Christmas Eve

Today was a busy day! After giving Mama Fifi a large list of fruits and veggies I needed at the market and running a load of laundry so it would be ready for her hang, Mark and I went into town to get some last minute groceries for Christmas. We went downtown to the Nakumatt because I figured they would have a few more of the specific items I needed. For instance, I wanted brown sugar but that is not available here so the next best thing is mixing molasses into white sugar. (1 TBLS molasses per 1 cup white sugar). The trick was finding molasses. We asked one of the workers at the store (BTW: Nakumatt has a worker in EVERY aisle to assist but I think also to prevent shoplifting. It’s a little weird to have so many people around and if you take something off the shelf, they come right away to rearrange the other items so that everything is up to front.) At first, the worker said no but then found Mark a few minutes later and said yes. Indeed they did have a few cans of it. It was a little pricey but since I’ll use it a little at time, it will last me awhile. Something else I was looking for was either buttermilk or what they call “curdled” milk. All the milk cartons were labeled in French or Kinyarwanda and we weren’t sure how to say it in French. I tried to ask a worker but he didn’t understand what I wanted so I went with my gut feeling and bought a small carton of what I thought I wanted. I got home and discovered that I was right!

After lunch I made our traditional 3 “Candy Cane” breads with some slight variations. I couldn’t find dried apricots for the filling so I substituted dried pineapple. With the cherries it was a little sweet, though, so to cut the sweetness a little, I added some cinnamon. I liked the flavor of that! I think I’ll keep using the cinnamon. Also, for the decoration on top, I have always used fresh mint leaves with the cherries but I couldn’t find mint so I used cilantro leaves! They didn’t look quite as nice but I didn’t mind the flavor. It was interesting. Maybe I plant some mint for next year.

While the breads were rising, I mixed up a buttermilk spice cake that I told Myriam Bonvallat I would bring to the potluck on Christmas.

In the evening we decided to attend an English Christmas Eve service. It was a candlelight service with LOTS of candles. They had a nice variety of music: mostly Christmas carols with some worship songs mixed in, some adults singing, some kids, some “wazungu” (white people), some Rwandans. In general, it was well done. A young Rwandan man gave his testimony which was very well done. He had it well thought out and presented it well. It was interesting because his Kinyarwandan name means “light” and with it being a candlelight service, he tied it all into his talk. At the end, everyone took a candle and we stood around the room and lit them while singing “This little light of mine.” It was a nice touch.

Mark and I stayed up a bit and wrapped Emily’s presents. We bought 3 small sheets of wrapping paper and some ribbon at Nakumatt and also used the brown grocery bags from Nakumatt (plastic grocery bags are illegal here in Rwanda so all the stores use brown paper. Even bread comes in paper bags rather than plastic). While we wrapped, Emily baked some chocolate chip cookies for Mark’s Christmas present. The house smells good after baking bread, spice cake and chocolate chip cookies!!

We are looking forward to celebrating Jesus’ birthday!