Idd and other December events

December. Idd ul Hajj for Moslems, Christmas and confirmations for Christians. Increased expenditures for everyone. In this predominantly Christian region, it’s the month of Christmas, confirmations, and crime.

Just like for Idd, everyone needs new clothes for Christmas. But before Christmas come the Barikio – the confirmation season. I had no idea this was so big here. Like in Norway, protestant confirmations have very little to do with the original idea of confirmation - a child learning about the faith and then taking an independent decision to follow it – thus ‘confirming’ their adherence to the faith they were baptised into. Polls of Norwegian teenagers getting confirmed usually show that the main motivation is tradition plus the presents they get. Here it seems to be a kind of ‘rite of passage’ for both the family and the child. The child has become an ‘spiritual adult’ as it’s been said at the ceremonies I’ve attended, and the family is clearly happy to show that they have succeeded, that they've reached this far, that they can throw a party and serve up an entire goat, crates of soda and piles of rice, that their kid has turned out well and is going on to secondary school.

It is quite costly for ordinary people. I know because I’ve helped finance some. Including the one that these pictures are of, which was really quite a party. The confirmed boy was placed on a podium draped with shiny white satin and decorated with Fanta, Coke and ribbons, until the ‘goat cake’ ceremony when he descended to feed his godparents and parents in turn with the first carvings of roasted goat.

So they say there’s always more theft in December. Last week a thief in the area I live was killed by a mob. Mob killing are on the increase in the area according to human rights monitors, and I’ve heard quite a few stories recently. It used to be more of an urban thing, and the place I live is rural. But two weeks ago they tyred a guy at nearby town Usa River one evening – apparently he’d been caught by the police but got away and people were just fed up with him. The next morning his body was still burning. This time some people were shouting to get a tyre and some petrol, but then others shouted it was a waste of time and just hacked him to death with machetes instead. It’s one of the things I ask people about, what they think of these ‘mwizi!’ killings, and so I found it interesting.