I frequently get asked the question how do we celebrate Christmas in Uganda. It's actually not that different except Christmas is not as commercialized here. There's no focus on giving gifts, no Santa, and almost every church has a Christmas Day service. Most people travel to the village to celebrate Christmas with their extended family. Most Christmases I've spent in Uganda I've also made the trip to the village with my extended family here in Uganda. This year all of us kids were prepared and excited to be going. Then we were informed that bees had taken over the house in the village so we would be spending Christmas in the city. No problem. There was still much to do.
I spent the evening of Christmas Eve at a get together at a friend's house. She's American married to a Congolese man who grew up in Uganda. We enjoyed ourselves eating lots of Congolese food prepared by the husband's extended family. Then we were taught Congolese and Kinyarwanda dances. The Kinyarwanda traditional dance is one of the most beautiful in this region, at least to me.
Christmas day was pretty laid back. Lots of food and fellowship and of course attending the Christmas Day church service.
I think the highlight for me was the day after Christmas, Boxing Day. I got to spend the whole day with my extended family here, something which I've not had time for in quite a while. What made it even better was spending the day at one of my favorite places, the beach. OK, it wasn't a beach on the ocean, but it was close enough. We ate fish, walked and collected shells, and the youngest even took a swim.
We even got to get up close to a crocodile! OK, so what if it wasn't real!
2 comments:
This first picture definitely freaked me out. I was thinking, "Why is Cari that close to take a picture of a CROCODILE!?"
Yeah, it sort of freaked us out too when we first saw it. We were like why are people swimming here if there are crocs but then we looked at the teeth and noticed they were concrete. It was a fun photo anyway!
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