Christmas is Christmasing...Joyous Celebration

Truth be told, it is not an easy job to be a supervisor. Supervising whole lots of work is such a stressful one, and I think among everyone doing the work, the supervisor does the big part; like overseeing the activities going on around here and there, making sure everything is going as planned and expected and in the end, becoming a success. If there's an error in one thing, the supervisor would be blamed. Such is my case earlier today - Christmas day.

Last night, we planned on what to prepare today for both lunch and dinner as we had decided no one would be eating in the morning until they were back from church. Church starts at 10 am and ends at 11 am, just an hour program, which is still okay.

All the food items we bought were kept in my room, and no one touches the food unless they get permission from me. The goal is for me to manage everything to last everyone and also keep for my dad to last him for 6 months or more. So, I instructed everyone not to take anything behind my back unless they'd get permission from me.

As we woke up this morning at 6 am, we observed our morning devotion, and I was the one who gave a short exhortation and led the prayer. We rounded everything up at 7 am and we began the work.

My siblings and cousins were outside cooking using the firewood. As you can see, my younger sister is frying the fish while my cousin is making a solid meal called Semovita and others are busy running errands and helping out. The vegetable and melon soup was cooked first before other things. The reason we fried fish was that our goat had been running away from us to avoid being slaughtered for the celebration. We actually caught a goat yesterday and thought it was ours, only to realize later that it wasn't ours.

Thank God we didn't kill it immediately it was caught, causing the owner to start raining curses on us because of their missing goat. We later saw ours around the house but it was also vigilant and had to turn back to only God knows where. We are planning on going around to look for it with some hired youths in the town, we only need to pay them for their service. Hopefully, the goat would be caught before New Year.

Yesterday, I told my dad to call the gas filler to come around since our gas has finished so we could make our cooking faster and not rely only on one means of cooking - the firewood. It makes it faster when food is being cooked outside and another is cooked on the gas. When the guy came around, I told him to fill the whole kg (6) which was around $7.

This is our tap set up outside where we give room for people around to fetch water as long as there is electricity, but yesterday there was no light and people were coming to take water without being concerned about us at home. We are twelve in the house and we need to manage the water too. I plan to get some fuel tomorrow so that we don't run out of water when there's no electricity, but with the generator, we can easily feel comfortable in the house without anyone inconveniencing each other.

Our plan for dinner is Jollof rice with plantain and I would be in charge of the cooking later in the evening. There are also drinks available for everyone including visitors who might be coming around. This Christmas is getting more fun with people in the house. While some of our relatives have pleaded not to come to celebrate with us due to the economy, we understand and only wish ourselves the best of it.

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_{All images are mine}