The 10-day Christmas and New Year’s marathon
It is all in the past now, but it has been wonderful and good again
the last and festive 10 days of 2015 in our Community!
This yearly marathon of 10 days starts with the thorough cleaning and fabulous decoration of PCC just before Christmas and it finishes after the big New Year’s Party on the 1st of January.
In this column and the next I will have a try at describing this 10-day marathon, but actually you should have been here to fully understand what this period around Christmas and New Year really means to our Community: the extraordinary dynamics, the unique community spirit, the special celebrations and the pure joie the vivre.
Martin Klomp and his wife Corinne were visiting us again this year. Martin has made the wonderful and well-known info-DVD about PCC dating from 2010/2012. He thought it high time for an update on this PCC film. Because Martin was a guest around Christmas there will surely be nice shots of the Christmas celebrations in PCC on this new DVD, which will appear in the course of 2016. We are absolutely sure that many will appreciate this new and wonderful documentary!
As always fifty Frafra dancers and musicians launched all festivities on Christmas Eve with a dynamic north-Ghanaian dance performance full of verve and vitality. One of our residents, Cynthia Akoos, who is also Frafra surprised everybody by joining the dancers spontaneously. She has shown us that she hasn’t forgotten her roots and Frafra dancing abilities, in spite of her impediments and yearlong stay in a completely different area. It was a real “Christmas Eve experience”!
This yearly marathon of 10 days starts with the thorough cleaning and fabulous decoration of PCC just before Christmas and it finishes after the big New Year’s Party on the 1st of January.
In this column and the next I will have a try at describing this 10-day marathon, but actually you should have been here to fully understand what this period around Christmas and New Year really means to our Community: the extraordinary dynamics, the unique community spirit, the special celebrations and the pure joie the vivre.
Martin Klomp and his wife Corinne were visiting us again this year. Martin has made the wonderful and well-known info-DVD about PCC dating from 2010/2012. He thought it high time for an update on this PCC film. Because Martin was a guest around Christmas there will surely be nice shots of the Christmas celebrations in PCC on this new DVD, which will appear in the course of 2016. We are absolutely sure that many will appreciate this new and wonderful documentary!
As always fifty Frafra dancers and musicians launched all festivities on Christmas Eve with a dynamic north-Ghanaian dance performance full of verve and vitality. One of our residents, Cynthia Akoos, who is also Frafra surprised everybody by joining the dancers spontaneously. She has shown us that she hasn’t forgotten her roots and Frafra dancing abilities, in spite of her impediments and yearlong stay in a completely different area. It was a real “Christmas Eve experience”!
On Christmas Day it was time for a short church service in the morning and Father Christmas in the afternoon. For a while it seemed that Father Christmas had completely forgotten about PCC, but when all children called his name very loudly, fortunately, Father Christmas did appear! This year it was Ayuba who had the very important task of being Father Christmas for two hours and James did a very good job as his personal assistant. It became a fine party with much music, wonderful presents and most important of all many happy faces, just like it should be during Christmas.
It became even better on Boxing Day: the Christmas Play was being performed which is the undisputed climax of the PCC Christmas celebrations. For weeks the play had been in rehearsal, but of course things are completely different when it is really performed: the actors were wearing special costumes and on top of that they were performing in front of a real audience! James had the honour of playing the role of Jesus this year and he did so in quiet devotion and with a marvellous twinkle in his eyes. It was obvious that the many sheep enjoyed their performance as well and that they knew their lines by heart because a “baaaaa” was often heard.
All present enjoyed the Christmas Play enormously, the audience as well as the children and caregivers. This makes it rather difficult to decide which were the heights of the play because, in fact, it was a sequence of heights. Afia was very convincingly acting Maria in hard labour, Koo Emma – the archangel Gabriel – was flapping his wings enthusiastically, Kofi Asare was both Joseph and Music Master, Philomenia acted a beautiful and bright star, and so forth, and so forth. It was a great play, we all felt the Peace of Christmas.
And then the rest of the 10-day marathon still had to come, but more about that in the next Albert’s Corner.
Finally, we would like to wish all friends and supporters of PCC and all readers of this column a very happy and peaceful 2016!