Christmas

We had a lovely, lovely Christmas here at Imani. With a full house, we served a wonderful lobster and seafood buffet on Christmas eve, I played Christmas songs on guitar for a little while, and guests sat around drinking wine until quite late. It was a very nice atmosphere. On Christmas day, everybody had a little shell wrapped in a piece of kanga as a token gift and we put on a big barbecue buffet - beef skewers, goat skewers, tuna skewers and more besides! I was busy since morning preparing a turkey for a few friends, but I’m glad we didn’t serve it to the guests because it was very tough and all the meat was dark! I don’t think I’ll bother trying to cook a Zanzibari turkey again! We had bacon though, which was a treat here on Zanzibar, and traditional English vegetables, gravy and bread sauce! Those of us living here enjoyed that. Then - for everyone - I had also made Christmas cookies with an angel cookie cutter I had found in town!

Christmas night was the classic ‘Christmas leftovers’ buffet. With a small bonfire on, a puff on a shisha pipe, more wine and people seemd to be really enjoying their Zanzibar Christmas! Thanks to our family and friends, Simon and I had loads of prezzies to open, delivered days in advance to our post box in town. Our Belgian friends couldn’t believe how many presents we had!! They say they don’t make such a fuss in Belgium! On boxing day I had a lovely day getting a small Henna design, as is customary to do at times of celebration, and Simon watched Liverpool Football Club win 2-0, which is customary for him to do on boxing day! Now we have New Year to look forward to… I wonder what 2010 will bring to Imani…? we hope a small pier!!!! Or maybe solar panels...