Christmas Eve in Malawi, 2008

Normally on Christmas Eve, we have my sister and her family, my parents and our children over for dinner. I make ham, a turkey breast, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole…..you get the picture. We go to the late Christmas Eve service at church then come home and put the gifts around the tree. The last thing we do every year before going to bed on Christmas Eve is listen to Manheim Steamroller’s version of Silent Night.

Now…………..our Malawi version. Feel free to laugh because it really is funny.

It is Christmas Eve and I thought I had dinner for the next two days strategically planned. Shoprite, the main grocery store in town, will be closed on Christmas Day so we went to the store today to see if we could find food for the next two days that does not need to be refrigerated. (Remember, our refrigerator died last Saturday and the freezer portion of it got hot on Sunday.) I told Ray that we need to see what kind of meat they have in a can besides tuna. We could have peanut butter but Ray had peanut butter sandwiches for lunch on Thanksgiving and I couldn’t do that to him on another holiday. I could make tuna casserole because I think I could find all the ingredients but Ray *hates* hot tuna – so that’s out. We laughed as we walked down the aisles commenting that we could probably find Vienna sausages in a can and have viennas and beans. Sure enough, there they were, a big can of viennas. I picked them up but promptly put them back after we laughed. What I did get though was a can of meatballs, in rich gravy. I thought about meatballs and noodles but the only noodles we can find that are semi-reasonably priced are either spaghetti noodle or mostacolli noodles. They do have egg noodles but I thought paying $10.00 per bag was just a bit too much, even if it was Christmas. So, we bought the canned meatballs and mostacoli noodles and that will be our Christmas dinner. Maybe it will be so good that we’ll start a new tradition.

Now, since it was in the early afternoon that we went to the store, I thought I’d buy some type of meat that was frozen that we could eat for dinner tonight. Buying frozen would allow it to stay good until I could cook it tonight. I did find a whole frozen chicken. We went about our business the rest of the day, spending some time with the kids at the orphanage and going to the internet café. We drove home, thinking I would start the chicken, which is now thawed since the temperature outside is about 85 degrees. Our night watchman greeted us with our favorite line, “Welcome to Malawi – today we have no water AND no power.” So we waited about an hour for the power to come back and then I asked Ben to start the small charcoal cooker they use to cook their nsima (pronounced “seema”) on. He does and I cut the chicken up then ……….rain. So much for the chicken. I just starting laughing – what else could I do?

Eventually it stopped raining long enough to get the chicken on the grill. Let me tell you about Malawian grills. They are not like the Weber grills we are used to in the states. They are a small hourglass shaped metal container that you put charcoal (burnt wood chips) in and place a piece of grate of some type over the top to keep the food from falling in. When we purchased the grates for the top, we got two. One we have used before but I could not find that one today because the person who knew where it was (Evance) was out for a while. So I found the other one. It was a piece of steel grate that was painted red. Well, when I put the chicken on the grate and started to cook it, I didn’t realize it but the red paint was sticking to my chicken. So I took all the chicken off the grill and searched until I found the other grate. I peeled the red paint off the chicken and put it back on the grill. I wonder if red paint causes brain damage.

Now, every time I needed to wash my hands or wash the utensils because I was working with chicken, I couldn’t turn the water on in the sink because we had no water so I had to dip a pitcher in our reserve water container to clean. The power came back on just as I was taking the chicken off the grill. It really started raining hard after we finished eating - thunder, lightning, heavy winds and rain. The rain reminded me of one of the BRAN rains where you get called into the school to sleep because it is raining so hard and the wind is really blowing. It makes me want to put my helmet over my head and pull the sleeping bag up a bit tighter around me. (My BRAN friends will know exactly what I mean.) Rain stops as suddenly as it starts here. All of a sudden, it will just downpour then when it is ready to stop, it’s like someone just turned the switch off and the rain instantly stops. However, tonight it did not stop right away. It rained for a long time and it rained very hard.

The good thing is that we have battery powered fans that are blowing on us to keep us cool. When Erle was here in November, he left us two battery powered fans. What a lifesaver they are. Thank you Erle!!!

This year, we really downsized for Christmas. The only gifts we purchased were for our staff. Food is one thing that everyone likes so we decided to make food baskets for them. Throughout the month, when I would see something on sale (“promotion” as they call it here) like sugar, salt (Malawians *love* their sugar and salt), I would buy them. I took our day watchman and our housekeeper to the market with me today as they can negotiate better prices than I can and we finished purchasing the rest of the food. In each basket were a few of each of the following: tomatoes, dry beans, onions, potatoes, cabbage, bananas, dried fish, mangos, carrots, eggs, cooking oil, margarine, bread, tomato sauce (ketchup), nsima flour, rice, sugar, kamba puffs (cheetos), and biscuits (cookies). We also purchased a live chicken for each of them. We gave them a small amount of cash and some airtime for their phones. We spent less than $30.00 on each of them and you would have thought this was the best gift they had ever received in their life. Ben, our night watchman told us it truly was a miracle. Zione, our housekeeper told us she didn’t think her family would be eating tonight.

I have to end here, the battery is almost out on my laptop. But our prayer is that each and every one of you have a very Blessed Christmas. And remember, Jesus is the reason for the season, not the other “stuff”.

God bless you and Merry CHRISTmas!

Ray & Alice