Christmas in Guyana

25.12.12

 

It is late afternoon on Christmas day as I write this and it has been a very different Christmas day to our usual ones and quite difficult in many ways.

 The day started at 4am when we got up ready to go to Mark’s first service at 5am!  Aaghh!!  We never even got up that early when the children were little!  We arrived in the dark at the chapel and only two people were there.  The couple who were there had kindly brought some breakfast for us so we had a flask of coffee and some cheese and crackers before the service.  Gradually people started to filter in and we started the service at about 5.45am accompanied by a bat swooping around as it was just about dawn by then.  A bit scary singing carols with a bat around my head! 

We had to slip out before the end of that service so that we could go to Mark’s next service at 7am in a different village.  By now it was starting to get hot so was glad to be wearing a summery dress and flip flops!  I’ve never done that before at Christmas! 

We got home about 8.30 and had a coffee and some Guyana ‘black cake’ given to us by someone in the congregation.  It is a traditional moist, dark cake eaten in Guyana and the Caribbean at weddings and at Christmas. 

It was an emotional morning as we spoke to the girls and other family members and we were reminded how far away from home and family we are…all the more poignant at this family time of Christmas.

We had been invited out for lunch by a couple from one of Mark’s churches and we were scared we would have to eat ‘pepperpot’ which is a traditional Guyanese dish apparently made of cows’ feet and tripe in a spicy sauce but thankfully we were given chicken and rice so were very grateful!  Tomorrow we have a day off and I am going to attempt to cook chicken with roast potatoes, a tin of veg and some bread sauce and gravy I brought from the UK to try to replicate a traditional British Christmas dinner as best I can!  

Some people here do decorate the outsides of their homes with lights and an assorted array of Santas, Christmas trees and wreaths but not so much the insides of them.  They do give and receive gifts but nothing like the scale of present giving back home.  It is a wholly more simple occasion here which is quite refreshing and releasing as the pressure is off! 

 It has not really felt like Christmas to us as everything is so different to our usual traditions and of course we are away from our loved ones.  We have had no decorations, haven’t given or received gifts, have had no alcohol or luxury food, there is nothing on TV, no parties to go to and it has seemed in lots of ways just like an ordinary day.    The things I am missing are not the material things but our loved ones and the traditions we usually share together.

I guess that for most people around the world living in poverty, in conditions of war, under occupation, oppression or persecution it really is just another day and all we are left with is Jesus – he is meant to be the focus of this day anyway so I think maybe it has all been put into perspective for me this year.  I usually spend so much time and effort preparing for Christmas and get stressed in the process so the positive side of all this is that it has been quite liberating to be set free from all that and I wonder if it will change the way I view Christmas when we come home again.  Time will tell!