Thanksgiving 2011- Burkina Faso

I am thankful for family, friends, new experiences, lessons learned, challenges overcome, inquisitive young ladies, the potential for growth, my strengths, the ability to be honest that I am flawed, most importantly life and love (both of which describes the nature of God)! 

The menu: grilled chicken, couscous, watermelon and popcorn.  

Drink menu: bissap (hibiscus juice), box wine, and water.

The guests: community house co-workers including the three catholic sisters, the two cooks, one of the guardians, and the chauffer; other colleagues from regional direction of education, my neighbors, the accountant for the mayor, and my landlord.

This thanksgiving was indeed one to remember.  Many volunteers organized thanksgiving dinners together in large towns putting together money to fatten up (weeks in advance) and kill a turkey for good old fashion thanksgiving dinner.  The country director even hosted a thanksgiving dinner at her house and invited those who had already planned to be in the capital to join in.  Considering that I am a Peace Corps Response Volunteer, I didn’t come in with a group of 35 other trainees awaiting the day of swear in.  I am actually the only response volunteer in country now.  So to say the least, I have nothing against the other volunteers, but I also do not have strong ties to most of them as we didn’t cry through diarrhea and training together.  I do have a select few close volunteer friends who I hang out with and who I vent to when I need a mental Burkina and French break, but I feel more tied to the people I work with and other friends I have in my community.  Thus I decided to make thanksgiving happen for the people here in my town.  And what a delight it was indeed.

Traditionally in my family the ways things go is that we cook starting on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  We make the staple Thanksgiving foods, go to relatives houses and eat!  We usually do some sort of explanation of what we are thankful for and then a prayer.  I tried to recreate the atmosphere here.  We didn’t have turkey, but really good grilled chicken stuff with couscous…kinda like turkey with cornbread stuffing no?  There was no cornbread stuffing, or corn pudding, but I had popCORN! No cranberry sauce, or pies/dessert, so the watermelon was the sweet stuff.  Haha.  It was great J.  I explaned to them what thanksgiving meant to me and then we all said a word of what we were thankful for.  Haha, the chauffer of the community house is really funny and he reminded me of all the teenagers in my family who have absolutely no interest in the thankful circle and prayer…they just want to eat.  He also designated himself my personal “Protocol”.  I guess the best way to describe that is a personal assistant, or planner.  It was quite comical.  So if people came late, he was looking at his watch to let them know.  If I needed anything for the dinner, he was Johnny on the spot.  It was quite surprising to see him come out of his shell. 

This is the first thanksgiving in Burkina that I actually celebrated with Burkinabe.  The first time I was here, I went to a big volunteer thanksgiving throw down, and then the following year, I didn’t go anywhere and didn’t even mention to my community that there was a holiday in America.  This one as worth having and I am happy I was able to share the experience with the people here J