Last month in Tanzania my team and “Umoja�, another team
that we were working with for the month, celebrated two holidays! I think we
were all a little homesick and really wanted a little piece of America…so we
made it happen.
The first holiday that we celebrated was the 4th
of July…except we actually celebrated on the 7th of July! Sorry America, we were a few days late! In order to make this a true American 4th
of July, we found REAL hot dogs (which isn’t easy to do in Africa), roasted
them over a fire (our contacts really thought we were crazy for this), bought
chips and fruit and also recorded all of us singing the national anthem! The pastor’s family joined in by learning to
roast the hot dogs, trying them and asking us questions about this holiday that
we were so excited to celebrate.
“Christmas in July� was the second holiday of the
month. We went “all out� for our World
Race budget, buying one present for each person that cost less than 1 USD! Some of these presents included an Obama
beanie, a mirror, batteries, a package of cashews, and a deck of cards; all
useful presents on the WR! Our contact had a Christmas tree and lights hiding
behind his TV, so we borrowed that for decoration. Wanting to miss out on as few traditions as
possible, we even bought a few pairs of socks and hung them as stockings from
our windows with clothes pins inserting a package of peanuts, some gum, and a
pen in each. Although ice cream isn’t
really a Christmas tradition, we decided that we all needed a little something
sweet so we made “Christmas Sundaes� complete with chocolate syrup and
m&ms! To top it all off we made a
Christmas angel to go on top of the tree and rocked out to some Christmas
classics from Eryn’s ipod.
We had so much fun recreating these holidays that are so
close to our hearts, and also enjoyed sharing with our “Tanzanian family� why
we did all of these crazy things!
