A Glimpse of The Gambia: A mix of Christmas Traditions

When part of 4 different families come together for a holiday each has their own set of traditions. Lori’s family has chili for dinner on Christmas Eve; so she got her grandmother’s recipe and made it for us. Only the measurement for the chili powder got mixed up and it was incredibly spicy. Lori and I could barely finish our first bowl and Eric was sweating. Nyamo & Chun, some of the Gambian MEHDA staff, enjoyed it immensely; it was the first thing we cooked that Nyamo didn’t have to add hot sauce to. Then we had our final Advent service and ended with singing Christmas Hymns by candle light. Then we got up early on Christmas day to open presents and had a breakfast casserole and Eric’s family’s Hard Cake. We took the long walk to church for the Christmas service that didn’t have a whole lot to do with Christmas and later went in to the city to visit friends. We ended the evening by celebrating with our compounds and sharing with them a little bit of why we celebrate Christmas. At Lori and my compound we made a fire and cooked hot chocolate to share with everyone. We passed out candy and cookies as well as Christmas cards. We did have to explain to many of the adults that the card did not have any money in it as they expected; but instead we had bought a large (50kg) bag of rice for the compound to share.

The temp made it up to 102 on Christmas Eve