It was the first year that I would spend the holidays away from home and even though I tried really hard to forget about Christmas altogether, it turned out to be quite impossible! When I landed in Uganda, the first thing that caught my eye was a really tacky Christmas tree with thousands of bright, blinding, flashing lights.
On the way into town I quickly realised that Ugandans had a strange obsession with flashing lights and Christmas was clearly the perfect occasion to satisfy their craving: On every corner, in every shop and in every window were blinking Christmas decorations and to make things even worse Christmas music was played incredibly loud from every radio in Kampala. 
Do you remember what Boney M did to some of the most beautiful Christmas songs? Now try and imagine what a low budget completely talent-free Ugandan version of Boney M might manage to come up with – make it out of tune, add some incredibly repetitive pop rhythms and jingle bells and you’re half way to the disastrous tunes coming out of every radio on every corner! So it should come as no surprise that my expectations of Christmas Eve were fairly low – especially since I had to spend the majority of it travelling back from the most southern corner of Uganda to Kampala. Getting up at 5.30am, being thrown around on roads with a million potholes and not being allowed to stop for a decent lunch or even a cup of coffee because our driver wanted to be back in time for mass meant that my chances of a peaceful Christmas were never particularly good.
Fortunately, being an ODI does not only mean that you spend hours fighting to get medical bills reimbursed, but also that you’re part of the global ODI family and never really alone no matter where you go. So when the ODIs from Uganda heard that Ewa and I would be coming into town, they spontaneously invited us to join them for their Christmas dinner despite never having met us before. It was a bit strange to turn up at someone’s Christmas dinner and introduce yourself – after all, you normally spend Christmas with people you’re very close to – but the fact that we were all ODIs meant that we bonded immediately, had plenty of things to talk about and experiences to share. So against all odds, Christmas Eve turned out to be a lovely evening. Rather than with my family and our traditional Christmas music and food, I spent it with a Pole, an Indian, an Irish and a Swede, eating Köttbullar, drinking mulled wine and listening to completely random Christmas music in Uganda!
Could it be any more international? I don’t think so!
Could it have been lovelier given that I was miles away from home? Definitely not!
PS: For those of you who do not scare away from pain and find strange enjoyment in torturing themselves (and I actually hope that this applies to none of my friends), here’s a link to “Krismis in Kampala“ by Zinkplaat … keep in mind, you have been warned!
http://www.findmusic.co.za/Music/All+Genres/Zinkplaat
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