Even though it's Boxing Day today on the 26th of December, I still wish us a Merry Christmas because I realized I didn't do that in my last post which was on the 25th. From my sister and I, we are wishing us a Merry Christmas to everyone.
So far, I am enjoying the holiday in my hometown as I travelled home last week Friday where I met my family. When I got home, I met my two younger siblings who are in school, also came home for the holiday. I also met my cousins and aunt, together with my Dad. Half an hour later, my immediate younger sister arrived home too and it seemed the house was getting filled up already.
Since I was born, I never missed going on a trip to my hometown every December to celebrate the season. As of November, I had zeroed my mind from going home because I already travelled home in August/September to do the funeral of my Grandma and I felt since everyone had come home to celebrate the occasion, if I didn't travel home for the festive season, there shouldn't be anything wrong with it. Not that I don't have the money to travel home, I just don't want to step foot until next year again. But my siblings persuaded me to come home because of good news. Though, my immediate sister had hinted me the good news but still wanted us to come home to tell other family members about it.
I was happy I came home because I would have been missing the goodies at home and that could have hurt me if others started to gist me about it. I remember those days when we were always happy to travel home as kids because we were sure that we would get a lot of tips from other family members who would come home, and now, we are adults and there are those expecting us to do the same for them. They say, life is turn by turn and here comes our turn.
When I travel home, I always reserve some cash with me. Apart from Christmas gifts I give out, I still give them money when I go back and this reminds me of the good old days when we would make a lot of money from the adult and our mom would tell us to bring our money in the hope of keeping it for us to buy Christmas clothes and shoes for the next year.
I have been wanting to be the one to prepare party jollof rice for the family for this Christmas but realized I wasn't good at cooking a large portion of food as there might be a mistake; it's either there is not enough salt or the Maggi is too much. Don't think I don't know how to cook, I do, but when it comes to a large gathering, I try to learn it but always fail. The concoction rice I was served on the day I arrived, if not that I was so hungry, I would have not eaten it because there was seasoning at every corner of the food, it turned out that they didn't stir the rice on every side and it was too much, we had to eat the remaining the next morning as breakfast.
My big sister arrived the next day and I was so happy to see her. As usual, she is always the one handling the cooking of Jollof rice for the whole house while mine is to prepare the chicken by telling my cousin to kill it while we both remove the feathers and unnecessary things, then I boil and fry the meat; this hasn't changed and it has already become an annual routine for me, both for the two seasons.
We woke up late yesterday morning. Service in Church was at 9:30 am and here we were around 7 am just parboiling the rice while we were setting the other ingredients to be used as we shared the tasks amongst ourselves. There is one person slicing the onions, another removing up to 15 tomato pastes into a small bowl, another setting the firewood etc. There was a division of labour, but still, we went to church late. The time was running out, my immediate sister said she wasn't going to church, so we told her to handle the rest of the food since our big sister had cooked the rice to the final stage.
I'm glad I went home as my sister told me what she has learnt this year about cooking and what she has been doing wrongly, she taught me the right way to do things as in the case of cooking, she even made sure she guided me on how to prepare a party jollof rice against the new year which I hope I don't fuck up on that day 馃槂 That was my younger sister who had packed the rice into the coolers, we came back from church and ate our meal. I forgot the part where my brother and cousin did the killing and cutting off the two chickens we bought while I boiled and fried them.
Christmas in the village was interesting as we ate, laughed and gisted about lots of things and talked about our late Grandma and how loving she was while on earth. I thought Christmas wouldn't be sweet but it turns out that it was another best moments of our lives as a family 鉂わ笍
