I’m feeling homesick this Advent. In the last four years living overseas I’ve delighted in the way Tanzanians do Christmas - it’s primarily a religious festival and it receives the same treatment as Eid or even Diwali - everyone gets public holidays, public spaces are decorated a little, and those who belong to that religion have services and feasts. That means a lot less commercialism, and for us, avoiding the complicated negotiations of families.

But this year I’m feeling the distance. We work with the university Christian movement here in Tanzania, and this year we’ll be at their conference over Christmas, and I’m wishing I could be somewhere else.

I’m remembering how my family watches the Channel 9 carols on Christmas Eve, stuffing ourselves with cheese and kabana, torn between rolling our eyes at the tackiness, and tearing up when Sylvie Palladino sings, no matter which carol she’s given. I love Tanzanian worship, and it’s guaranteed there’ll be plenty at the conference, but it’s not O Holy Night.

I know my youngest sister will be a total paparazzo during the present opening, and that everyone will laugh remembering my nanny to whom we used to give the same presents every year (a bottle of Baileys, some jelly lollies, and chocolate covered ginger) and she never cottoned on. This year the time difference means we couldn’t even Skype in for presents.

I know there’ll be a game of Charades in the afternoon, with balanced teams, carefully negotiated because by his own admission Dad’s a bit of a dead weight on any team, but Mum is equal to two maybe even three average players. Meanwhile I’ll be playing a kind of game of Charades in Tanzania too, the kind where you only understand 3/4 of what’s happening around you, but the remaining quarter is where all the important things are. I won’t be laughing; I’ll be feeling vulnerable.

It feels like I am so far away from the centre of things. My church will celebrate Christ’s birth without me. My family’s joy will bubble up despite my absence. 

I have been reflecting on how being present in Tanzania instead of in Australia is a Christmas discipline, and especially an Advent discipline.

One of the startling things about Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew 1 is the inclusion of a number of women in Jesus’ line. They stand out because of their gender, and also because they are all marginal in some way. All but Bathsheba are foreigners: Tamar is the daughter of a Canaanite, Ruth is a Moabitess, Rahab is from Jericho. Bathsheba was married to a Hittite, but he was shown to be more righteous than the great king David who not only abused his position of power to commit adultery with Bathsheba, but then tried to cover it up, even to the point of arranging murder. Yet it is here, from those who are women, foreign, powerless and mistreated, that Jesus’ story is birthed.

And that’s entirely appropriate. Because Jesus was not born to privilege and power and wealth. His young parents were nobodies from a nowhere town. Yet this was where God chose to make his presence, where he comes to be with us, and to be one of us. And that continues to draw others into the story, from lowly shepherds to foreign star men.

Being somewhere other, being the other, including the other is a re-enactment of this Christmas story. To truly be present in Tanzania not Australia, with university students not our extended families, to sing songs that are not my own, is to follow our Master far from the centre to be with those on the margins, because this is where he chose to come, and where he comes still.

Tamie Davis lives in Tanzania with her husband and two sons where they partner with CMS Australia and the Tanzanian Fellowship of Evangelical Students.