Blog: Mary celebrates the holidays

For Christmas this year, Mary is visiting her brother and his wife in the town of Mbeya, three hours drive away from the home Mary shares with her mother in Iringa, in western Tanzania. Here, she talks about the way she prepares for the holidays.

At home in Iringa, we spend the time leading up to Christmas preparing at our church. We rehearse a choir performance, as well as a drama and some special poems with a message, which we call ngonjera.

Most weeks, the church service lasts for two hours, between 10am and noon, but at Christmas there’s more going on so it lasts until 1pm. After that we go and eat, and then we visit friends or family nearby. It’s like a party, and if you have money you can get special food. When we can afford it, we buy some rice.

This year I don’t know what is going to happen for Christmas. I’ll probably go to church with my brother and his wife. I will get up at 5am as usual and do the housework.

My best memory of Christmas was the one I celebrated in 2002. I spent the holiday at home with my mother and three of our relatives came to visit: my mother’s younger sister, and my brother and sister, too. We really celebrated together and recalled lots of stories from the past. They haven’t been able to come since, so it was very special.

The worst Christmas was in 2005 when I was 13. Normally you hope to have a change of food, but my mother didn’t have any money, so Christmas was just like any other day.

When I look back over the past year, I think my greatest achievement was my results in the June exams, when I came in fourth in my class; normally, I come in eighth or ninth or tenth. But before the June exams, I was sure to get all of my housework done quickly so that I had time to study.

My aim for 2008 is to really love my studies. We’re now supposed to choose seven out of nine subjects to study, but I would be happy to study all nine!

Read all the installments of Mary’s blog.

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