Thanksgiving

  You can't have Thanksgiving without turkey, but here you can't just run down to the local safeway and pick up a perfectly shrink wrapped, hormone enlarged frozen hunk of meat. If you want to do the holiday up right in Senegal you've got to get your hands a little dirty. Thats why, several days ago, I found myself in Keur Madialbel elbow deep in blood doing autopsies on four dead turkeys. Jessica had called me the night before begging for some assistance and I was more than happy to oblige. After all, what could be better than experiencing Thanksgiving like a true pilgrim with a little good old fashioned slaughter.

    I took a car to her town first thing in the morning and we got right down to business. We bought four big fat turkeys from her neighbor which ended up costing us roughly $120 and were just enough to feed the 30+ people coming to Kaolack for Thanksgiving. Then we carried then back to her house, cut off their heads and got down to the dirty business of de-feathering and gutting our future meal. Once the hard work was done we wrapped them up in plastic bags, threw them in a bucket with a couple chunks of ice and loaded it all onto the back of a truck to be driven up to the city and stored in the regional house freezer until the big day.

For two whole days our amazing cooks slaved away to produce one of the most delicious Thanksgiving feasts I've ever had, probably because it was seasoned by the hunger of weeks in village eating rice and bird food. We grilled two turkeys, roasted one and deep fried another as well as making stuffing, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, corn bread, deviled eggs, cranberry sauce, gravy, apple pie, and pumpkin pie. Some people had requested ingredients in care packages months ago and some things, like cheese, we had to purchase at ridiculously inflated rates ($2 an ounce) so it really was a once in a lifetime meal. Sadly after months of village diets our stomachs were all so shrunken that we couldn't handle all the food we had loaded onto our plates, and most of us ate ourselves sick. We spent the evening sipping sangria and massaging our bulging bellies and trying to fight off the impending food comas.

One of the turkeys had eggs, so I guess I actually murdered 9 turkeys