Happy Thanksgiving!

***Preface*** Finally!! Enjoy these pictures. They took FOREVER to upload and I'm not entirely sure why. I wrote this post on sunday night and it is now wednesday morning. Hopefully it will still be wednesday morning by the time this actually gets posted....

It was Canadian Thanksgiving this past weekend and even though I am not in Canada, I got to celebrate it anyway. Jen is a friend who lives here in Rwanda but who loves thanksgiving. When she moved here and later married Serge, a Rwandan, she decided that just because she lived in Rwanda didn't mean she couldn't have thanksgiving. So their family has started a tradition of inviting other Canadians for thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings. Including turkey.

Maddy and I arrived at Jen's on sunday morning just after 9am and there were three turkeys running around. One of them was very grumpy and liked to chase people around. I called him Dinner.

We spent the day cutting, cleaning, chopping and frosting (alliteration fail) and helping Jen stay sane while preparing a dinner for 36 people. Cooking three turkeys at once would seem crazy even in Canada - how do fit three turkeys in the oven?! The answer? You don't cook them in the oven. It was a great production involving a charcoal fire, a huge drum and a spit. Two and a half hours later, and voila. Yummy thanksgiving turkey!


After the turkeys were killed, plucked and cleaned they were prepared in the outdoor kitchen.

The turkey is placed under a drum with hot coals under it and on top to cook it evenly

You can only take the drum off when you're sure the turkey is cooked because as soon as you lift it all the heat is lost. It is a bit of a guessing game based on experience and the way the turkey is smelling...

Cooked to perfection! And it smells like heaven.

Time to eat!!




It was a great evening of meeting interesting people and eating entirely too much. Growing up my family had a tradition of going around the table and saying something we were thankful for. I am thankful that things finally came together for this trip to Rwanda and that my research is going reasonabley well. I'm thankful my friends, new and old, that have enriched my life. And I'm thankful for my family, my sister who is also my friend and for my parents who support and love me even though I'm crazy and they don't always understand me.