The clusters of berries on the quinina trees have turned a brilliant red, new peanuts and roast corn on the cob are plentiful for many people, as people are bringing in the harvest after lean months, and my flower beds are in their glory.It's getting close to Christmas.
The women here at the agricultural center are alternately harvesting their peanuts and learning some new Christmas songs, most of them ones you've never heard of.On the other hand, they know maybe only one or two of the classic sing-along ones you know.This year I'm teaching them three more. They're struggling with "Glo-o-o-o-o,o-o-o-o-o,o-o-o-o-o,oria..." (in Lingala it goes "Nke-e-e-mbo-o, nke-e-e-mbo-o, na Nza-a-mbi-i, Nke-e-mbo"...)"Pretty.""How do you ever keep track of all those o's and e's?" are some of their comments.
Some people are starting to buy some livestock for a Christmas or New Year's feast.I refused a goat.My neighbor just bought a pig that they'll butcher and sell most of the meat of on the appropriate date.Last year some neighbors walked to a far village to help with a fishpond harvest in order to get a share of the fish for a Christmas family treat.
On the dark side, the Vanga hospital, seven kilometers away, is filled with severely malnourished young women and their babies, (the doctors say the most ever) and, as always at this time of year, sick kids are 3 and 4 to a bed, their resistance lowered by months of insufficient food before the harvest. The new peanuts and the corn are what re-establish their health after treatment.Significant numbers of people, though, especially those malnourished ones, didn't have peanuts to plant this year, so won't be getting that nutritional boost.How does one share?How does one re-establish people on a solid footing?How to get the Church to care and to do something – to live out the compassion and Good News of God for each one of these?
This year the Lusekele women have decided to let the young people put on the Christmas story, since they are busy putting on a choir extravaganza about the same time.Initially all the kids thought about was how they were going to upstage everyone else in the vaudeville parts (at least the way Congolese tend to play them) of the census of a reluctant population by the occupying power, the slaughter of the babies of Bethlehem, and the bitter end of Herod.Now, though, they've started really trying to put the play together:learning the lines, tentatively trying on the roles, giggling in embarrassment in front of each other, trying to figure out exactly how it was anyway.They've banned the little kids, who are tremendously excited but add nothing but noise and confusion.A few always manage to hover around anyway during rehearsals. (A lucky few of them get to play the shepherds' herd of sheep in the final version.)No one has any idea of the historical and cultural background, since few kids are in the habit of actually reading the Bible, and the way their mothers play it isn't that enlightening.But the pastor says he'll look in on them soon and help them out on that score.Pray that they'll really discover the Christmas story and what the coming of Jesus means for their life, in the course of acting it out.
May we all learn to follow better that Light whose entrance into the world we celebrate.
Miriam Noyes