A Christmas Story

Some of the most beautiful memories of Christmas past are the rituals we remember from childhood.  In many families, children are assigned the task of setting up the Nativity scene.  They carefully arrange the figures of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus in many variations of the manger, all the while reminding one another, “There was no room for them at the inn.”

The plight of any family without a place to call home seems especially sad at Christmas time.  For a widowed grandmother looking after five orphaned grandchildren in remote Mwandi, the situation is even more painful.  Mwandi, which means “plenty of fish,” is a small Zambian village located in the country’s Western Province. A single tarmac road runs through Mwandi Village connecting it to the roads that lead to Livingstone and Victoria Falls, about two hours away.

Mwandi District is a poor area, caught between old traditions and the contemporary world.

lingowe-and-her-grandchildren

From top left clockwise: Grandma Lingowe, Akaliwa (age 6), Namikula (age 12), Muyunda (age 13) holds  Munali (age 2), and Inonge (age 11).

Lingowe has spent a lifetime coping with loss and heartache.  Through poor health and poverty, she has outlived all seven of her children.   Her husband also died.  Life is especially hard for widows in rural Zambia. Without savings or a sustainable source of income, Lingowe can no longer afford a home of her own.  She and her grandchildren are currently staying with a kind neighbor who is also struggling to survive.

The family relies on small donations of corn meal and beans, but the grandchildren often go to bed hungry.  Lingowe grows tomatoes in a small garden to sell at the market.  The little she earns doesn’t go far.  Like so many grandmothers in her dire situation in Zambia she asks, “What can I do?”

Bishop Matthew H. Clark reminds us that vulnerable families, like Lingowe’s,  face “a barren Christmas, one without decorations, a brightly lit tree, sans all the glitter and mounts of presents we have come to associate with a good Christmas Day.”

It is through their eyes that we must see, and remember what Christmas is really all about.

Bishop Clark writes:

“Our loving God gave us the greatest gift possible:  his own Son.  God gave us a savior, the Prince of Peace, the promise of eternal life – and all the wisdom, peace and comfort the little child Jesus would grow to give us as a very way of life and a pathway to God.

This gift that changed humanity forever came to a couple without much means, without the ability to lavish presents on anyone, in the form of an innocent child born in a simple manger full of animals and straw.  All they really had was each other and a love that gave them their drive and confidence to endure all, and to do God’s will.

I think the lesson of this first Christmas is that the trappings of this world do not really matter in the end. Presents are wonderful, of course, and we do well to make others happy by giving them, but Christmas and what it means for us would be as powerful and as life-changing without them.

Would you agree that what really matters – 2,000 years ago and today – is the spirit of love that is Christmas – God’s love for us and our love for each other?” (source: Catholic Courier)

Lingowe and her five grandchildren have little more than their love for one another.  With your help, our CHAMPS initiative and economic empowerment programs support women like Lingowe with the tools they need to break the cycle of poverty.  Surely their devotion to family has earned these grandmothers the loving rewards of dignity, health, and joy.

Each Christmas, we remember that there was no room in Bethlehem for Mary and Joseph. This Christmas, grandmothers like Lingowe are counting on us to find room in our hearts for all needy families, searching for home.

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Read Bishop Clark’s entire blog on the true meaning of Christmas here.