Do They Know its Christmas Time?
Day 269
Nope, we we know it is but it doesn’t feel like it. Do the Zanzibarians? Sure but do they care? They are muslims, probably not considering they don’t celebrate it. The rest of Africa? Yeah they know, it doesn’t matter how poor they are. There, does that answer the songs question? Now that I’ve come to Africa to find out if they in fact know its Christmas time.
Right, so Christmas morning in Africa. Sounds exotic maybe but I’d rather be home today. We had our usual breakfast although a bit depressing this morning. Our second consecutive Christmas away, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. We met a couple at the guesthouse yesterday that we planned on going snorkelling with today. We figured it would be a good way to keep our minds off not being home for Chrsitmas day. The four of us were told to be ready for 9:30am, it was now 10:30am and we were being told only 5 more minutes. About 5 minutes later we were being told, “No snorkel today, tomorrow you go.” We had no idea what was going on but since we were leaving tomorrow we just decided to leave for the beach and get on with our day.
As we walked to the beach the same guy tells us that the boat guy and the snorkel gear would be here in 20 minutes, no problem just wait. Ah Africa, we said no thanks and continued on to our usual spot on the beach. After a few hours of beach time we walked to Paradise Beach. One of the more attractive hotels on the beach and a restaurant that has a good reputation. The beer was cold and the view great, we also ran into 4 Americans who were also staying at our guesthouse that we shared our lunch and drinks with. We spent close to 3 hours in Paradise Beach before returning to the beach for the afternoon.
Just before another fantastic sunset we added our airtime on our Tanzanian SIM card so we could call home. We called my mom, sister and grandfather first. The connection was pretty poor, though we were able to get in Merry Christmas before it became to had to talk. Besides the poor connection it was just too hard to talk with my mom today. To be away for this Christmas was really difficult and all I could think of was how hard it was for my family back home. Christmas morning for my family has always been our most enjoyable and important time together and I think it really hit me today how things would never be the same again. I tired to focus on being home next year and looking forward to new traditions. We had a much better connection with Jordana’s family and Jordana had a good talk with her mom and dad. Calling home had made the day even tougher for me, usually after calling home we miss everyone but it feels good to talk to our familes and puts us in a good mood. Tonight I just wanted to have dinner, go to bed and move on in the morning.
That’s pretty much the way the rest of the night went. After dinner we were in bed by 10pm and all packed up to leave in the morning. I couldn’t wait for the 26th to come.
Tags: Christmas, Tanzania, Zanzibar
Michael Coroneos
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