Christmas in Ghana

My friend Patricia Hamilton entered the Peace Corps at the age of 50 and spent two years establishing a nursery to grow tree seedlings for planting throughout Ghana in the mid-1990s. She writes of spending Christmas in Africa without the trappings of home, she writes:

"I was serving in the United States Peace Corp in Africa where I experienced my first Christmas away from home and where western food was scarce. My daughter flew to West Africa to be with me. My daughter brought a battery-charged Christmas tree (1 foot tall) in her suitcase and three great gifts: a jar of Skippy Peanut Butter, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and Welch’s Grape Jelly. These gifts were the greatest luxury I could have received."



Hamilton, who lived in a town named Little Ada, and her daughter threw a Christmas party for her neighbors, a family with 12 children.

"The center of the party was the battery- powered Christmas tree," she wrote in a 2003 personal narrative. "We served Ghanaian soda and played Ghanaian tapes on my battery-powered tape player. We tied balloons to the veranda and every one danced out in the front of the block house... It was special to see the merriment that such a simple act created."