Don’t panic! It is out of season to mention that holiday so early on in the year (although
the weather outside is indeed frightful at the moment) but there’s a good
reason for it. On Tuesday, Sachi commented that she had forgotten to celebrate
Christmas in summer as she’d meant to do. After I pointed out the 25th
was only 2 days away (albeit 2 days and 5 months away from the day itself), and
we also realised that the 25th marked the anniversary of Peace Corps
Group 36’s arrival in Namibia AND 6 months since we arrived too, we decided to
have a Christmas party. On a school night. In July. Of course.
We decorated Volunteer Towers with snowflakes and paper
chains, and for one evening, the shrub by the front door became a makeshift
Christmas tree. Hoodies and jumpers were customised to make festive jumpers
that Bridget Jones would be proud of, and chocolate bars made ideal budget
Christmas presents. Can you believe Sachi had never done Christmas crackers? Caitlin
and I bullied her briefly for it, and then made crackers out of toilet roll
tubes, complete with newspaper hats and bad jokes. She thought they were
somewhere between bizarre and adorable, but still remains baffled by Christmas
pudding. Crazy Brits strike again!
Despite only having a toaster oven with two electric hobs, we managed a slightly culturally-confused, trans-Atlantic Christmas dinner with all the trimmings – roast potatoes, carrots, green bean casserole, stuffing, pigs in blankets, and apple custard pie for dessert. We also made gingerbread biscuits to go with our peppermint hot chocolates for afterwards. I would call them gingerbread men, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate: we had one gingerbread man and a collection of other shapes, including a giraffe, a dragon and gingerbread likenesses of each other. Caitlin even made me a gingerbread to-do list : quite worrying, but most entertaining.
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The centrepiece was, however, a little more of a challenge. Unsurprisingly,
it’s not possible just to nip to M&S for a pre-packaged, oven-ready,
no-hassle turkey portion any more: indeed, even if we could find any kind of
turkey in Namibia, there’s no way it would be small enough to cook in our
kitchen. Chicken seemed like an acceptable substitute. Even then, whilst we
were sure it must be possible somewhere, none of us could recall ever seeing a
whole chicken in the supermarkets here. Solution? Ditch the supermarkets.
Dinner turned up on our doorstep that night, tucked under the arm of two students with whom Caitlin had made a deal earlier in the day, and very much still squawking.
After the chicken met his end at the hands of our security guard, the kids then sat on the floor, plucking the bird in a bucket, as the three of us watched in a mixture of fascination and utter hysterics. It was certainly a learning curve for all of us and although it required a lot of cleaning up afterwards, I think I do approve of understanding exactly where your food comes from. Absolutely a change from cling film and Styrofoam trays!
It was possibly the most ridiculous Thursday night in I’ve
ever had, and I think we’ve definitely all gone slightly crazy out here, but we
really, really didn’t care – we had such a laugh with good food, great company and silly paper hats. I feel like I finish
almost every blog post and email with this these days, but I really will miss
Tses when I leave and our departure a few weeks’ time seems far too soon. Never
have I been more certain that the friends that I’ve made here are for life, not
just for Christmas.
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