Happy Thanksgiving!

I made the journey to Kathy’s house for Thanksgiving, my roommate from stage.  She lives in a fairly big town that on a map looks to be maybe an hour to the east, but traveling in Burkina it takes 5 hours and two buses with a layover in Ouaga.  When I got to her village I was amazed at the paved streets and electricity.  She, herself, lives in a beautiful home inside a family compound with electricity, a running water shower, and a toilet!  She recently bought a mini-fridge for her house, so she could have ice for gin and tonics- Oh, the perks to being a Small Enterprise and Development volunteer. 

Kathy hosted 5 out of the area volunteers for the fete and her site mate.  We got there mid-afternoon and sat on her porch for a while drinking refreshments and catching up.  Finally at dusk we decided we should start making our Thanksgiving feast.  Sadly, no turkey.  But we had a hen!  Thanks to Chris and Kathy, I got my first butcher lesson.

     

Chris started us off by cutting the hen’s throat and draining it.  The blade of the knife wasn’t as sharp as one would hope, so it took a little doing…

  Then you put the bird in just boiled water, to loose up the feathers, or something like that. 

Kathy and I plucked her.  The feathers came out easy and it was actually kind of fun, in a bubble-wrap-popping kind of way.  Yes, that’s the head I’m holding.  We were going to throw it away but were told to keep it –“someone will want it”.  I don’t want to know what for. 

  Then Kathy did the honors of eviscerating it. I didn’t pay too much attention to this because it grossed me out, but I know she cut in from the back by the spine and then just kind of cut the insides out, being careful not to nick in intestines.  And that’s how you clean a chicken! 

Around this point Burkinabe started to show up at Kathy’s house and I discovered that she had invited all the people she works with as well as all the people her site mate works with for the fest- around 10 Burkinabe besides us American- and dinner was just getting started.  Needless to say, I spent most of the evening in the kitchen with a bottle of wine tending to the cooking while Kathy and the others played hostess.  Fine by me, I dread making small talk in French, but this also means I didn’t actually get a plate or really eat any of the meal.  It was fine though, we had a nice quite Black Friday and made an even better meal for just the 7 Americans, including Israeli salad and stuffed green peppers! Yum! It was a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded by friends. 

 

The sunset from Kathy’s house and Josh and I pause for a photo after he watched me rip apart the bird.  Happy Thanksgiving!