Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Philippians 2:8-10
Although not the same Christmas buzz as I’m used to back home, there is definitely excitement in the air here in Bukoba. We will close the school on Thursday and boarders will depart on Friday morning. With exams finished and revisions made, the students are spending their days catching up on late work, reading their final library books of the year, and playing with friends before they leave each other for the month-long break. The staff are writing their final reports and the wedding committees are tying up last minute details so that everything is in order before they, too, depart for home to prepare for Christmas with their families.
While it’s never easy to be away from home for Christmas, I find myself full of excitement and joy for what is sure to be just as merry of a Christmas holiday as any other, if not even more so! Joseph and I are working our way through a long list of things to take care of at home and for the wedding before my family arrives, each item we check off bringing more anticipation than the last. We went back and forth on how/where to spend Christmas. With the school being closed, all of our friends will be away visiting family, and the idea of sitting in a quiet house on an empty campus just didn’t feel very festive. And after the sadness I felt on Thanksgiving trying to pull off something on my own, I decided I was going to try to find some place festive in Tanzania that might help the holiday feel a little more like home. I found what I was looking for in Stone Town, Zanzibar. We’ll be staying for a couple of days in an American style hotel that offers a Christmas Eve dinner with carols, and I even found a Catholic cathedral built in the 1800s that has Christmas Eve candlelight mass. While it can’t compare to cooking, singing, worshipping, and gathering around the Christmas tree with my family, I’m hoping that a change of scenery and quality time with Joseph, combined with knowing that we’ll all be reunited so soon, will help make for a merry Christmas.
My parents, my sister Lauren, and my cousin Christine who is studying in Amsterdam, will all arrive here in Tanzania on the 27th. We will travel to Bukoba together on a small domestic plane and spend a couple days at KEMPS preparing for the wedding before the big day. Joseph’s family from Mwanza, as well as many of our friends from Morogoro will arrive on busses the day before, and will stay in the dorms here at KEMPS. It’s going to be three days of eating good food and spending time with the people we love. The actual wedding day, New Years Eve, will begin with the wedding service late in the morning, followed by a parade from the campus down into town, lead by a six piece band and a group of motorcycle drivers revving their engines and honking their horns. The parade will end at the beach on Lake Victoria where we will take pictures before returning to school for the reception. The reception will feature an MC, five cakes, traditional African drumming and dancing, a five member hip hop group performance, champagne toasts, and lots and lots of Tanzanian food. I hope to have someone live stream the event on Facebook, but we will also have the entire day recorded and made into a video to be shared later. While this will only be a church wedding and not legally binding in Tanzania, we will not be sharing any photos on our social media pages until after we receive Joseph’s Visa. Since we are still in the Immigration process (no, we still haven’t received any news), we don’t want to cause any confusion or question of whether or not we are legally married already. After the wedding, we will spend a couple more days relaxing in Bukoba before visiting Arusha to see Kilimanjaro, and back to Zanzibar to the beach for a few days so my family can experience the amazing white sands and turquoise waters before returning home on the 9th. This will surely be a memorable Christmas and New Years for all of us.
While I know it’s naïve to say that things are just going to magically improve in the New Year, I am really hopeful that they will. Not magically, but with medical advancements and new leadership and people working together to return to some sense of the normalcy that we are all craving after this year. I was talking with a friend last week and we were musing at how if 2021 is just a normal, uneventful year, it will seem like the best year ever. I pray that we are able to keep that mindset as the year progresses. That we can remain thankful for the “normal” and find joy and peace in the ordinary parts of our life that before 2020 we may have taken for granted. And I pray that while your Christmas, like mine, may look a little different this year, it is just as joy-filled as ever. While the traditions may change, the message of the season remains the same, and we need that message this year more than ever.
Mungu akubariki,
Allee
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Some of my incredible students here at KEMPS. |
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