Christmas in Lilongwe, Malawi

On Christmas Day Elder Prete was on his way to pick up the elders for dinner and he saw this Santa Clause at one of the traffic circles handing out candy.

These are some of the children from the Kauma branch. After church on Christmas day we had a little dinner. Elder Prete & I went with President Ngwelete and his counselor Bro. Levi on Wednesday to buy the food since we are the only ones  that have a vehicle (not that we have a vehicle, we still have commandeered the Zone leaders' truck). How do you buy food when you may have 40 people and then again there might be 120 show up. Anyway, we bought 30 kgs of rice and ingredients for a tomato meat sauce. Elder Prete & I volunteered to make the sauce because we are pretty sure that nobody else in this branch has refrigeration. Now, the issue of cooking the rice on Sunday at the church. No problem say the branch presidency. They asked the sisters to bring pots and they would cook it out back behind the church. As you can see from the picture below, they went right out after Sacrament meeting and got busy. One split the firewood we had bought and then each sister got about 3 rocks from a pile and six or so sticks of wood and laid their little fire.

Somehow one of my pictures just disappeared. GRRRRRR
I can't figure out where it went or how to get it back.
HA! I just uploaded it again.

In no time there were eight or ten little cooking fires with pots of rice bubbling away. I have to say, I did not have the vision for this one. I just  have no frame of reference but these sweet sisters cook outside every day. Most of them have little charcoal stoves that sit on the ground and a pot sits on top of but they certainly had no problem with open flame. They would just keep pushing the sticks in further as burned. Then when they were done, they immediately put out the fire and bundled up the left over wood to take home.They were amazing!

This little girl is probably six or seven and is taking care of her little brother while her mom helps cook. All the women carry their little ones like this and we have hardly seen a fussy baby. (We see hundreds of babies every day!) You see them hoeing in the fields, carrying huge containers of water on their heads,shopping, doing anything a mother needs to do and the babies just ride along. It's amazing. You hardly ever see someone carrying a child in their arms.

See what I was saying? Dinner prep Malawi style. It was a gorgeous day and I got a royal sunburn on my neck.

Elder Prete suggested to President Ngwelete that as the branch president he is the servant of all the branch members and it might be good if he were the one to serve the rice and he agreed to do that. After the blessing they first lined up the children and he started scooping rice. I saw how much he was giving the little kids and my heart sank as I pictured all that food in the garbage can. Their plates were heaped!!! Then the sauce on top and a glass of Sobo. (Amazing stuff-it goes forever. We used 4 2L bottles for over 120 people) Anyway, back to the kids and the food. At the end there was not a kernel of rice in that garbage! After all had been served, there was some left so we called for the kids first again and they ate just as much again. Little 3 or 4 year olds...I don't know how they didn't just pop. You know how hard it is to get most little kids to eat much of anything, well, it's not a problem here. It was astounding! And very telling. I doubt if there was a child there that is properly nourished. It's not that their parents don't know or don't care. They are doing the best they can. I wish we could feed them every day.

First they fed the kids, then they called for the men. We tried to get the women to come before the men but they wouldn't. Something odd about this place, we have way more men than women. The simple reason is that most of the women in the villages do not speak English and there are no Chichewa speaking missionaries. So sad! As much as we can, we all have members go with us to visit or teach because, becuase in many homes it's even difficult to communicate with the men because their English isn't great either. The elders have english classes going and there are several who have really improved but it's a lot of work for them and not enough people come.

Sister Jumbe's handsome little guys. We have tons more pictures but internet here is really expensive so we have to be careful. The people (especially the kids) really love to have their pictures taken and then they immediately want to see it.

On Christmas Eve, the Collins' invited all the missionaries over for a big turkey dinner. (They are a young American family here working with USAID to improve education in the schools) Sister Collins is a great cook and we all had a great feast and a fun evening playing games, watching the Grinch Who Stole Christmas then reading the Christmas story and singing Christmas hymns. It was a really nice evening. (Just a little side note, try cooking carrots in left over wassail. YUM!!! ) On Christmas day, after the branch activities, the elders came to our house. We had mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, tossed salad, glazed bacon wrapped meatloaf, cookies, banana bread, and treats the elders brought. Oh my gosh! I had almost forgotten how much 19-21 year old guys can eat! They licked out the potato bowl at the Collins' so we cooked 10 more potatoes thinking that should be enough. Wrong. Elder Ngobeni's plate below is only the average first 

 helping. Anyway, we had a great Christmas...very different but great.

 

There is a restaurant chain here in Africa called Pizza Inn and every Tuesday night they do 2 for 1 large pizzas. It has been the elders' tradition to go every Tuesday after teaching and each companionship gets 2 large pizzas. About half of them have nothing to take home. After that we have to get all 12 of us into our little 5 seater truck to get everyone home. Does Volkswagon stuffing mean anything here?