Apart from the temperature then:
Well there's the tree Sunday the 16th had us scouring the compound for a
suitable branch to paint gold and silver and
make glittery, a bit different from a green fir tree but perhaps more
suitable here and certainly easier to find apart from the plastic ones for sale
by the hawkers outside the supermarket with lights already attached. It looks
good once we've decorated and there are no needles to clear up.
Christmas eve shopping almost felt similar to England in that it was so busy. It too was outside,
the market having doubled in size as it spread up the surrounding roads. Women
sat behind piles of locally grown vegetables
on mats on the floor, frozen chickens (from Brazil) were defrosting in the sun ,
live ones were squawking and amongst all this motorbikes were weaving in and out threatening to knock us over. We enjoyed the buzz of anticipation
as we bought our vegetables for the next day.
What about the food.... well on the
25th we did manage a traditional Christmas
safari dinner with a slight twist of a watermelon nativity it would still have
been excellent in England However the nibbles after the Christmas presentation
earlier in the week were prawn crackers,
chunks of roasted beef and a type of
donut. 
Donuts were also on offer along with sweet and strong tea during a pause in the Christmas eve service and we had a gift of
sweets prawn crackers and biscuits from one of the midwives. One or 2 mince
pies were also eaten thanks to supplies from England and our retired guard who
came to greet us loved the Christmas cake eating two slices and taking a third home for his wife
I wonder what time your Christmas eve service started ours was at 6pm
and got going about 2 hours later lasting till 7 am! We only managed until 11pm
as we were on call the next day but did enjoy the Bible quiz even if Mark,
representing the hospital got his
question wrong.
Christmas day was spent part at home but also we managed a Caesarean and
a chest drain amongst other patients needing our attention. It did stay quiet
for our Christmas meal though and it was not all work, we enjoyed handing out gifts
to the patients: sweets, balloons, more biscuits, oranges, knitted hats and
booties, balls, crayons and outfits for the little babies and no Father Christmas in sight .
Our Boxing day walk was where we really knew we were in Chad we decided
to go and book our New Year camel ride but we were in for a surprise. We
arrived at the golf course, which is where the camel rides take place don't
worry about the greens, there are only browns and were asked if we had come to
see the Hippos. Half and hour later we were watching a group of 15 hippos in
the water just down from N'djamena's main bridge one chomping the greenery
making a terrible noise.
So that was our Christmas was it
really so different what made it good was sharing with others and having fun
celebrating the wonderful news that Christmas is and that doesn't need any
special food or place or weather does it?
