Thanksgiving Bonanza!

Happy Thanksgiving from Rwanda! I hope you all enjoyed the holiday, wherever it may have found you. I am still recovering from what was easily the craziest Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever been a part of.

 

About a month ago, I volunteered to be the head of Team Turkey. This means I was in charge of the team of trainees responsible for cooking the thanksgiving turkeys for our 60 person feast. Because the turkeys Peace Corps provided us with were live, this also meant overseeing the slaughter, plucking, and butchering of the turkeys asides from just the pit-roasting aspect I had originally envisioned. We started work on Wednesday, and it took us about 2.5 hours that afternoon to dig a 6′ by 8′ by 3′ pit. The next part was a bit trickier, but the Peace Corps staff helped us find a local community member who was willing to help us kill, pluck, and gut the birds.

 

I won’t get too much into the gory details but 6 of the trainees, including myself, decided we wanted to help kill the birds. The man helping us gave us each directions, and we each killed our birds with varying degrees of success. Afterward, about a dozen trainees set to work dunking the birds in hot water and removing the feathers. We continued preparing the birds until about 9pm that evening, so I was allowed to stay at our hub office that evening with a crack-team of turkey preparers. We woke up the next morning at 5am to light the huge mound of charcoal we had in the pit, which needed to be very hot before we added the turkeys. By 7:30, we had the turkeys stuffed and wrapped in foil, in the ground between layers of coal, and totally covered with earth. We let them cook in the pit for 10 hours while cooking the rest of our sides- mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, macaroni and cheese, salad, and green bean casserole.

 

My expectations for the meal were very low, but it really ended up being surprisingly good! The turkeys had to be dug up in the rain (not optimal) and were not all the way cooked, but we carved them up and recooked them in a big pot. We even managed to have just about all the food done at the same time. The whole experience was a nice escape from training, and a good excuse for the trainees to all spend time together. The Rwandan staff that came to the meal also really enjoyed it- and there was enough food for everyone to have two plates.

 

Thanksgiving also marks 3 weeks until the end of training. I am looking forward to going to my site to settle in for my two years of service, and to have a greater amount of control over my day-to-day life. But I am also going to be starting all over again, and that is going to be difficult, especially since I am just starting to get really comfortable here. Hopefully, I will be able to remain close with my host family and be able to come back and visit every so often.