What's Christmas like in Uganda?

One of my readers asked how children in Uganda celebrate Christmas, so I went and asked several children and parents.

Would you believe that I really had to pry answers out of the children? They didn’t seem to know what I was talking about when I asked if they were excited about celebrating Christmas. (These were all children who attend church.)

First off, all children have school vacation at this time. Their school year goes from February through November, so they have just had graduation. In January parents will go to sign up their children for another year of school. So you can understand that there are no special Christmas programs at school.

Sunday schools in the churches we have attended thus far, do not seem to be preparing anything extra for Christmas. One pastor told me that Christmas celebrations are a family affair and most people go to their home village for the celebration, (We live in the city here.) like you children go to Grandpa and Grandma’s house. That means that many members are absent at that time and it is difficult to plan something.
One teenage girl (15) I talked with said that it was a real problem for her this year because her church will have a special program on Christmas day and she was asked to participate. Her Dad is very angry about that because he wants her to go with the family to the village. Since she is the only Christian in the family she feels that she has to honor her parent but her heart is with her church.

What happens at those family gatherings? The children all said, food, lots of food; that they don’t get at other times of the year. Maybe Dad will roast a goat or turkeys and large families might roast two goats. If it has been a good year there might also be sweets (candy), and most of the children also get new clothes, showing them off at church on Christmas day. Those are the gifts they receive.

They love to play with all their cousins and listen to adults telling stories. And they love to sing and dance and play loud music. Often there also are fireworks in the evening. We’ve noticed that people in the villages all seem to be related in some way and they love for those who have left the village to come home for the celebration.

Do they decorate inside their homes? Yes, they do and we see decorations available in the shops. We’ve not seen decorations on the outside, they’d probably be stolen.
We don’t go out much after dark either (7 pm) because we’re constantly being warned about how dangerous that is.

2. What kind of food do Ugandan children eat? was another question.

That is quite different from what you are used to. Mostly it is posho and brown beans. Posho is a kind of porridge made from cassava or corn flour, mixed with ground millet. Most cooking is done outside and you can always find a large pan of beans cooking someplace.
They also eat matoki when in season. Those are green bananas, They peel them and place them on layers of banana leaves which they then tie together and put in a large pan to steam over hot coals. When they are ready the bananas are mashed, like potatoes. You can also cook those bananas like potatoes and mash them but not nearly everyone has a stove.
If the parents have a good day (enough money) they might have a sauce to go over the matoki and posho. They call sauce soup and that might be made with ground nuts (peanuts) mixed with greens (vegetables) or mom might have some meat with spices so she uses that for the soup.
They also eat rice with sauce and chipoti (like your tortillas) but that is mostly for rich people.
Snack: mandazi – like a doughnut but not really sweet.
Dried grasshoppers, dried ants. At times you can buy them by the bushel. I was told that they also buy dried ants to put in sauces. That made me realize what was floating in a cup of yoghurt I was offered some years ago.
Of course they love candy but not very many children have the money to buy candy.
And they have many kinds of nuts to snack on.
Fruit: Right now it is mango season, and bananas. Also pineapple, passion fruit and jack fruit. The passion fruit is just coming on the market and does not look appealing. You have to cut it open and squeeze out the most delicious juice.
Jack fruits are big, like melons, only they grow on a tree and you have to work real hard to get to the edible part. I don’t care for them very much. We absolutely love the pineapple here and try to eat it every day.
Did you know there are many different kinds of bananas? We like the little yellow ones the best, they are so sweet. Here on our compound we have 3 kinds of banana trees. Yesterday we were able to pick a bunch of matoki so we had that for supper last evening, with a sauce made with goat meat and tomato sauce.

That’s all for now.
Our prayer is that you all will have a very blessed Christmas. Remember that the celebration is not about the gifts you receive, it is about the “GIFT” God gave us!
The question is: “What do I do with that gift?”