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the major holiday season is here. of course in uganda, unless you invest in celebrating, that holiday season can completely pass you by since there are no seasonal changes to indicate the passing of fall and the onset of cold and snow and winter. halloween, the now harbinger of retail holiday chaos, doesn’t exist here, nor thanksgiving; christmas - marked by tinny christmas carols blasting from roadside music kiosks - does exist but in an unfamiliar way. but, the thing i’m realizing with a kid around is a reinvigorated interest in holiday celebration and traditions. christmas has always been a big one for us at home but we haven’t celebrated it in a traditional - snow, tree, presents - way since 2005 (our last christmas in the u.s.). our africa christmas standard is to travel - rwanda 2006, zanzibar 2007, and we’re contemplating ethiopia 2008. travel’s good for us as the parents, but we’re still doing what we can to give odin a chance at his first halloween, first thanksgiving, and first christmas in the middle of africa. so, he trick-or-treated on halloween, we’re planning a big turkey feast on thursday with friends, and we’ll hang his christmas stocking for santa to fill with oranges and trinkets. more stories and pictures (odin’s a cow!) inside.

odin’s lucky to have his great friends allie and tobias include him in all their kid adventures. halloween night odin, allie, tobias, and friends trick-or-treated a mini route through kansanga, the coles’ neighborhood in kampala. the route truly was mini - it was only 3 houses, and one of them was aussie getting into the holiday spirit. to draw out the event, it was a trick-or-treat cum easter egg hunt as the kids had to search out their candy in the gardens. yay for odin’s marmee who thought far enough in advance when we left mn on oct 4 and sent odin with a surprise present - his halloween costume. he was a bovine hit.

odin’s friends. odin, cow; allie, fairy; tobias, pirate #1.

house gates/walls are an added twist to trick-or-treating in uganda. as i was putting allie’s face-makeup on we had a girl heart-to-heart and she said, “you know what’s weird here that i just can’t get used to?” what’s that allie? “all the houses are behind gates. it makes it hard to trick-or-treat. when we lived in boston it was so much fun because we went to a lot of houses and got a lot of candy and we didn’t even know most of the people. and it was cold and there were kids all over.” yes, there are perks to living in uganda with kids (hello, exposure to the world) but the drawbacks aren’t invisible, including to a 9-year-old girl.

uganda pumpkins aren’t orange but the watermelons are round, so the jack-o-lanterns are watermelons. the added bonus is yummy guts to munch on during the carving process, although we did miss roasted pumpkin seeds.

an annual u.s. expat community event is the halloween party at kingfisher lodge in jinja at the source of the nile. last year i tagged along with tom, linda and the kids and played camp counselor while phil was in florida playing with surly at nationals. each year 12-15 families rent out all the bandas (cabins) at the lodge and host a trick-or-treating party for the kids. each family decorates its banda in halloween garb then once dark the kids banda hop following the path lit by jack-o-lanterns to collect their treats. there’s like 40 kids, no gates, and lots of festivity.

this year we were legitimate participants - we had our own banda (last year, i pitched a tent outside the coles’ banda) and we had a kid. even though our kid isn’t big enough to really do anything, somehow by virtue of having a kid we get included in all the kid events. odin’s our ticket.

odin & linda. yay for double-up trick-or-treating so odin got to wear his cow outfit twice.

most of the expats involved are usaid/u.s. embassy folks so they have access to pouch mail. pouch mail is equivalent to mail service in the u.s. literally. embassy staff have a u.s. mailing address in d.c. and everything sent there gets delivered to kampala daily - mail, newspapers, magazines, packages. you can order from amazon and choose 2-day standard shipping and get your item…in…2 days. and it doesn’t cost an ungodly amount in shipping & handling. pouch mail separates the haves and have-nots in american expat living. you can get the new york times daily paper (not online), get a birthday card on your birthday (rather than almost 1 year later), pay insurance bills (instead of policies becoming overdue and lapsing). or, in the case of halloween, you can purchase fancy decorations and real american candy.

we had the ghetto banda the first year. no pouch mail for us. paper towel ghosts tied with yarn were the cornerstone of our homemade decorations. of course the kids loved being crafty and were rightfully proud of their creations, so we schemed this year on how to be even craftier. we came up with an elaborate plan of papier-mache pirate heads, blood (red-dyed water) balloons, and more ghosts. all best laid plans…we forgot the heads at home and my backup idea of edible body parts - olive eyeballs, spaghetti intestines, mashed banana guts - became the main event.

mom, odin and hilary at kampala marathon. odin’s cow outfit is so cute that it’s silly to limit it to halloween only. today was the kampala marathon; friends ran, phil shot, and odin and i spectated. odin was sleepy and his cheeks rosy, hence the hat.