Holidays

The holidays are over already! Maybe that's not how ya'll feel back home, but it all seemed so fast to me. Maybe it's because Christmas is hardly celebrated in Chad. The "Christmas season" was basically just the few short days that any of us Americans had time to celebrate together. Here's what we did: first there was a cookie baking/decorating party on Wednesday afternoon. Then in the evening we all met at the McDowell's house for Christmas Eve. We read the nativity story, sang Christmas carols, ate cookies, and watched It's A Wonderful Life. The next day (Christmas day) was wild. It began with a pancake breakfast at Zach's house with the four of us single volunteers (Zach, Charis, Miki, and I). Then we spent a few hours preparing food for a Christmas dinner at the Netteburg's, which was followed by dessert and a white elephant gift exchange.

And like that it was over…but then the New Year came the following week. New Year's Eve/Day is a BIG deal in Chad, with lots of singing, dancing, feasting, and gift giving. The "gift giving" is actually more like "gift demanding". Basically everyone goes around and yells "Bonne année!" ("Happy New Year!") to everyone else. If someone says "Bonne année!" to you, you're expected to give them something. This all begins at like 4 AM on New Year's Eve when people start running around to the different homes. It's a bit shameful to be unprepared for this, and so my family and I planned ahead and prepared some traditional cakes to give away.



Us Nasaras didn't really want to participate in the all the crazy early-morning stuff, so instead we built a big bonfire and roasted hotdogs on New Year's Eve. On New Year's Day a few of us loaded up the back of the pickup truck with clothes, shoes, toys, soap, rice, and beans and drove through a bunch of neighboring villages to hand stuff out. We got swarmed a few times whenever we stopped for too long, but overall it was a success.

I hope you all enjoyed the holiday season back home!