It's T-H-A-N-K-S--G-I-V-I-N-G!! Year two in Africa

Thanksgiving is Brent's favorite holiday. I'm not quite sure why, maybe it's -family, favorite foods, football, fun, feasting, fatique, frustration, fat, FOREVER in the kitchen. Oops! Now that's just how I feel. Strike the last four items. I believe that whoever invented the Thanksgiving menu and activities also invented humans carrying large loads, charcoal haulers, chariot transports and indentured servitude.

But, it always turns out to be a great day. These years in Africa will always be remembered.

First, we got our turkey from the landlady. To our great joy, it was not sporting feathers and gobbling. It looked just like it came from Bashas. Well, not exactly, but it was ONLY "in the flesh" and not in the feathers, etc. Turkeys in Africa look the same in the feathers, but are very different "in the flesh."

We have no temperature control on our oven. We just have on and off, (go figure!) so cooking a turkey in our oven didn't seem like a wise choice. So the Frogleys cooked the turkey.

Elder Frogley had to use all his surgical skills to cut it. He looked like the mad Doctor in his lab working on the turkey. It looked and tasted quite different than an American turkey. It was so kind of our landlord to give us the Thanksgiving turkey. She is a wonderful lady.

I was thrilled to find "vegetable cooking fat" which I had heard was like shortening. The "fat" comes in plastic tubs about the size of a large jar of peanut butter ($5). It's CLOSE to the real thing. I was excited to make pies with it. I was a little nervous about doing it too with only the "on/off stove" to use for my pies and dressing, but it worked well enough. We were happy to have them. What's Thanksgiving without pies?

We decided that it would be fun to show the workers at our apartment that we had a holiday to show gratitude. We got them together and told them that today was Thanksgiving in the US. It is a holiday where we give thanks to God for our blessings. We told them that we wanted to give our thanks to them as well with a little gift and gave them each a little money. It was fun to give them something and we felt like it was well received.

The first person on the left in the picture is Jean. He and the girls, Anita and Elena clean. The there are the gardeners (Sylvestre and Kevin) and the manager (Fulgence), and Jackson. The second picture is Jackson (again) and the gate keepers (Isaac and the another Sylvestre.) We're not quite sure what Jackson does, but he's here all the time and must have some job.

We had invited a member from the US Embassy to dinner. He couldn't come until 7 pm, so that was the dinner hour. Brother Willes ended up bringing an African friend, Caleb. He was a very interesting man and added a lot to our party. He'd never been to a Thanksgiving feast before, but he seemed to enjoyed feasting. Brother Willes brought his flute and played some songs for us. He even had some nice jazz music. It was so wonderful to have music.

We had a meal with almost all the traditional Thanksgiving food, except for yams. We even found a can of cranberry sauce and hauled it from Lubumbashi when we moved. We found olives for $5 a can and we bought them. We made dressing and potatoes and veggies and pies. With a lot of improvising, it was pretty close to a Thanksgiving meal.

Neither candy corns nor chocolate were on the menu, but the debate raged on this year in the Jameson family whether to have candy corns or chocolate to celebrate our gratitude. No " I'm thankful fors" before you get your food at this Thanksgiving dinner. Some things are very different in Africa and some things are the same no matter where you go when ...

"IT'S T-H-A-N-K-S--G-I-V-I-N-G! "