A Tropical Christmas

For the first time in my life I was away from my loved ones for Christmas, without the need of a down jacket and where glistening snow was nowhere in sight. Rather I spent the holiday on a tropical island with a fellow volunteer. Because of the events explained in the previous blog I was forced out of my site around Christmas, which I had expected to spend the holiday with my community. It was still a great Christmas despite the lack of candy cane and wrapping paper. Cecilia’s village is similar to my old one in infrastructure (palm roofs and mud walls) and population (Tsimihety). Therefore I feel overall it emanated a similar Christmasy ambiance that own village would have. We went “grocery” shopping a couple days before in the neighboring district capital to find the perfect holiday bird. We spotted our chicken, which was a bit small for slaughter, which we over paid for (a total of 2.5 dollars!)! We named it Noel for festivities sake. We spent the holidays listening to Hindi music on cassettes that Cecilia bought on discount from a local Karani shop (Indian minority in Madagascar) and drinking precious hot cocoa sent from the states. At night we would be drenched by the tropical storms (rainy season!) from her leaky palm thatched roof while simultaneously being eaten alive by potentially malarial laden mosquitoes since rats chewed through her bed net. In the morning we’d be covered in rat shit with an overzealous roaster crowing outside her mud hut. But this didn’t dampen our holiday mood. Cecilia held the knife by the chicken’s throat and screamed, “No! You have to do this…it’s character building!” I held the butcher knife in my right hand while stepping down on its wing with it’s beady eyes looking up at me. Nope, this wasn’t going to happen either. This is when we grabbed the small children already staring in at us through the window. The nine year old boy takes the knife and nonchalantly slits its jugular. The other children immediately start gutting its innards-how convenient. We spend 3 hours roasting the chicken on Cecilia’s homemade cook stove made out of mud and clay while making paella with the use of dried shrimp reminiscing about our past Christmases. I’m looking forward to my next tropical Christmas!