Advent Preparations and Christmas

As we approach the end of December, I realize that we are due one more blog entry this month. Like the last entry, this one is being written at a time of transition. Our family is enroute to Nairobi, sitting in the airport as I begin, to attend the annual mission retreat ‘Renew’. This is our third time attending in person, and a great chance to reconnect with friends from other places we have lived, including Tanzania and Burundi.

December is always a bit of an odd month as work responsibilities and a significant increase in social obligations (and opportunities), as well as school activities, all seem to come crashing together. It is almost a relief for us that travel in the country is greatly limited due to conflict, in that we have had many events scheduled after work and every weekend.

Work has had its share of responsibilities—actually there is a bit of a disconnect between Ethiopia and the rest of the world in terms of work intensity. Ethiopia celebrates Christmas on the Orthodox calendar (January 7), and their new Year is in September. So that means that the last two weeks of December tend to be a time of intense work among our partners, and by extension, our office. The challenge is that much of what we need to do requires discussion and even authorization from our home offices in the US, Canada, or Kenya. Almost everyone in these places is moving into the slower pace of winding up the year, taking vacation The period between Christmas and New Year is nearly dead in these places--in terms of getting work done. But by January 3^rd, everyone will be back in their offices, right when the Ethiopians will be winding down for a holiday around Gena. A return to ‘normal routine’ won’t really happen until mid-January. Because of this, except for Christmas Day, Rebecca and I have had to do some office hours every weekday.

So we are pleased to be getting away for a bit for some holiday between now and January 8^th. We will be going to Kenya for about 5 days, then taking a shuttle bus to Arusha TZ for the last week.

As far as work goes, we have had quite a bit of responsibility around the launch of a large Global Affairs Canada (GAC) food security/climate adaptation grant that is being shared by two partners. There is an urgent need to complete a few activities and finalize proposals before the end of the year.

We are still waiting for the importation of the car we purchased two months ago. It is apparently on the truck in Djibouti, but they are waiting until the truck is fully loaded to move to Addis. Hopefully soon. We are also going to be entering a recruitment process as one of our staff has had the opportunity to take a higher-level role within the GAC Climate grant I mentioned above. It is a great opportunity for him although we are always sad to lose a good team member.

Outside of work, we had been equally if not busier with preparations for Christmas. We come from traditions that make a lot of Advent and we usually set up Christmas decorations on the Sunday after American Thanksgiving. We started a bit later as Rebecca just got back from the US at the beginning of December. David was excited to start, and we did have the MCC artificial tree set up when she arrived. Rebecca brought a chocolate advent calendar for David and we set up the Advent candles on our coffee table. We also decorated the tree with ornaments we have been traveling with for many years. Some were homemade by kids, others from places we have been. We put lights inside, on the tree, and around our outside gazebo where we entertain guests. We usually listen to Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas Jazz and the Nutcracker as set up.

Our church and Sunday school classes have had Advent-themed sermons and lessons (from the lectionary), and I worked with the children to prepare a song to sing with some solos, duets, and trios. It was Do You Hear What I Hear, and the Star, little lambs, shepherds, and King all had costumes.

We also had two youth group meetings during the month, one was hosted at our house, and I also led the second one, where we played “Greed” a variation of the White Elephant gift exchange where there is an extensive amount of stealing of the presents of others during one’s turn to select. (Although the kids are really too nice to each other to take the best gifts away.) I have appreciated this group of kids who have been building a supportive community together for each other.

Bingham (David’s school) has also had several extracurricular activities including a movie night at the end of term, and many students participated in an All-Addis International School track meet, that brought together about 9 schools to compete. The event was held at a school called ICS which had a very nice track and field facility. David competed in shotput and triple jump, although the competition was higher the the intraschool competition and he did not place. Bingham, on the other hand, won the overall competition handily, winning in almost every age category, but particularly among their girls who won almost everything.

