In two days time it would be Christmas and I was very sad. There was no joy and
anticipation that I always felt during Christmas season. Christmas time was the time that our friends and relatives from far visited us. We had good meals and the house was decorated.
There
was beautiful Christmas music
everywhere on the radio and in the shops. The celebrations in our church in the coastal area began in November.
Due to the floods the cyclonic winds and rain that lashed out, our village disappeared with the waters and we had to evacuate. One evening with all the wind and rain, our river burst its bank about two weeks ago and the waters just swished though our village. To get away quickly, we waded through waist high water with a few things we could carry above our heads and we left our village. We walked through the night and we came to a place where it had a hillock.
One side of the hillock had a large
shallow cave. We just sat down, then stretched ourselves and slept. It was nearly mid-day when we awoke. There were sixteen of us. Someone started a fire going and we had some tea. Luckily about half the people had brought tea with them. Next, we cut entire branches of thick leaves and made makeshift shelters very near the cave.
There was shrub jungle in the
distance and a little stream gurgling by it. The countryside looked very green with many trees. We were like gypsies and food was scarce. Families were separated, some would have drowned. Most men had left to find work and money. We had disrupted families and this was the situation. There was a clump of bushes near our shelter and my sick
grandmother clearing a little there, found a green, orange, red leafed plant on the other
side of the clump. It was a
poinsettia plant.
For some
reason it was growing there, as poinsettias usually grew in the high hilly land. Grandmother said it was growing there for us and it was a good omen and a sign from God.
She cleared around the plant so that it could get more sun and more leaves would turn scarlet.
Being 10 years old, I sat and thought of the Christmases past and as I sat musing, suddenly we heard a car horn. Not one but several horns. All of us became alert and we saw a number of cars on a cart track. Our elders approached the cars warily but these were ordinary travellers. They said that the bridge over the river on their route had been washed away and their detour had led them straight to our encampment. They were on their way to another village far away with help for flood victims but circumstances had brought them to us.
After listening to our tale of woe, they decided to wait with us till Christmas day and then leave. They helped us build a big fire and brought out a fair sized tent and pitched it. The tent was large and rectangular and they gave us folding chairs and a couple of tables. Things were happening and it became
exciting. They brought rice, food, pots and pans and cooked us a good meal. They slept inside the tent that night.
Next day was hustling and
bustling. They spoke a long time on their mobile phones and promised that they would help us to build huts and they would tell the land
authorities when they got back to make us cultivate the land around us and would bring us tools and plants.
Soon, it was Christmas Eve and we gathered around the large
bonfire and we sang all the Christmas hymns we knew and then the Christmas songs.
In the middle of this, my older
sister became ill and could not stand.
She was expecting a baby. She had been in a state of shock since we came to the makeshift camp. I was
worried for her because we did not have medical supplies or a nearby hospital. The visitors had nurses among them and they made her comfortable on a ground sheet near the fire and screened off a room with poles and sheets. That night about 10 p.m., my sister gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. This called for a
celebration and many of us danced around the bonfire. For the first time all our pain and agony of the past days escaped us. When morning finally came, my sister was asked, “What are you going to name the
baby?”
Would you believe for the first time after two weeks she spoke and said, “His name is Nauvana which means new.”
And so we celebrated Christmas that day happily. Christmas really came to our new place but it did not come in the cars with the travellers. It came in the birth of my nephew in the midst of our suffering. We saw hope in what this little baby could do. The birth is a universal story of how bad things turn into new hope, just like the hope we found in Baby Jesus. A miracle occurred that night before Christmas and all of a sudden I knew we were not alone any more. I learnt there is always hope and Christmas comes in spite of any
circumstance. Christmas is within us and Christmas came to our encampment that night. |
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