Arne's Observations

Arne Doornebal is a Dutch freelance journalist working out of Kampala, Uganda. For Club Africa he shares his experiences living and working as a journalist in Africa

Snow and Christmas trees: no rarity in Africa this time of year

Yes they know it’s Christmas!

After acting as Santa Claus at a nearby day care centre, I am totally in the Christmas mood. No matter the state of the economy, by the end of December money always flows in Africa.

I couldn’t help laughing all the way yesterday. After carefully putting on my white beard, I pulled my red snow-boots up and then completed my outfit with Santa’s hat. I was ready to survive a blizzard, though the thermometer in Kampala showed over 30 degrees Celsius. There was no dashing through the snow, only dashing through my sweat.

The kids enjoyed it all the way. Trying in vain not to be recognized, I handed them the nicely wrapped presents which their parents had bought for them. There were helicopters, dolls and clocks that make animal sounds. I couldn’t believe the stack of gifts I was handing out, considering all the doom stories about the world’s economy I’d been reading for weeks in a row.

Buy your woman a new gown

All attention on Christmas and snow seems a bit odd in a tropical African country. While the feast is not such a big deal in the secular part of Europe I come from, here in Africa it is! And that boosts pre-Christmas sales. A Ugandan man who shows up at home on Christmas day without a new gown for his wife may find she has left him the very next day.
African cities, in normal times already overcrowded, see massive amounts of shoppers thronging the streets. Some years ago I made the mistake of going to town just days before Christmas. Except for that it was hardly possible to walk, I was an easy target for pickpockets and nearly lost my wallet. Crime rates and corruption shoot up from Kampala to Cameroon, that is the only down side of it.

Christmas trees for sale

But the economy thrives. Newspapers, radio shows and the prime time hours on TV are packed with Christmas advertisements. South Africa’s Shoprite sells plastic trees complete with fake snow for as little as 40 rand; some 4 euro’s. That makes sense, since South Africa is the only African country with a reasonable chance of snowfall even in the low lying areas.

The bee-hive that cities across Africa become in the weeks before the feast is in stark contrast with the actual days itself, when most of the city residents have travelled ‘to the village.’ Christmas is celebrated in your original home, and that is despite Africa’s rapid urbanization generally not the big city. The 25th and 26th of December might be the only days in the year without massive traffic jams in Kampala. It gives the city dwellers a well deserved break after a hectic period. Let nobody think long about the question whether Africa knows it is Christmas; yes they do!

Question: what should Africa expect from Santa?

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