christmas a day early.

People in Zambia seem to wonder why Christmas is on the 25th. Of course it's just a date. They also celebrate it on that day but it seems that many raise the question.
Sunday is going to be a busy day, so we decided to have our family celbration today! Thanks to some gd parents and great gd parents we had a bunch of really nice presents to open! Kezia got a beautiful bike.

Matthews is a taxi driver that parks a couple meters from our house from he's not working. He's been taking us places and giving us a little bit of a deal. Today we went to meet his family. I'll try to uload some pictures that will speak for themselves. They are church goers but when they heard that our church was having a dinner after the service they decided to all come to our church tomorrow! :) it'll be great to have them there and maybe God will touch their hearts in a special way.
When we walked in their one room house (separated by a curtain to make 2 rooms (one is the living room/dinning room/kitchen and the other half the bedroom for all 6 occupants...)the children + one neighbor were sitting on the floor in a corner, and their mom and the youngest girl on a chair. After we sat down in their shabby looking but well kept little place, Matthews proceeded to introduce his family to us. "This is my wife Esther, and this is my eldest Mandarine." To which she stood up and shook our hands. "This is the second, Adia" same protocol. "My son Moses" "And the last born Sarah" The little 2 year old was too afraid of our white muzungu faces to even lok at us at first. It made her parents laugh! We had baked 3 dozens of mini muffins and little by little the word got out and 5 or 6 more neighbors joined in the party to get a taste of these funny looking treats. The children had apparently never heard the 'story of christmas' and so we proceeded to give them the long version even as we were sweating bullets. Liliana proceeded to add to the story in her own way and they were all surprised to see a baby wearing nothing but a diaper.
Babies in zambia are always -did i say always?- covered from head to toe and i mean hats, socks, sweaters etc NO MATTER WHAT the temperature... Yeah, sometimes it's disturbing.

Still haven't learnt how to make nshima (spelling correction on that word) but the other night i made a peanut/tomatoe/garden egg sauce west african style and invited our landlady and 'her pple' to join us. they brought the nshima and some other delicious side dishes. Sace made with leaves of green bean plant. Pumkin plant leaves, etc it was super tasty; one of the best meal we've had in Lusaka yet.
She has two children living in America with their families, and after the meal we talked abt the differences of raising children between the 2 continents.

I found out more abt some traditions surrounding a death. wow. i'll tell more later as my little princess is waking up, asking for 2 lattes please.