Wherever you are, you will find that there are few better ways to celebrate the New Years than with olie bollen! Our Ugandan family now agrees!
In the States Allie is used to celebrating New Years in personal fireworks restricted Illinois, with close friends and family, over a nice potluck meal, games, and a toast at midnight. In the Netherlands, New Years can be a bit more crazy in general, since personal fireworks are allowed everywhere. The booms and bangs start early New Years morning and continue on til sunrise New Years day. It sounds like a war zone.
Here in Uganda, the New Years tradition is more similar to the Netherlands, only the lack of fireworks is compensated for with just fire. When we asked our friends about the New Years traditions whether they were from the east, west, or the central Buganda kingdom, they all mentioned fire. Everything from cutting down trees days before then decorating and carving them with wishes for the future then setting them a fire on New Years, to just running around burning everything they see, even houses! Sound intense? Potentially chaotic? Yea we think so too, and so does the government and the church of Uganda.
More recently, the government and church have encouraged people to participate in organized gatherings of prayer and worship to enter into the New Year peacefully rather than in destructive fire. So on New Years Eve, churches and even the national football arena are packed with people for prayer.
Feeling slightly intimidated by our invitations to join the celebration at the jam packed arena full of people praying, singing and shouting for hours and hours in a language we don't know, and not really feeling the pyro-vibe, we decided to stay in for the night.
Instead, we combined our traditions and spent a nice time with our family, cooking olie bollen (a dutch treat of fluffy fried dough! Literally translated “oil balls”) playing and singing songs, and thanksgiving prayer for the year.
The efforts to discourage everyone from running around setting things on fire seemed to work as we didn't see any flames, though we still heard a lot of sounds of chaos outside and tremendously loud noises continued into the early morning. We were quite thankful to be inside. Again though we miss our families and friends back home, we are very thankful to have our family here in Uganda to celebrate the holidays with.
Happy New Years!