Music has featured large in our household and among our ‘extracurricular’ activities. At home, the house has been filled with the sound of banjo music, thanks to the fact that I inherited a banjo from our friend Neil who is leaving Africa this month and was able to pass it on to me. I have really enjoyed learning it (bluegrass). I played classical guitar in high school and part of college, but let it drop when I started my dance career. It is great to be learning the intricacy of finger plucking that makes banjo music sound so exciting. (So far I can play the Ballad of Jed Clampett, Rainbow Connection, and a few bluegrass numbers)

Rebecca and I spent many hours a week preparing for our choir concert. We were part of this year’s Christmas choir organized by our friend Lori Kempen, as well as her smaller chamber group. We did some great pieces, both secular and spiritual. We did very cool arrangements of Jingle Bells, Let it Snow, I’ll be Home for Christmas, and Jingle Bell Rock –all tight harmony jazz arrangements. We also did an R&B Away in a Manger—the rest of the pieces were all in Latin, beautiful pieces. The chamber group also did the Pentatonix arrangement of Mary Did You Know and I got to beatbox! Lori challenged us to get everything ‘off book’ which Rebecca and I took the time in the last 2 weeks to do. It was great to be able to sing all of the songs without needing to look at the words and music. There were quite long rehearsals on the last 2 Saturdays, and we performed on the evening of Saturday the 23^rd at a large Anglican church for a huge group.

We were thrilled to have Oren return to Addis from the College of William and Mary on Saturday morning and be able to see the concert. Though he was dead tired. There are some good friends who were seniors last year who have returned, including Christopher K. and Shenani S., they had a good time reuniting and seeing each other again. Bereket and Oren were also very happy to be reunited.

Bereket recently started college at the University of Addis in the Science and Technology school. Despite being denied a US visa to study in the US, he was a top-ranked student here and got into his first choice of schools here. We are still working on the possibility of attending a school in Canada as he would really like to have the benefit of studying at a good school in another country.

It has been having Bereket around and on the weekends, he has joined us in Christmas prep. including making cinnamon rolls, Christmas cookies, and a gingerbread manor. We usually give away baked goods at Christmas, and the gingerbread construction is a creative outlet for me. This year’s was especially tasty as I found a really good recipe for construction gingerbread, did not burn it, and made a perfect peppermint royal icing. Rebecca brought some great candy for decoration from the US so it looked great and was almost entirely devoured when I broke it apart during our Christmas Day meal.

We had a very nice Christmas Eve service at our church. It is a very international congregation and we had hymns from about 10 different countries and regions of Ethiopia. We had a candle lighting during Silent Night which I have done, I think, since I was 10 years old. When we got home, after our Advent devotional reading, we watched the Polar Express. I don’t exactly know how that became a family tradition, but it is what we do right before bed. (Maybe because Oren loved trains when he was a young child).

Oren managed to wake up early with us as David wanted to start opening gifts at 6am. (We waited until 7). We had many reasons to be proud of Oren. He got a job as a lab assistant in the chem department., he did decently in all of his classes including Chinese history, math, chemistry, and physics (as well as an education course). It was a very hard semester for him as he had to make the adjustment from being a high school student to a college student.

We had quite an abundant Christmas as Rebecca and Oren had both come back with Christmas gifts from family and Amazon. David was especially happy to get some new Lego sets. I got a really nice shirt, new puffy vest, and a strap for my banjo.

Christmas day was a very special time. We had four families of very good friends meet together. They have kids the same age, and parents who really get along. All of us sing together in the choir as well. Dinner featured ham and many sides. Kids played spikeball and crossnet, as well as a new board game we got called Planet Unknown. The adults talked. We broke apart the giant gingerbread house and ate it as well. It was a time to recognize that we have built a good community of friends here in the last year.

It was a time to really be grateful realizing how far we have come.

Our flight has landed, and we have arrived at Brackenhurst where we will spend the next 5 days before continuing on to Arusha. In the words of Tiny Tim: “God bless us every one.”