True to Christmas form, as soon as Josh, Lauren, and I woke up on Christmas morning we chowed down on the left over eggrolls. We lazed around for a bit until Josh heard the Catholic choir start singing and we went off to church. The Catholic church is just up the street from his house and was jam packed full of people. There were about a hundred people huddled around the outside of the church and another 50 or so under a big baobab tree across the street. Apparently this is the normal church size for them. Someone needs to come build them a mega church! Josh has gone to the catholic church before, but there is never enough room and you can’t hear the service from outside, so he prefers the smaller protestant church across village.
They had just gotten started by the time we got there, so we tried to sneak in the back. But being the only two white people there, it’s a little hard to sneak in, and everyone turned around to check us out. Or really, to check me out, since they are use to Josh coming to church and were curious to see who his femme was. We sat down in the back row and tried to blend in. The church was small and everyone was packed in. There was a man upfront asking questions about the Christmas story to the congregation and giving bonbons to whomever answered, he explained to us in French. I would have tried to answer them, since Josh had read me the Christmas story form Matthew and Luke just that morning, but I honestly couldn’t tell whether the man was speaking in French or local language. The local language there is different then my local language and the French accent was slightly different too. After the Q&A, the choir began to sing and everyone stood up to sing along. The man who had lead the questions came to next to Josh and translate into French for us, since all the songs were in local language. He explained that someone from each neighborhood of the village was going to come up to the front and lead the congregation in a song, however there are only 4 neighborhoods in the village and way more then 4 people went up to sing. There was a drum or two, sort of like a bongo drum, that accompanied the singing. For each song everyone stood and swayed, some people clapped their hands, a couple men had shakers, some people got down and boogied- there was a certain dance move for the women and one for the men, and some of the men got real into it, shacking their butts like a Ricky Martin video. I don’t want to sound rude, but it was sort of hilarious. I only recognized one of the hymns, when a big, well dressed women lead us in “Joy to the World” in French, all the rest were African hymns. After about a half hour and all the people had stopped filtering in I realized that all the women were sitting on the right side, the children in the middle isle, and all the men on the left hand side of the church. There was a man standing in the back who sat people as them came in, moving children around to make room for adults. I was sitting on the left side with Josh, and wondered why they do the separation and what kind of cultural taboo I was causing. No wonder everyone stared at me when I (we) sat down. I said something to Josh and asked if I should join the women on the women’s side, but he insisted that I should stay right there next to him. I’ll know better next time.
After an hour and a half Josh leaned into me saying we should leave. All the singing was still taking place, we had left Lauren home alone, and were expecting another PCV to come at any time. I wanted to stay, but he said we’d be there at least another 2 hours, so thinking of dinner I agreed. Outside we greeted the pastor, who had stepped out to salue us, we thanked him and he thanked us for coming.
Back at the home front Lauren and Shannon were waiting for us. Josh and I went over to the chief de village’s house to wish him a joyeux noel and fetch the turkey. After giving Josh the mission of getting us a bird earlier that week, he had asked the Chief where to find a turkey. The next night when he went to the Chief’s for dinner, the Chief surprised him with a giant turkey, saying “I got you the biggest one I could find!” The Chief looked after the turkey for us until we were ready to kill it. None of us had ever killed a bird before ourselves, so I encouraged Josh to ask for help. I was thankful when the Chief sent 2 of his sons along with us. Josh was determined to try is hand at butchering dinner, so he pinned down the bird as we had watched Chris do at Thanksgiving. He had received a Swiss army knife from his parents for Christmas and was eager to use it, however the bird was big and the knife blade was small and it didn’t work as well as he had hoped. After a good couple minutes of the bird not really bleeding out and still gasping for air, the three of us girls brought him a bigger, really sharp knife and insisted that he use it. Finally one of the Chief’s sons stepped in and with one quick swoop slight the throat the right way.
After it bled out the girls had the hot water ready and the cluster of children we had attracted were eager to pluck the turkey for us. Fine by me. Josh wanted to try and gut the turkey himself, but I was not about to have the intestines nicked and ruin Christmas dinner, so with my encouragement he asked his neighbor to help. We watched carefully though, so next time he can do it himself (when we’re not hosting a big dinner for other people…) He then light the charcoal, put potatoes in the bottom of a huge marmite, and put in the bird as I made up the first butter (well, Blue Band) baste.
Three hours or so later the bird was ready, just as the girls finished up the rest of the cooking. Josh had largely been in charge of cooking the bird and I have to give him props, it turned out very well. We set the table- mashed potatoes and gravy (thank you, Aunt Vicki, for the gravy mixes!), stuffing, salad, challah bread, cooked beets and carrots, and, of course, turkey. It was everything I had been dreaming of.
Once we were all stuffed Shannon pulled out her Christmas surprise. She had received a gingerbread man decorating kit in a Christmas package, so the three of us girls decorated gingerbread men. Then to bring Christmas day to an end, I brought out the in-French storybook about a snowman that Aunt Sharon had sent me. We passed the book around and took turns reading a page or two. Here is Shannon reading to us in French. And with that, to all a goodnight.
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