Several times during the first few days of my stay at the EAC house the other girls would ask Ashley and me why we had come over Christmas. Most of the other MSTs were in Uganda for extended stays. Some were a few months, one nearly a year. Ashley and I had come on a short term trip and the fact that we had intentionally planned it over the biggest holiday of the year really astonished some people. We told them about our planning process and how nicely our little trip fit into Ashley's winter break from school. We had toyed with the idea of a summer trip that would match my trip of '09 but somewhere in the process these dates had stuck and God sent us over the holiday break.
Now, I love my family. But I didn't miss them at all.
Being home now and seeing their photos from the get togethers and the kids' gift exchange makes me sad to have missed it all but on Christmas morning when I woke up in my mosquito net and had egg nog French toast in my shorts and watched the rain while I frosted cookies I did not miss Christmas at home.
We had a lot of company on Christmas and I got to meet several sisters of some of the EAC employees. Jayan, sort of the EAC house mother, cooked several Ugandan dishes for us and I roasted a chicken (something the Ugandans had never seen done before). We had Christmas cookies and granola and stuffing. Cooking in a Ugandan kitchen is no easy feat and once while the chicken was in the oven the pilot went out (or someone unknowingly shut it off) and it was a little while later before I noticed and had it relit. With no numbered dial to tell me how hot the oven was we had to just guess. I also didn't know how many pounds my chicken was. I can only imagine how Ashley's cookie baking had gone the night before.
Altogether it was a very nice blend of both cultures. We even had a Christmas tree (which was up when I arrived at the house) in the corner, decorated with lights, paper grass, hand and home made ornaments and balloons.
The morning rain storm was a heavy one and we had a perfect view from the common room windows. Once the rain passed the air dried out some and we spent the day together, watching Christmas movies and talking. We had plenty of cookies so we took a plate of them out to the neighbor kids and also gave them their first American candy canes.
There were no church services the day after Christmas so our break continued. Schedule to leave for camp on Tuesday, some of us used our Monday off to the fullest and went to the Equator. The taxi ride, even at high speed when the roads allowed, was over an hour long. We had lunch and shopped a little bit. We headed home right around sunset and most of our drive back was in the dark.
Ugandan taxis are large vans with quite a few seats and everyone just mashes in for maximum profit. I was in the very last row and the gentleman in front of me asked to share my iPod. I gave him an ear and we listened to Christian rap the whole way home. Outside of Kampala we hit a traffic jam of epic proportions and our driver abruptly turned around and got out of there. He took a back way through what looked like the jungle in Tarzan. I wasn't sure he was sure of the way but I forced my attention back to my musical witnessing for a bit. It wasn't until the van stopped and the headlights and motor turned off that I had a mild panic attack.
The driver was only asking directions, I assume for how to get out of that jungle. We made it safely back to Kampala, never really having been in any danger at all. Silly white girl.
Thus concluded our Christmas break. We would leave for camp the following day and so I went to bed with Ivan's promise of clean squatties and fun camp activities echoing in my head.
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