Christmas peace

Dawn scrambles rapidly into the sky. The southern hemisphere sunset the previous night had arrived with astonishing rapidity, a fiscal shrike shrieking a defiant rebuke as darkness fell. Sunrise, too, accelerated its arrival. By 7am the sun was already high, as if it was midday already.

Christmas Eve. No dark days or cold weather. This is Christmas in Africa.

This is not the first time we have celebrated Christmas together. In Loita, certainly, more than once.

We prepare gently. Lisa and I drive to the shop - just 40 minutes, on a dirt track so worn away by the rains, that in places it is in danger of disappearing. An augur buzzard soars overhead, awaiting our return perched on a fence post beside the road. We catch up with each other, relishing the chance to have this uninterrupted time.

At home, we all hang out together: playing Monopoly Deal, snoozing in the shade, sharing washing up - seemingly endless, with 9 of us; a walk through the coffee plantation and up in to the forest .

Christmas conversations.

A shared meal, a Czechoslovakian tradition of eating crackers with honey for the sweetness of the year, walnuts for the bitter. Reflecting with enormous gratitude on the tremendous goodness of God. We laugh, remembering Christmases past, shared memories bubbling into conversation. Many years of lives shared.

The evening winds gently into a star-studded night, Orion soaring across the sky, a herald of the season. The moon clambers up, until the night is bright as day.

Christmas calm.