A Treasury of Christmas Stories (2 page)

A Swahili Christmas

By Elaine L. Schulte

“H
OW WOULD YOU
like to go on a photo safari in East Africa for Christmas?”

“A safari in East Africa?” I repeated to my husband.

The idea conjured up images of great adventure — and a pang of reluctance. “It sounds wonderful, but it just wouldn't seem like Christmas, and the boys wouldn't want to leave their friends… .”

He handed me a travel brochure, and the colorful pictures of zebras, giraffes, elephants, and wildebeest in Kenya and Tanzania made the prospect more enticing. But we'd have to give up the usual Christmas expenses.

Part of my brain said,
Go, it's the chance of a lifetime!
But another part argued,
It just wouldn't be Christmas without a tree and gifts.

He showed the brochure to our two young sons. They looked at the wildlife animals and whooped, “Let's go!”

“No Christmas tree or presents,” I warned them.

“Who cares?” they answered.

We made reservations for the two-week trip.

As the departure day approached, I was torn between the excitement of going and the sadness at giving up our traditions. The meteorologist added to my regrets with predictions of a white Christmas. In Africa, it would be summer.

On December 23, we flew to London, and changed planes to fly on to Kenya. We landed, exhausted, at the Nairobi Airport, and were driven by van through the outskirts of town, where natives lived in thatch-roofed huts.

We stayed in a modern Nairobi hotel, whose wall decorations included spears, shields, and bright African wall hangings. The hotel's shops featured carved mahogany busts of Africans, as well as carvings of their animals. We were most definitely in Africa.

We registered, and then headed for the hotel's bank to exchange travelers' checks. At the bank's door, a burly African guard held a baseball bat over his shoulder, apparently to fend off possible bank robbers. It seemed that bank security people were allowed to carry baseball bats, but not guns. An African Christmas would be different indeed.

The next morning, Christmas Eve, we met our native driver, Adam, outside the hotel. He greeted me with a bright, “Jambo, Mama.”

His friendly smile convinced me that he was not calling me a “jumbo mama.” Once our luggage was settled, we started out in a zebra-striped minibus.

Riding through the countryside, we bounced on rutted roads for hours before stopping at a colonial hotel, where dusty oleanders bloomed and tea was served on the veranda. Here, Adam picked up our box lunches for later.

Nearby, under the trees, vendors had set up shops for selling drums, handwoven baskets, colorful fabrics, cowhide shields, and Masai calabashes for carrying cow's milk and blood.

“Smell in the calabash,” they urged, taking off the lid and holding it out to us.

I quickly backed away from the putrid smell.

They laughed.

We'll buy souvenirs elsewhere
, I thought, but the boys thought differently.

“Please, can't we buy one?” they begged. “Please! We'll use our own money.”

“Wait till we take them to school!” the boys exclaimed looking over the inexpen-sive calabashes. “Some kids don't even believe we're going to Africa. They'll believe these!”

We drove on, past scattered villages with more thatched-roof huts. Here and there, Masai men herded their scrawny cattle across the dusty land. The men carried tall spears that doubled as walking sticks, looking as if they had posed for the pictures of Masai in
National Geographic
.

We stopped for cattle and Masai herdsmen crossing the road. My husband opened a side window in the van and pointed the camera toward them.

Adam shouted, “No, no, cannot do!” He stepped on the gas, swerved around the angry Masai, and raced away. “Last week a Masai put his spear through a tourist taking his picture! Masai think pictures take away the spirit.”

After some moments, we righted ourselves in our seats and remembered that we were visitors in their country. Still, the encounter added to my misgivings.

It was late afternoon when we approached Lake Manyara National Park. My husband read from the brochure: “The lodge overlooks a mahogany forest, marshes, and scrubland, where we find lions lying in the trees and herds of elephants.”

But that's tomorrow
, I thought.
Tonight we'll spend Christmas Eve in this strange place
.

It was a long day's drive, broken only when we stopped to eat fried chicken from our box lunches and to drink bottled orange juice and water.

