Christmas in South Sudan

This was my first time ever being away from home for the holidays. It was such a unique experience to be able to celebrate Christmas in a new environment with new people, but with the same purpose-welcoming our Lord and savior into the world! Advent was a beautiful time of preparation for the birth of Jesus. Our masses and prayers were very focused on the coming of Christmas and the church was always full, even during daily mass. It was inspiring to see the faith of the people. There weren’t Christmas lights and decorations everywhere around town, but the church did play Christmas music every morning at 6:30 to let us know mass was about to start. (It was only slightly ironic that the first time I woke up to the music, they were playing Silent Night.)

The week of Christmas was full of many celebrations. On Sunday, we had our staff Christmas party. The sisters invite all of the employees from both of their schools and the dispensary to have mass and lunch together. At one point, a pretty great dance party started to Feliz Navidad and it was glorious. Monday and Tuesday, we went caroling with some of the girls from the school. On Monday, we went to the United Nations compound to sing to the Kenyan soldiers and to Bilfam, the village where we host oratory. On Tuesday, we went to the prison and two hospitals. It was so encouraging to see these young girls spreading Christmas spirit to many places that otherwise might not experience it.

We celebrated Christmas Eve Polish style! Christmas Eve dinner is the big celebration in Polish culture so Ania and Marta prepared a traditional dinner of dumplings, cabbage soup and beet soup. We invited over our other polish friends Bartek and Kazik (the salesion vounteers that work next door with the priests) and Piotr (our new friend who works for the Red Cross.) We started dinner by reading the gospel of the birth of Jesus. After that we each took a piece of unleavened bread and went around the room giving Christmas greetings and good wishes to each person. After greeting each other, we took a piece of each other’s bread and then went to someone else. It is a beautiful tradition and we then had a great time eating and exchanging small gifts.

At 11:30 PM, we went to mass at our parish. There were so many people there. We even had to come back to the house to get chairs because we didn’t want to stand for all of Arabic mass. They can get pretty lengthy. We got home from mass around 2 AM and we all went into the sisters’ chapel to greet Jesus and sing a few carols. Then the sisters had set up the table to have hot chocolate and cookies before going to bed. After sleeping for about 5 hours, I decided to get up and go to the English mass, so I could actually understand the language and receive Jesus on his birthday. The rest of the morning was spent getting ready for our big lunch. We invited Fr George (our parish priest/Salesian), Kazik and Bartek over for lunch. It was really nice to celebrate all together!

The day after Christmas, we left for a weeklong holiday in a town called Tonj. It’s about a 3 hour drive from Wau (depending on the conditions of the road, during wet season it can take much longer.) All of us (volunteers and sisters) went for the day to have lunch with the community of Salesian sisters there, but Ania, Marta and I got to stay for the week. It was absolutely beautiful there. I’m hoping to have some time later to write a blog post just about Tonj so be on the lookout for that. We rang in the New Year there with the two sisters we were staying with. We got home from mass around 10 PM, had a delicious dinner and then the sisters broke out some nice beverages for us at midnight. I never would have expected that I would be starting the year like this, but I am so grateful for this experience, everything that I’m learning and the people that God has placed in my life.

I had a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year and I hope you all did as well!