Celebrating Christmas in Juba

This is our 10th Christmas in Africa, but our first Christmas in South Sudan.

So how did we celebrate Christmas in Juba?

Children's Christmas Nativity play (Dec 19th)

Esther and Ben were very kindly included with the pupils from Joel's little preschool as part of the acting cast for the school's Christmas Nativity.

Esther was Innkeeper.
Ben was Joseph.
Joel was a shepherd.

All 9 children involved did very well, remembering their lines and performing brilliantly for the parents and the entire MAF staff, who all came to sit on plastic chairs in the playground to watch the show...

Christmas Carols on the banks of the River Nile

It was wonderful to be involved in Juba's first ever Carols By the Nile!

Actually getting to the 5pm Carol Service ended up as rather a challenge. Surly-looking soldiers had blockaded the roads leading down to the river. Standing or sitting sullenly on large, black tyres at the road junction, the soldiers were munching on packets of food and drinking bottles of coke. Despite their relaxed appearance, they proved to be uncommunicative, so it was impossible to know why the road had been blocked off. We tried a different route, but the traffic was backed up from another blockade.
In Juba, with a car-load of children, we don't take risks. We felt uncomfortable as we headed into this traffic jam:

We did not want to get trapped, as we did not know what was going on and were concerned in case the situation deteriorated. So we turned the MAF vehicle around and started to head back for home, disappointed that we might miss the Carol service.

But just at that point, the soldiers suddenly mounted their jeeps and drove off, clearing the road and creating a passage for us to get through to the hotel where the Carol service was to be held! Andrew turned the vehicle around again and we drove on unhindered...

It was an amazing venue, situated alongside this historic river (on left of photo):

Esther did a great job when it was her turn to do one of the Christmas Story Bible Readings:

As dusk fell, it was the turn of the children to come up to the front and sing "Away in a Manger". Beautiful!

I enjoyed being part of the choir for the evening. When the dark night of South Sudan covered our view of the river, the fairy lights came on, winding around the thatched banda and creating an almost magical atmosphere!

 A nice surprise
We were taken by surprise one evening when Carol Singers turned up on our door-step one warm Juba evening! What a nice gesture for Christmas.
It was the first time our children had experienced the concept of Carol Singers, but for me it was a lovely reminder of traditions from my UK Christmases, pre-Africa!

Secret Santa
On Tuesday evening we hosted a small Christmas get-together for friends from the compound/Joel's school. It was a fun evening, with a bring-and-share meal, a Christmas Quiz and a Secret Santa game.

For Secret Santa, everyone brought a mysterious, unlabelled gift to place under our well lit tree (tree- lights courtesy of a local shop- we ended up with more lights than tree, but it was a nice effect!):

 Everyone got into the spirit of the "Secret Santa" game. It can get very competitive at times, as it involves lots of "stealing" of other people's presents if they have chosen a gift you like!

It was nice to have everyone over to our home to celebrate Christmas together.

Christmas: A Time to Give
We all joined in with helping friends to pack up 400 Christmas packages to be distributed among some of the most needy in our neighbourhood.

It was a big job to pack up all those food parcels! Many people came along to help, which meant that this huge task was completed in just the Tuesday morning.

There was plenty to do, from measuring the beans, flour and sugar into 1 kilo portions for each parcel, to making sure that each package also had the allocated amount of tea, milk powder, biscuits, cooking oil, washing soap and a piece of clothing. Necessities which we take for granted, but a luxury for those who live day to day with next to nothing.

We were all kept busy...

On Christmas Eve, some of us went out into the community with the leaders from the organisation that heads up this amazing Christmas distribution. Ben chose to come along with Andrew and I, joining in with some teenage girls from a local orphanage, who also came to help give out the parcels in some of the slum areas of Juba.

The poverty in the shanty-town areas should shock me, Sadly, I have seen it so much in South Africa and in parts of Tanzania. It no longer shocks me, but it still saddens me every time. Giving out the food parcels was a tiny something to help provide enough for a decent Christmas dinner for the families living in rickety shacks, in dingy, muddy corners of the city...

A view from behind our delivery truck as we arrive at the homes where we had the first distribution point:

After this distribution point, we moved on to the town cemetery, where there is an informal settlement of wooden, ramshackle homes, where the poorest of the poor survive day to day. Prostitution, drunkeness, violent abuse of women and children is horribly rife in these areas.

Arriving at the cemetery entrance and preparing for the distribution of the food parcels:

The one thing that strikes me in these situations is the lack of security. If you live in a little wooden shack, with tarpaulin for your roof, with rotting walls and without enough money to purchase a door or a padlock and perhaps only a curtain to close over the doorway, how do you have any security? How could a woman prevent a man bent on rape from entering the hut she calls home? How can she shield her children? The children in this particular area are especially vulnerable to abuse, neglect and starvation. There were plenty of naked children, with distended stomachs, wandering around when we arrived on Christmas eve.
 There were also a few women tottering around, their eyes unfocused and bodies swaying with the effects of too much alcohol. Some of them were onlookers. A few had come with an invitation card which gave them the right to a food parcel. I watched one of them wander off down the dusty track, 3 food parcels balanced on her head as she swayed and staggered away. I couldn't help wondering how she would use them, hoping that she would use the contents to make herself and her children a good meal and not sell it to fuel an addiction.

The majority of recipients were mothers and some grannies and dads, who queued in an orderly fashion at the entrance to the cemetery. They brought their invitation cards with them and we ticked each card as they received their package, so that the giving out of food parcels could be monitored and each person just took the one allocated to them. The system worked well, despite the great crowds that started to gather.

Ben watched it all from his vantage point on the roof of the pick-up truck full of parcels:

In just one hour, the parcels had been given out. A fantastic initiative on the part of Dutch friends who led and organised it.
It was good to be able to be involved, although sad to see the desperate and overwhelming need in this place. Hopefully, each parcel is a sign that Someone cares for each of these people caught in lives so full of challenges that we cannot begin to imagine.