We arrived at the rustic lodge in time to wash and change before dinner. Later, in the dining room, a foil Christmas tree stood in the far corner. A few people said, “Merry Christmas,” but the holiday spirit was missing.

After dinner, the lodge manager announced that there would be a program out on the patio. We headed outside for the chairs near a blazing bonfire. Behind the fire stood women wearing bright caftans and colorful turbans high on their heads; the men lined up behind them in white shirts and dark pants.

After we settled down, they hummed a note, and then began to sing in Swahili: “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!” As they sang, their faith radiated like the sparks from the bonfire.

A lump crept to my throat.

Before long, the night filled with “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”

My soul was shaken.

In broken English, the director asked us to sing the last song with them.

My voice quavered as I sang, my English words blending with their Swahili. “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright, round yon virgin mother and child …”

Hot tears streamed down my cheeks. It was Christmas, a real Christmas, not one bound by cultures or traditions.

In Africa, the wondrous story returned to touch me.

Elaine L. Schulte
is the author of thirty-six novels and hundreds of articles and short stories for both adults and children. She has lived in Europe and traveled extensively, but her “Swahili Christmas” turned out to be the best vacation of her life. She and her husband, Frank, have two sons and two grandchildren.

The Christmas Well

By Janet Lynn Oakley

W
HEN THE CITY PIPES
broke at four above zero, the water spread out across our road like the thick roots of a crystal banyan tree and froze. We all came out to stare, our boots slipping on the remains of last week's snow. It was three days before Christmas. Our trees and lights were up, our cookies were in the canisters, and our stockings were on the mantel, but we had no water.

“Not until the twenty-eighth,” the Forest Hills Water Department said and would have left it at that until someone got the brilliant idea of hauling up a water tank and putting it at the top of the hill.

“At least it's something,” a neighbor said and went to organize her pots.

Others weren't so sure and said that the season was ruined.

Our community well arrived that afternoon. An old World War II water tankard bristling with spigots, its camouflage shell looked odd against the neat prewar brick homes lined with hedges and crusted with old snow. Curious children and their parents watched a brief demonstration, and then were left to their imaginations as to how they would actually do it.

I heard about the tankard after I came home from junior high school. Mom, Dad, and my brother, John, had already carried enough pots of water into the kitchen to make it look like a battlefield after a major roof leak. (There was a leak of some sort, a family member later recalled. A pipe had snapped from the cold.) We had water in stew pots, canning pots, saucepans, and even a few tin cans for the powder room. A large boiler was on the stove for doing dishes and washing hands.

In the living room behind the swinging kitchen doors, Handel played on the radio. The windows were painted with angels and snow, and the Christmas tree was ready to trim. Christmas was not going to be delayed.

Winters are cold and often snowy in Pittsburgh. Except for the hordes of children with whom I sledded in the open field below the alley, neighbors only glimpsed and waved at one another as they communally scraped ice or snow off windshields on the way to work or to shop. Snowman-worthy snow might bring out a few townspeople for a moment's divertissement, but that was usually reserved for the younger crowd. Most folks kept to their calendar of baking, Christmas-card writing, and package sending-off. Visiting applied only to a few close friends and often it was by telephone to catch up on the day's news. In winter we just stayed inside. The Christmas well changed that.

From morning to night we bundled up in our bright wool coats and scarves and rubber overboots and trudged up the hill to the tankard with our pails and pots in hand, like ants making lines to a picnic. Neighbors that we hadn't seen since summer or hardly knew at all tiptoed down their steep stairs or off their brick porches to go to the well. As we gathered at the spigots, conversations blossomed in the frigid air, puffing out like little smoke signals.

“What's news, Mrs. Hanna? Did you get your tree?”

“My car didn't start again.”

“My grandkids are coming for Christmas Eve.”

The pots and pans were filled, but so were the spaces between neighbors. Older times were recalled and strategies on hauling water offered.

