Stuffing and Bathing Suits: Happy Thanksgiving to Me!

The Thanksgiving holiday this year was interesting-a vastly different environment, yet not without some of the usual accoutrements that typically accompany this day. I was slightly bummed to be missing my family celebration this year, but not bummed enough to stay home. Turkey in West Virginia vs. Wild Animals in Africa.....that is a no-brainer for me. Having said that, when Thursday found us waking at 5 AM, mumbling a Thanksgiving day greeting to each other, and once more hauling our stuff into a waiting bus, I felt a touch of the holiday funk start to wash over me. This was soon to be displaced, albeit temporarily, by outright fear for my life on the bus ride. If you have not done so already, please read the previous post for a breakdown of bus rides in Tanzania. Then you can come back.

So there we were, all settled in for the eight hour ride to Morogoro. It is hot as Hades, cramped (remember, I am sharing the seat with a man twice my size) and I am hungry. Longingly, I think of the feast at home and my family around the table. This is my first holiday being engaged, and not only am I not there, I am not even sure that a telephone call to Adam will be in my imminent future. Oh dear. Will he think I forgot about him? Surely, he knows that I will still.....oh wait! We just nearly had a head-on collision with another large bus, and my bus driver's head is drooping. This reverie is postponed until later when I can stop the ceaseless prayers.

After eight sweaty, cramped, hungry, thirsty hours, we arrive in Morogoro to a chaotic scene of buses, taxis, and touts. There is lots of yelling and shouting from people who desperately want us to choose their taxi for the next leg of our journey. I am not in the mood for this. We don't see our friend, so we have no choice but to take a taxi to the center of town to find the supermarket because that is near where the internet cafe is and we need the internet to find the number of either our friend or the farm at which we are staying and then we need to find a phone so that we can attempt to enjoy what is left of this day.   That is exactly how the thoughts were running in my head. A shower and a meal seemed a dismal prospect. Thanksgiving joy? Forget it.

Then, in the time it has taken me to write these few paragraphs, the tide of gloom turned to a veritable fountain (or maybe just a spray) of happiness. We found some mango juice next to the internet cafe and followed that up with some ice cream at the supermarket. With sugar coursing through my body, the world was looking much better. Armed with the telephone number we needed, a random and very nice man let us use his cell phone without even charging us. (Completely off topic: if you ever need to use a phone in Tanzania, it is usually no problem as long as it is domestic. Many Tanzanians will let you use their cell phone if you compensate them anywhere from .50-$2).  Then came our crowning moment of the day, the moment that defined this day and now graces the title of this post. Katy, our friend and contact in country, arrived in her air-conditioned vehicle, bearing the news that not only had she prepared stuffing to accompany dinner, but that there was a pool at the place we were staying! This last piece of information was met with brief exultation until we all realized that we had left our bathing suits at her home three hours away. Spirits down. Spirits jubilantly high when she informed us that she had brought them with her and the pool was ours for the taking!

So, to sum up, it was not my usual Thanksgiving in many respects. It was, however, one for the memory books. The menu was mostly the same. I was beyond thrilled when I was able to eat real mashed potatoes swimming in a delicious pool of gravy. The stuffing? Amazing. Just like at home, I did have to take a long ride in a vehicle to get to dinner, although the two hours in my clean, roomy, temperature-controlled car does not quite compare to this year's ride. That is probably where the similarities end though. I do not ever recall swooning in near ecstasy over the prospect of swimming before dinner (at least at that time of year) or the presence of stuffing.  Sitting around the candlelit table that evening under the African sky, I wished I could preserve the contentment of the occasion. There was great food, new people to make friends with, and old friends with whom to chalk up another treasured memory. I knew that next year would bring a different happiness, another type of gratification-I will have a husband to call family by then.  Yet, for that moment, I just wanted to relish the warm glow of my African Thanskgiving.