas tree I have ever seen fit inside a house. There was awesome music, and the smell of amazing food. Unfortunately it was at this time that I knew something was going rather wrong with my health. I had known I was feeling a bit strange over the weekend, but had decided it was from the goat I ate at work on Friday… but I’m not so sure anymore! It was positively torturous, there was food everywhere…food I was so desperately wanting to eat, but I simultaneously couldn’t handle the thought of food. It was a bit of a nightmare really!! But the evening was awesome, all sorts of different people arrived, people I had met at all different places, and some I had never met, but had seen around town. At about 8 we all piled into cars and left for the midnight mass…which was actually at 8pm…. It was a pretty boring service to be perfectly honest, Im not afraid to say that if Jesus was sitting next to me, he would have yawned for sure! but I still thoroughly enjoyed myself, the choir was fabulous, I got to hear the Bishop of Malawi speak and Lucy and I whispered during the service discovering that we were both Christians, which was a pretty fun discovery!!

Honeslty the rest of the night was a big blur, I felt worse and worse as the evening went on, although despite that, the spread of portugese food for dinner was amazing, and the company was awesome! After dinner I arrived at Kathy & Steve’s where I was to stay for the night. Kathy and I were up wrapping presents for the girls late into the night and I made dough for our fresh bread Christmas morning.

I was a little amazed to wake before Amy and Alisa (thanks mum for the good training!!) and we had a lovely relaxing morning of present opening! It was so much fun to share in Christmas morning with little kids. Can’t wait to have my own!

Christmas afternoon was tough, after chatting to my family I felt quiet sad, which I’m sure was made worse by how sick I felt by that stage. We had lots of different missionary families all over for dinner and it was great. But all a bit of a blur, as was the next 6 days or … so after a few doctors visits, a number of tests, a few tears, and lots of sleeping, I finally began to recover. I’m told it was a parasite of some sort, probably from bad water.

Although I had really wanted to spend the day in a village, once again I can see how things turned out sensationally well, especially not being well, it was lovely having the day with a family who were such a blessing to me!