My Second African Thanksgiving

As some of you may know, Thanksgiving just happens to be my favorite holiday. I like it primarily because it provides an occasion for friends and family to gather and reflect on all that is good in life but it eliminates the material elements of other modern holidays.

This year, I had Thanksgiving at a lodge on the outskirts of Opuwo with two Canadians, an Irishman, a Brit, one of my Dutch neighbors, some Namibians, four other PCVs, and five PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees who will join me in Kunene in January when their training is complete) – it was a very international Thanksgiving!

In spite of the fact that we are basically in ‘middle-of-nowhere’ Africa, we had a somewhat authentic Thanksgiving meal. I hitch-hiked up from Windhoek (eight hours away) with a cooler full of frozen cranberries and two frozen turkeys…that sucker was heavy! Some of the PCTs made apple pies and another volunteer found something similar to ice cream (we don’t really get ice cream in Opuwo sadly). We even had a couple cans of cranberry sauce from the SuperSpar in Otjiwarongo (the biggest grocery store in Namibia!). And the lodge made something similar to stuffing. So in all, we may not have exactly replicated an American Thanksgiving but I was quite pleased with our Africanization of it! J