part 5: merry american christmas

i’m aware that christmas is being celebrated differently in every family. so this is post can only be a small insight into what i experienced during christmas time in america.

in germany, we start christmas preparations on the first advent sunday. that’s usually when all the christmas markets start. friends, colleagues, families come together to drink gluhwein, eat (yeah, christmas is about eating), and spend a merry time.

in my family, we use this time to bake cookies and set up some light christmas decoration. but we don’t put up the tree until the 23rd. and with regards to the presents, we try to keep it simple. one or two per person is enough. but granted, my niece gets more than that.

my experience in america is that people decorate their houses like crazy. lights inside, and on the outside. most families try to outshine the neighbors. and if you live in a neighborhood that is sort of boringly decorated, people drive to so called “gardens of light”. there, they sit in their car, going less than a mile an hour and goggle at some christmas decoration that was professionally set up. they even pay for this. why? i don’t know. i also don’t understand the concept of driving through this thing because you would clearly be much faster walking. and it would be healthier for everyone involved as well.

whatever. americans get their tree early in december, and almost immediately it is set up in the living room next to the fireplace. there’s always a fireplace. even in houses in florida that are in a way too warm climate to need a fireplace you will find one. it’s part of the charme.

apart from the whole santa coming down the chimney, and putting out some cookies and milk for santa to have, presents are being giving on the morning of the 25th. that usually results in christmas pictures of not yet presentable looking people in pjs unwrapping presents. lots of them. i have never seen this many christmas present in my life. in my first host family, the children got 30 individual presents. and i know that this is a rather small number. there’s families that hit the 60+ present mark. unbelievable.

in the aftermath, all the wrapping paper is not being recycled but thrown into the regular trash. we had three enormous trash bags that we were putting out on the trash. add to that all the cardboard boxes…

and all of this for one day only! here in germany, we celebrate christmas for three days. so the whole hassle is worth it. i was disappointed when in america, i found that life was back to normal on the 26th.

happy holidays everyone!

franzi

there won’t be snow in africa this christmas time

four years ago, i returned from mozambique after a three-month intense work experience.

my time in africa was great. i had amazing colleagues who helped me overcome many obstacles. i worked with the poorest of the poor, with the sick, with orphaned children…i was put into situations that were so intense that they haunted me for quite a while. it was the poverty, the fate or families and communities…it is difficult to put this into words.

the reason i am writing this today, on christmas eve, is that i wanted to share with you the challenges other people face, people most of us will never meet, challenges most of us will never (thankfully) face.

one of my tasks was to go on field trips to talk to those who were recipients of food aid. i talked to organizations and individuals to check if the quality was ok, if they received the rations that they were supposed to get. i checked on storage facilities, the bookkeeping…basically everything that happens after the food commodities left our storage point.

of course it was the contact with the locals that was the most touching one. for example, i met a mother who had twins. when i came to her home there was also a little boy with her, he looked like he was five years old. the little ones looked like they were newborns. very tiny, very thin. i was then told that she had five kids in total and her husband worked in south africa. this is where he got infected with hiv and once he was too sick to work anymore he returned home, only to give the virus to his wife. she took care of him when he was sick but when she got sick also, he accused her of infidelity and was very harsh on her. he didn’t tell her why he was sick. during this time she got pregnant several times. the last pregnancy, she had the twins. while she was pregnant, her husband died. so there she was, five kids total, three of them carried the hi-virus. she herself had aids and was too weak to work.

she was dependent on aid agencies and spend a significant amount of time with the twins in the hospital because they were malnourished and way below the already low standards for child weight in developing countries. when i saw here, her kids were nine months old. they were about the size of my niece, who was just four weeks old back then. and with close to 4kilos, my niece weighed more than these kids.

the babies did not move much. it was like they were only able to do the most necessary movements. for any other movement they didn’t have the energy.

the older boy who was with her was not five but nine years old. he also was underdeveloped for his age. he didn’t attend school, he helped his mom with the twins and otherwise was begging for food.

now, four years later, she is probably not alive anymore. i am almost certain she lost the fight to the virus. i don’t know how her kids are doing. if they are still more or less healthy, they are probably with relatives. these relatives will make them work for their living so the kids cannot go to school and learn how to escape the cycle of poverty. because they never had their parents to teach them life skills, such as farming, important knowledge that has been passed down generation after generation is lost.

i returned to germany on december 22. apart from the obvious temperature difference that i thought would kill me straight at frankfurt airport (no, over 50 degree celsius temperature change does not kill you), i was stunned by the shopping madness that was going on because of christmas. people running all over town buying whatever they could get. their grocery shopping looked like there was no tomorrow.

very vividly, i remember standing in city center, not able to understand what was going on. the extreme differences that i was exposed to in such a short time frame – extreme poverty and then goods and money in abundance – was too much for me to comprehend at this moment.

like i said, it took me months to adjust. and now, four years later, i do wonder what happened to the promises i made to myself back then. the ambitions i had, the giving back i wanted to do.

maybe i did my share and are just not able to see it because i expected more visible out comes. maybe i didn’t do anything at all.

this christmas, and all other 364 days of the year, remember those who cannot speak for themselves. remember the ones too weak to make their needs heard, those who are sick, those who have nothing.

but also remember that these people, despite all their hardship, are among the happiest people i have ever met.

keep them in mind when you think your life is tough, when the complaining and bickering of life is taking its toll. this is your life and you have many chances to make the best out of it. not many get these chances so suck it up and be a better person.

merry christmas,

franzi

my second family

i told you about my first host family so it’s only fair to tell you about the second one.

when we met in rematch, i was actually constantly crying. i’m not a cry baby but the situation in my first host family was just so bad at this point that whenever i was asked about how i was doing, i would tear up and dissolve into a little piece of misery.

still, the kids in the second family seemed to liked me, and the host parents were a lot warmer – to each other, to everyone around them, to me. it’s like i switched from the north pole to brazil.

i’m still in touch with this family, and i try to visit them often. my kids are growing up now, one is now a freshman in college. and it is great to have them in my life. though i wish we were much closer.

and to top it off, i decided to share some things i learned from them that will forever be with me:

righty tighty – lefty losy (yes, indeed, before my au pair year i had no idea how to unscrew things. i just tried one direction and it either worked or it didn’t)

if it’s yellow, let it mellow – if it’s brown, flush it down — no explanation needed

the door needs to be locked turning the key away from the long side of the door, unlocking works the other way – turn the key towards the long side (probably doesn’t make much sense to you now, i can demonstrate this life lesson better than i can explain it here)

they encouraged me to learn swimming (when i realized that the little one was able to do it and i was the only one left at the shallow end of the pool, i felt the urge to change something about this)

they taught me the true meaning of positive reinforcement and enabled me to see how a little “good job” and “well done” here and there can work magic

…and there is so much more…

franzi