Thanksgiving at the Thies Training Center has come and gone in what feels like a whirlwind. It is hard to believe the holiday was less than a week ago. Last Thursday I helped cook a Thanksgiving dinner with about 10 other trainees. We cooked for about 80 people: the trainees, the LCFs (Language and Cultural Facilitators), and the kitchen ladies who cook for us every day.
We started cooking at 2:00 pm, right after lunch. I was on potato duty. The first orders of business were cutting up the potatoes and garlic and getting a giant pot of water boiling on the gas stove. The stove was a little tricky to light (with matches), so we had to have the kitchen ladies help us. After watching the process a few times, I am now pretty confident that I could light it successfully if called upon to do so. In addition to the standard Thanksgiving mashed potatoes, we were planning to make candied sweet potatoes. Unfortunately, orange-fleshed sweet potatoes are not possible to find in Thies right now, so we instead of this Thanksgiving classic we made a mashed sweet potato dish with white sweet potatoes, sugar, and cinnamon. It was a bit of a trick to figure out how to get the potatoes into and out of the giant pot without splashing boiling water everywhere, as the pot was much too heavy to pick up. I don't know exactly how many potatoes we had cooking in the pot, but it was at least 25 pounds.
The other trainees cooked chicken, gravy, stuffing, peas, corn, carrots, deviled eggs, cookies, and apple pie for the meal. Turkey is too expensive and hard to find here in Senegal, so chicken was substituted as the bird of choice. I stuffed myself with multiple plates until I couldn't eat any more then went to bed fairly early to help my food digest. It was a great afternoon/evening and a nice way to spend my first Thanksgiving outside the US. It was a little strange to spend the holiday without family or close friends, as I did each year while living in Boston. I am sure that by the time my service ends in two years I will have developed very close friendships with many of my fellow volunteers. Maybe spending my final Thanksgiving in Senegal with other volunteers two years from now will feel perfectly natural. Christmas away from home will also be new for me. I am not sure yet whether I will be at my site or spending the day with other volunteers, but either way I will be in Senegal rather than in Seattle.
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| Cutting potatoes, garlic, and apples |
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| Cooking crew |
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| My friend Gavin with a full plate of food |
After Thanksgiving, I headed back to my local home-stay for a short 2-night stay. It felt all too quick--soon I was headed back to Thies in the Peace Corps van with my friends, my things all packed and my room key hanging in the door as it had been when I arrived at my local home-stay family's home two months ago. On Wednesday this week we had a host family reception at the Thies Training Center. My host mom and younger sister came to the party. We had a great lunch followed by some music and dancing. It was sad to say goodbye to my host family for a second time. I hope to be able to visit them sometime during the next two years when I am in the area.
Some pictures from my pre-service training, including some from the host family reception (all the Jaxanke students and our families have matching outfits!) will be uploaded soon.
So good to hear your doing well Tavish!! Can't wait to hear about how things go after you install, which I imagine you have already done at this point? Please let me know if you'd like any packages sent your way, always happy to contribute American goods!!
ReplyDeleteBill again, Tavish, just to say that the Thanksgiving feast you and your friends had looks very successful to me. Charron and I had Thanksgiving at our church, where Charron decided we should have some church members join us and our church's visitor, Rosa and her friend Alex, for Thanksgiving dinner. Rosa has been living in our church for about 6 months, having taken sanctuary there hoping to avoid forcible deportation back to Honduras. Our church is one of three or four in central N.C. to declare itself a Sanctuary Church as a statement of our congregation's opposition to detaining, jailing, and deporting people who, like Rosa, fled their country due to fear for their personal safety. It's nice to share Thanksgiving with someone who could feel very alone and vulnerable in Rosa's circumstances.
ReplyDeleteUncle Bill