“When I was growing up on the farm we had a pump. Had to prime it every time. Mother always kept a can of water next to it just for that.”

“We had a well in Italy. The whole village used it.”

We stopped and listened to the stories. We filled and hauled and laughed at our communal inconvenience. Our own village was born right there in our neighborhood.

Anything with a handle was employed. My family preferred our aluminum camping equipment, pots with wire handles that nestled together in the cellar when they weren't in use. But neighbors' containers ran the gambit of tin and copper pails to saucepans. Someone arrived with a wagon full of number five cans.

Techniques on catching water varied. Some hung the handle on the spigot and let the container fill until it looked too heavy to lift. Sometimes it was. Others held the handle of their pots until they began to tilt.

All day and night we came, the water spilling on our boots and onto the pavement. It was so cold that the water froze, leaving icy blobs around the tankard. At night under the streetlight, they gleamed like diamond cow pies.

On Christmas Eve day, the morning broke clear and cold, but by noon the sky had begun to grow flat. The wind stung our cheeks like a sharp wet kiss. We scurried for last-minute presents and lingered over the evening meal, wondering if it would snow. Would we get to church? Or would we have to stay home? Service at eleven o'clock in the evening was always an adventure.

Dark fell at four o'clock. We turned on the lights on our tree and in the windows. Outside, it began to snow. Invisible at first to the eye, the flakes grew from pinpoint to apple blossom size, sashaying down to the frozen ground. Bit by bit, crystal by crystal, the snow covered the street, the cars, the knobby roots of the oak tree in front of our house, with a tenuous mesh of white velvet fuzz.

Then, belying its gentle start, the snowfall suddenly exploded, throwing out snowflakes like the contents of a huge featherbed. In a silent rush, it covered everything and piled up, mutating the street into a close, distant world. By 5:30, it rose four inches deep with more to come.

“Janie, girl, will you go out and get water for dinner?”

I pulled back from the window and smiled at my mother, who stood at the swinging door leading from the long living room to the kitchen. She wore a Christmas apron with ruffles and her hands were covered in flour. Behind her wafted the smell of cinnamon.

“Sure.”

I went into the kitchen and down to the side door landing where coats and boots collected. My mother handed me some pails. I opened the door and stepped out onto virgin snow.

In my life there are scenes that have stayed with me always. They are hallowed memories, forever magical in my mind.

Going to get water from the community well that Christmas Eve is one of them.

The world beyond was still and silent, and a strange pale blue light reflected off hillocks of snow that looked for all their worth like confectioners' sugar.

My neighborhood had undergone a remarkable change. It no longer seemed an average residential street in a big city, but rather, a country lane in a long-ago time. The streets and yards had become one vast empty field, its hedges hidden somewhere under the snow. Candles flickered in windows. The trees overhead formed a tunnel whose roof was made of mist and falling snow. Far off, a street lamp beckoned like a muted star.

I tightened my mittened grip around the handles of the pails, and like a character from
A Christmas Carol
, went out to get water from the well.

When I reached the top of the street I stopped. Under a street lamp, the Christmas well stood, its cylinder shape topped off with several inches of snow, its tongue and wheels hidden. The bright yellow light of the lamp played over it and gave it a curious glow — like the manger in the Nativity scene under the star. It was impossible to see into the gloom around it. There was only the well and the snow rushing down from the sky. I felt utterly alone and at peace.

I put down my pails.

“Merry Christmas,” a neighbor said as she peered around the other side of the well.

“And a Happy New Year,” said another. “What a beautiful night.”

From beyond the well, a line of scarves, hats, and coats dusted with downy snowflakes stepped forward with their pots and pails to say hello. My neighbors' faces were red with cold but each had that particular smile of goodwill and humor that had brought us to the well.

Christmas had come. A broken water pipe had not delayed it. We would gather our water and carry on with our lives as if nothing had happened. Except that something had. With each pot and pail of water we carried away, we also took a new sense of community and resourcefulness — and perhaps the true meaning of Christmas.