South Africa 2011-2012

The Christmas season here has been fun and, as expected, completely different from Christmas at home. On Monday 12/20 two other volunteers and I went to a “Carols by Candlelight”, an event at a park, on blankets, by candlelight, put on by the local Lion’s Club (similar to the Rotary Club). It was part performance and part communal singing of Christmas carols. There were clearly a lot of tourists in attendance, and more retired folks than young people, but it was still a lot of fun.

On Christmas Eve all the volunteers went to the house of the couple who started Give a Child a Family (the Woodhouse’s) to celebrate a Swedish Christmas (“julbord”) with them! The Woodhouse’s invite the volunteers to their house on Christmas Eve every year, though this year even more members of their family were present than usual, so together I think there were twenty-six of us. The food, a mix of Swedish and South African, was spectacular, with nothing too outlandish (the most unusual food was pickled fish; delicious, I might add). After eating and reading the Christmas story, we played a game involving rolling dice to determine the order in which we got to take a present (we had all been instructed to bring one gift worth R50, or about $6.25, to the gathering, so everyone got one gift). There was some singing of Christmas carols, and before long it was time to go to a Lutheran Christmas Eve service at the church of our friends, Anna and Ross (a Swedish couple who met when they were both volunteers at GCF). After that was over we went to their house for julgrot (a kind of rice pudding Swedes eat on Christmas Eve), more games involving throwing dice to see who gets which present (we had each brought a gift for this too), and my favorite piece of Swedish culture yet: Kalle Anka. An article in slate.com describes this tradition this way:

“Every year on Dec. 24 at 3 p.m., half of Sweden sits down in front of the television for a family viewing of the 1958 Walt Disney Presents Christmas special, "From All of Us to All of You." Or as it is known in Sverige,Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul: "Donald Duck and his friends wish you a Merry Christmas."

Kalle Anka, for short, has been airing without commercial interruption at the same time on Sweden's main public-television channel, TV1, on Christmas Eve (when Swedes traditionally celebrate the holiday) since 1959. The show consists of Jiminy Cricket presenting about a dozen Disney cartoons from the '30s, '40s, '50s, and '60s, only a couple of which have anything to do with Christmas. There are "Silly Symphonies" shorts and clips from films like Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and The Jungle Book. The special is pretty much the same every year, except for the live introduction by a host (who plays the role of Walt Disney from the original Walt Disney Presents series) and the annual addition of one new snippet from the latest Disney-produced movie, which TV1's parent network, SVT, is contractually obligated by Disney to air.

Kalle Anka is typically one of the three most popular television events of the year, with between 40 and 50 percent of the country tuning in to watch.” .....

I found it to be a highly goofy and entertaining show! It did make me miss Christmas programs that are sort of classic in the U.S. like “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, but I’ll have a chance to watch that again soon enough.

On Christmas Day we just went to church in the morning and had the Christmas Party for the children at Give a Child a Family right after that, which basically consisted of Santa (one of the female volunteers) giving all the children their presents. They were very excited. One of the volunteers also made a movie with pictures and videos of all the kids, which we showed to them that evening, and they were, as you might imagine, wild about seeing themselves on video, so much so that at its conclusion they demanded to see it again. Other than that it was a very relaxed day, marred only by the fact that we had no internet that day and so none of us could Skype or talk to our families. Internet continues to be sketchy here so if I say I’m going to talk to you at a certain time and don’t show up online then, it’s because I don’t have internet, not because I’ve forgotten or found something better to do! (I mean really, what would I rather do than talk to one of you lovely people?)

This week SDC and the Co-op are closed, which means I’m at GCF this whole week making myself as useful as possible (working in the kitchen, with the children, etc.). Back to work next week!