For me Christmas is usually about spending time with family and friends, catching up with thing which have been neglected throughout the years, listening to other people’s stories, watching family movies on TV, receiving Christmas cards and emails from people you like and appreciating the feeling of being at home.
This year it will be different. Sitting here in the Sierra Leonean sun (waiting for the water to start running again and being happy that the power came back after another blackout :-)) and being far away from all the people I love, it is very hard to believe that Christmas eve is coming so soon.
However, I have a wonderful time here and do not want to miss one of the experiences. Life is not necessarily a piece of a cake here and it would be a lie to say that I am not struggling. But it is definitely worth to struggle and I guess it is also worth to try, maybe to fail, but then to try again. Everyday I am facing situation I have never been into before and I have to make decisions where I am struggling heavily to figure out what is wrong and what is right. The people are just great here and they have stories to tell I had only heard from in books if any. The setting is just crazy, crazily beautiful, crazily sad, crazily encouraging and crazily discouraging sometimes.
Being a white person in a country where white is deeply connected to prosperity and wealth, working for a local NGO in a country where everyone is extremely familiar with the ‘good’ work NGOs are doing and where people are not afraid to ask for money (to put it in a polite and rather neutral way), being in a country where you can find incredible social networks, with people helping each other without asking for reimbursement, where they share their food with the dogs living on the street although they have hardly anything, is an outstanding experience. I found people I trust and who I may call friends at the end of the day. I found people telling me about their country, sharing their perspectives with me (sometimes hard to digest when it e.g. comes to female circumcision) and letting me step a bit into their lives.
However, I know that I can only be here and just deal with these things because I just have such great friends and family, always supporting me and being a great source of inspiration. Thank you for all your support in different ways, for all your love, nice words and for sure also for all the fun, parties, great time we had together during the last year(s).
It is Christmas time and I wish you all a merry Christmas wherever you are on this world. I hope you will all have people around you like and that you will have an awesome time.
Have a happy new year, full of joy, satisfaction, luck and happiness and I hope to see all of you next year and that we can party and laugh.
I miss you all very big time and sometimes I wish you could be here or I could be with you to share the experiences.
But since this is not possible, just be aware that I took tons of pictures and whoever meets me first has to suffer and go through all of them, hahaha.
All my good wishes go to Germany, Sweden, India, South Africa, Bangladesh, Colombia, Brazil, Palestine, Rwanda, Kenya, Botswana, Sierra Leone, Argentina, Spain, Australia, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan, Mexico, Austria and all the other places I missed but where you enjoy life!
Take care, see you soon and with a big hug
Juliane
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