Christmas luncheon

On Saturday Sarah and I had our friend Paskaria and various members of her family over for a Christmas lunch. (Several months ago I wrote about Paskaria when she came to teach Sarah and me how to cook a duck.)

We had pilau (a rice & meat dish), kachumbari (tomato and onion salad) and sodas. Pilau is quite traditional for a Christmas meal here.

After lunch we had a gift exchange. Paskaria gave Sarah and me each a kanga (a Tanzanian sarong type cloth with a saying on it). Our kangas say 'tuvumiliane tusikosane kwa jambo dogo' which roughly translated means "let us bear with one another, let us not sin against one another for a little thing".

It is traditional when giving cloth to wrap it around the recipient.

Sarah and I gave them a solar lamp, some Western candy (I warned them not to worry when the pop rocks jump around in their mouth...that is what they are supposed to do), the book of Luke in Kwaya and a beautiful piece of art that Sarah made them.

Since my family traditionally reads the Christmas story on Christmas morning I asked if we could read Luke 2, but in Kwaya. One of the little girls read the first half and I read the second half. Thankfully, this is one of the languages that I work with so I was able to make my way through it and understand what I was reading for the most part.

We then had some ice cream. This was the first time for any of them to ever have ice cream! They said that it was very sweet and if they ate it they would definitely get fat. I think that that means they liked it.

We finished our meal by playing and teaching the kids to throw a frisbee. They really enjoyed that part of the day, I even saw them getting fancy with their throws and incorporating upside-down throws as well as hammer throws. They are very talented.

It was a wonderful day of spending time with friends and blessing each other with food, company, frisbee, gifts, ice cream and friendship.