Thanksgiving in Dakar

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I certainly didn’t miss out on Thanksgiving; I actually went to two. The first was for all the CIEE students and was hosted by our program director, Serigne. The other was in my neighborhood, Sacre-Coeur III, organized by the students.

Thanksgiving at Serigne’s house was actually on Thanksgiving. He lives pretty close to us, so a group of us walked over at around 7:30. Unfortunately, we forgot the map. Our attempts to remember it weren’t very successful, and we ended up wandering around for a while. We remembered that the directions mentioned a pile of bricks, but there were an awful lot of piles of bricks. Eventually we ran into some other toubabs headed that way.

We followed them all the way up the roof of the three story building. There were chairs set up along the perimeter and a bunch of food on two tables. The main dishes were: chicken, stuffing, salad, and mashed potatoes. We also had pumpkin pie, apple pie, chocolate cake (sort of), and a brave attempt at chocolate covered bananas. It was good, and we followed the thanksgiving tradition of eating too much.

After dinner, we had an impromptu musical performance, using empty buckets and bowls. Then Sabrina, a true ham, took center stage. She called groups up to dance and kept everyone laughing.

Then on Saturday we had a neighborhood Thanksgiving. All the students in the neighborhood cooked dishes (except me), and everyone came over to Joy’s house. We had chicken, stuffing, salad, carrot bread, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and sautéed veggies. Our families seemed to like everything but the mashed potatoes, and they didn’t eat too much salad either. Our mothers expected us to serve them, so we were constantly sent to refill their plates, re-cook their chicken, get them more dressing, etc. It was pretty annoying, since we were trying to eat.

Then Joy made everyone go around in a circle and say what they were thankful for. It turned into us saying we were thankful for our Senegalese families, and them saying they were thankful for their American families. After that, we served pumpkin pie, apple pie, apple cake, chocolate chip cookies, and more almost chocolate cake. They devoured the desserts!

Since I didn’t cook, I stayed behind afterwards to help clean up. Just as we started with the massive pile of dirty dishes, the power went out. We ended up washing them all by the light of one small candle. I think it was better that way. It was less gross because I couldn’t see how dirty they still were when we put them on the drying rack. There’s running water in the kitchen, but no drain, so basically we washed them in dirty water. Ick!

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Photos

Dancing on the roof
get up and dance if you've ever...
been proposed to by a man wearing jellies
...had you hair braided by a Senegalese woman and had to take two aspirins afterwards
...killed a giant cockroach
...had Dakarrhea

Our neighborhood meal
Here's Liz and Lauren dipping plates for our guests.

Eating dinner
Here are our moms eating dinner, a lot of them using their hands.

Circle of thanks
This is a picture of our guests at the Sacre-Coeur Thanksgiving going around and saying what they're thankful for.

Pretty sunset
This is the view from the roof of Joy's house.

Comments

[mommy]

thanksgiving
hey holly. I wish i could have been there to share your thanksgiving celebration. it sounds wonderful....all but the cleaning up part...which sounds very moonshadowy! yuck. love you and looking forward to seeing you home. mommy

[Carrie]

I'm so into that hardcore bonding on the dance floor. Holla! Please tell me you danced.