Mim In Mali: Looking Like Christmas!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christ-mas……! Except that the particles in the air are red dust and black plastic bags instead of crisp white snowflakes. We have hung a few red and gold ribbons in the livingroom, set up a tabletop Christmas tree on a wooden box, and placed the new African nativity set on the small cupboard that holds our dishes. We listen to our one Christmas CD - a Chris Tomlin CD of Christmas carols (why didn’t I think to bring more? ...next year!) and have even baked some Christmas cookies. It doesn’t quite look and FEEL like Christmas to us yet! But then, what does “Christmas” look like? In reality, that first Christmas must have looked a lot more like where we are in Mali this year, than any place we have been for Christmas in our lives!! When I look out my window, I can see small houses with flat roofs and unscreened windows, and courtyards where small fires are built to cook simple meals. The streets are rough and dusty—one NEEDS a feet-washing after walking any distance on them. I can hear (CLEARLY, at 4 am) the braying of a donkey that might be the descendent of the one we like to think Mary traveled on to get from Nazareth to Bethlehem in answer to Caesar’s command for a census count. There might be a few cattle wandering down the street, tended by a Fulani herdsman, like as not; probably a few sheep are in view, and a couple of hens with a flurry of chicks scratching in the dust. There may be a neighbors’ dog, or a couple of goats in the picture as well. [No need to seek out a live nativity scene.: )]

Children of all sizes are out and about from daylight til well after the sun goes down. Infants are carried on the hips or slung on the backs of sisters just slightly older themselves. (Well, maybe a little older. – But we have seen tiny babies on the back of children that look to be no older than 3 or 4, and I watch in amazement as a mother places her newborn on the lap of her 2 year old (Yes, her 2 year old!) sitting on the bench beside her, then calmly picks the baby up again in a few minutes when the toddler gets restless.) ‘Big’ brothers stop in at the church services and listen for a bit, then shepherd their toddler siblings back out the door and down the street to wherever it is they have decided to go that day. [I can visualize Mary telling Jesus to take young John or James out to play, and a similar scene ensues.]

Toys are what you make them

Toys are made of whatever is at hand: a bicycle tire or a plastic bag on a string make dandy toys to chase down the street with a stick or watch fly aloft on the breeze. An empty plastic coke bottle works to play kick-the-can, by your-self or with a friend. ( A recent picture captured 3such tires lined up in parking-lot fashion against the church wall, with rolling sticks balanced on top, while their young owners ventured inside to hear the Bible story, or listen to the singing and the drums. [No, I don’t think that Jesus had coke bottles to play with, or plastic bags either, for that matter. But maybe his kite was made from a scrap of material from a worn and discarded garment, or he had a whistle made from a length of sweet grass, or bamboo. And I imagine that his feet got as rough and calloused as these boys’ feet get as he ran and played with the other boys in Nazareth.] In Yirimadio, donkey carts and small pushcarts raise trailing clouds of dust (and flies) as they wend their way over the rugged streets and roads. Piles of rubbish seem to be everywhere.

Small boutiques open their doors for customers and tailors hang up their samples on pegs on their shop walls. Carpenters set their beds and cupboards outside tiny workshops to be seen by passersby, maybe choosing this quiet morning to varnish a new piece. The crippled beggar makes his way to his spot where traffic has to slow to cross a dry waterway and then turn a corner, hoping to make enough to sustain himself another day. Children head off to school and enterprising women sit at food booths near that busy corner. Fruits and vegetables, eggs to be fried and served on fresh bread for breakfast sandwiches, maybe a few soaps and household items are for sale.

Mary and Joseph may have looked out on a similar scene, don’t you think? If the angels did not visit you and give you a heads up—Christmas looked like any other day in Bethlehem. Mary probably planned to go down to the market to buy provisions for the day, and draw water for the day’s work from the community well. She may have had a scarf to wear draped over her head to shield her from unwelcome stares, as well as the heat of the mid-day sun. That scarf could also be coiled to make a more comfortable resting place for the pot that she carried back to her house on her head, pregnant or no. [Plastic buckets and light metal basins substitute for clay pots around us here in Yirimadio, but I still stand amazed at the loads they can carry on their heads.] Joseph was most assuredly dressed more like the men of Mali, with their long flowing kaftans and loose trousers, than in the Docker’s and polo shirts that you guys might see in your closet.

Living in Mali has given us a new perspective on what Christmas looks like. It is a different, and sometimes uncomfortable picture. We still enjoy some of our traditions,and the Christmas carols we listen to. But my material trappings of ‘Christmas’ seem much less worthwhile, and I am forced to look at this gift of God in new ways. What about you? How does your ‘Christmas’ look this year?
Make it a meaningful one, no matter how and where you celebrate it. It is still a celebration of the greatest gift ever given—Jesus, incarnate/come in the weak form of a man-child- to bring new life to us all.

Have a blessed Christmas!