Turkey

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I attended a meeting at the school that went from 9am until 4:30pm, a meeting of which I understood little but was called upon regularly for my opinion – “I think what we are talking about is important, if there is anything I can do to help I will, but I think it is best for me to just listen right now and hear all the information.” This response seems to work at most meetings when I am called upon to speak out of the blue and don't entirely know why. With the meeting finished, it was Wednesday afternoon, I was exhausted, but got on my bike to head in to Kedougou for Thanksgiving.

Around 20 volunteers arrived and we had a pretty ambitious menu. A turkey was going to be sent down from Tamba, the only place we could find a turkey, we had a duck, a chicken, and a very large pig. Wednesday night a box the size of a large flat rate box arrived at the house. The turkey has arrived! - it was announced as one of the volunteers set down the box and it bounced around a bit from within. That can't possibly be the turkey - we all thought -the box was just so small! After opening it up, sure enough, it was a full-sized, live (not for long) turkey. The turkey was killed promptly and we took the chicken and stuffed it in the duck, took the duck and stuffed it in the turkey, took the turkey and stuffed it in the pig, put several large, red hot rocks in the pig, wired it shut, wrapped the whole thing in wet banana leaves and a wet sheet, and stuck the pig in the ground in a pit of coals and red hot rocks which was covered up with dirt. We were not messing around- actually, they were not messing around, I was more of a passive observer. Late Thursday afternoon we dug it up. You can only imagine the sight of 20 protein deficient volunteers and that much meat, way too much meat. When the pig was unwrapped, no one waited for it to reach the table as all gathered around and ripped into whatever meat we could get our hands on. Being the first Thanksgiving I have eaten meat since I was 13, we certainly tried to make up for lost time.

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