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Published: November 26th 2007
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I wouldn't list turkey as my favorite meat, I don't like stuffing, and I much prefer chocolate silk pie to apple pie, but I must admit that I was a bit anxious about missing Thanksgiving. How can one celebrate this incredibly American holiday without insane amounts of food, the Macy's parade, and the crazy extended family? I doubted that our faux-Thanksgiving celebration would be anywhere close to what we were hoping for...we weren't even going to have turkey (chicken would have to suffice for this year).
Steven and I decided to make pudding as our contribution to the potluck portion of the dinner. Unfortunately, you can't find Jell-O instant pudding here, so we had to buy the milk and sugar and cook the pudding. We chose Steven's house as our headquarters because he has a stove top (I laughed when he looked confused and asked did I have a stove, too?) The family's cook, however, thought that it would be obviously much easier for us to use the propane tank instead of the stove top. I doubted this, seeing as I have been spoiled for the last twenty years with a gas stove top that conforms to my every whim
with a quick turn of a knob. We played along, though, and we did surprisingly well - no fingers were lost, no propane spilled, and the milk didn't even burn! The cook and the maid were a bit skeptical that this foreign dessert we called "pudding" would be any good, but they whole-heartedly agreed after licking our spoons (I can only imagine their new-found love after tasting the oh-so-much better Jell-O instant pudding!) We had decided to splurge and turn the pudding into dirt'n'worms, complete with crushed chocolate cookies and gummy candy. If all else failed and the dinner was less than stellar, at least we could fall back on comfort food from our childhood. We made a small bowl for Steven's family (they keep asking when I am coming over next...apparently I should be his fiancée since we spent one afternoon together cooking), donned our Senegalese best, and set out for dinner.
There were twenty tables set up behind the dorm, covered in red and yellow tablecloths and topped with festive centerpieces. The American students set up a table full of our various dishes, and I must say we did quite well despite the lack of American ingredients
and familiar kitchen appliances. The African and American students had to be integrated against our will because we all hoped to share this holiday with our friends instead of other students we really didn't know. I was moved to a table with students from Togo, Guinea, and Senegal and we all got along quite well. We rushed up to get our food together and chatted excitedly through dinner and dessert.
It turns out that they had turkeys flown in from Europe, so we were able to have a feast complete with turkey, chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato fries, corn, green beans, carrots, and cornbread. If you add in the potluck food (macaroni and cheese, salad, fried okra, apple pie, rice pudding, fruit salad, chocolate mousse, candied carrots, scalloped potatoes, pumpkin pie, bruschetta), we had an amazing meal. We bought some wine but soon found out that wine that only costs 2490cfa ($5) is terrible. We settled instead for Fanta orange and Sprite to complete our meal.
The cultural differences soon became obvious. The Americans ate so much that we all sprawled out over the plastic chairs, whereas the African students didn't eat nearly as much of our
foreign food and proceeded to have a huge dance party. Many of the American students left early-ish and went home to watch movies and lie around in order to complete the Thanksgiving tradition.
I hope everyone else had a fabulous Thanksgiving!
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Katie
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While I am mildly upset you didn't get to eat antelope, I'm glad you had an awesome Thanksgiving.... and hey, it seems that you had a better dinner than I did! :P How much time you got left, anyways?