Christmas in Africa

It's a beautiful summer day here in Lesotho. I've just returned from a week at Bethel, the site of my friend KJ. She's a teacher at the Permaculture/Technical school and lives in a really sweet house on the school compound. To get to her site we had to ride buses and taxi's for hours, hike for several miles down to a river, ferry across the river in a boat and ride in the back of a truck to her house. It was an all day adventure.

It wasn't feeling much like XMAS until we went into KJ's house. The weather here has been really warm and there isn't as much Christmas "hype" in the stores, radio etc. It's weird being in the S.Hemisphere. KJ went all out with decorations and made a construction paper fire, stockings and snowflakes. To celebrate Christmas we spent several days eating fantastic food, watched "It's a Wonderful Life" (on a laptop), decorated cookies, exchanged funny gifts and enjoyed each others company. I loved hiking around and seeing another part of Lesotho (and collecting rocks :) ) We had access to solar electricity, flush toilets and hot showers, it was awesome! I also was able to receive a few phone calls from home. I had to answer the calls in a field, where the best signal came through. I talked to some of my family in the pouring down rain, but it was awesome to say hello and hear everyones voices.

The most memorable part of Christmas this year was getting in touch with our food source. We had ducks for xmas dinner (couldn't find a turkey). Casey and Andy each lopped the heads off of a duck, we then plucked them, gutted them and ate them for dinner. It was a dramatic, disgusting and humorous event. The ducks turned out fantastic, but it was a lot of work.

It was a fun week and one of the most memorable holidays I've ever had. Hope everyone in the states had a great holiday also.

Tomorrow Casey and I are headed to the Wildcoast to do some backpacking and relaxing on the Indian Ocean.