Thanksgiving done right

In spite of the increased risk in Nairobi this time of year, several of us volunteers wanted to meet there and cook a proper Thanksgiving dinner. I was incredibly drained after all of the issues with exams, so I was thrilled for this kind of pick-me-up. Erin (the business volunteer) arranged for an RPCV (returned peace corps volunteer) who lives in Nairobi to host us. Martha now works for the Carter Foundation in procurement and was an excellent hostess. We were particularly impressed with her ability to procure cranberry sauce to really complete the dinner.

On Wednesday morning, I traveled to Voi and met up with Greg (public health volunteer near me) and we hopped on a bus for the six hour ride to Nairobi. The ride is a whole lot more pleasant when there is someone to share it with. Fortunately, it was generally uneventful and we were able to talk the whole bus ride. We hopped off in Nairobi and after my frustrating struggle to figure out where to catch the matatu we needed (I should really know this by now), headed to Westlands for some grocery shopping.

We met up with Erin and Paula (another business volunteer) at the store and split up the shopping list. We struggled a bit figuring out how to convert some of the quantities needed for recipes (1 1/2 cups of butter is how many grams?) but it was lots of fun to do a huge grocery run. We made a quick trip to the food court where Greg assured me there were amazing tacos and they certainly lived up to his descriptions. Then we wheeled the groceries out to the street to grab a taxi (Erin tipped over the shopping cart along the way and there was a moment of panic as we checked the eggs and saw that miraculously none of them had broken). The taxi ride was very slow (Nairobi rush hour is atrocious) but we finally pulled up to Martha’s apartment and marveled at everything at our disposal: stove and oven, microwave, refrigerator and lots and lots of kitchen tools. It was fantastic.

Greg and I were planning to meet some of the public health volunteers who are in Nairobi currently, but were not able to come for Thanksgiving. Paula opened the wine and offered us a glass. Turned out that was enough to keep us there the whole night. We missed the public health volunteers (I was sad, since I still haven’t met half of them), but had a wonderful time. We enjoyed a gourmet dinner of popcorn and apples as the wine kept flowing. Erin arranged for Greg and I to spend the night, since it would be easy to start cooking right off the bat the next day.

In spite of the fact that we were up until after 1 (I’ve been doing that a lot lately) I was the last one awake at 8:00 (much later than I’ve been waking up lately, actually). We started cooking at 8:30 and pushed on through the day. Paula and Erin were running the scene on tubers (yep, we had potatoes, yams and sweet potatoes, all of which were a pretty similar hue of off-white) and I was assisting. Greg went to visit one of the public health volunteers who suffered a pretty nasty attack in Nairobi. During low intensity parts of the cooking, we got hot showers. (Amazing!) David aka Mr. Gourmet (an ICT volunteer) showed up a bit later and started the great pie crusade. He threw together some pretty amazing pie crusts from scratch and invited me to roll out two of them (he believes in beginners’ luck). We made pecan pie, pumpkin pie and apple pie. We had to get them done early while the turkey thawed so that we could cook that for a long time.

Carly (another science teacher) arrived around noon, and she and I ran to the grocery store (only ten minutes walk from Martha’s apartment) where we ran into Alex (business volunteer). We picked up a few more supplies and grabbed a fantastic lunch at Java House and all caught up a bit. Erin called me three times while we were there to make two additional requests from the grocery store and to accuse me of stealing the peanut butter (I was completely innocent). As we were heading back to the apartment, we made a detour to a gas station where Alex wanted to fill his football (American football to complete the Thanksgiving experience). The attendant asked if we had a needle, which we didn’t. We were about to leave and come up with a plan B when he decided to try forcing the compressed air against the valve. We stood there chuckling about this ridiculous idea only to have our jaws drop as the ball inflated. Pretty amazing.

When we got back to the apartment, Nik (another public health volunteer) was mulling some wine (I kept hearing him say mold wine instead of mulled wine, which was pretty confusing). The turkey was in the oven and we were just waiting at this point, so we enjoyed celery (first time I’ve seen that in Kenya), raisins, mango gummies, devilled eggs and chips and salsa. All of the business volunteers received a text message from Louis (their APCD or Peace Corps supervisor) wishing them a happy thanksgiving. I was excited to also receive a text from Louis and gloated to the other education volunteers (Louis is pretty amazing).

The last bit of preparation was making the gravy and carving the turkey. I was really impressed that all the food was out of the oven by 4:00. Fortunately, Tom (another science teacher) arrived and we crowned him the Gravy King. The Gravy King lived up to his name. Nik became the carving king. He also did a pretty impressive job. At this point, it seemed like the mulled wine was setting in. We had a delicious thanksgiving feast. After eating, we ran outside to catch the last bit of daylight and throw the football around a bit. This was my chance to talk to Matt (the only deaf education volunteer who was able to attend) and catch up a bunch. Then we came in and ate pie. Alex whipped some cream and all three pies were amazing. I guess David was right about beginner’s luck; I’ll probably never be able to roll them out like that again.

Kristy (one of the science teachers who has finished her service and will be leaving in December) arrived after most of the food was gone, but lots of turkey remained. This was unfortunate for her, since Kristy is a vegetarian. Still, she seemed pretty thrilled about the pie, so it wasn’t so bad.

After all the food, we lounged in front of the TV a bit (stumbled on an episode of The Office and part of Paris Je T’aime, though some people were disappointed that we couldn’t find the parade or football; I was thrilled to see satellite TV). I made sure to corner Nik and Paula at different points throughout the night to talk about doing a charcoal project in their villages. Paula and I have been talking about this for a while, and I’ve been too busy to organize the details, but we finally ironed everything out, I believe. Nik’s is a pretty funny story. I was trying to download Amy Smith’s talk on TED about charcoal when I noticed on the comments page that one of the most recent comments was from a volunteer based in Kenya. I had been trying to meet with Nik to talk more about this, so Thanksgiving wound up being a pretty golden opportunity. It was especially funny, since most of my training group knows me as (or makes fun of me as) The Charcoal Guy. The public health volunteers never had to deal with my incessant discussions on the topic, so they didn’t even know how excited I get about it. It sounds like I may have a few charcoal projects in my future.

One of the high points of the evening was when Nik stood up and regaled us with a poem, which was fantastic. Apparently people had a bet about when I would start talking about tryptophan during the night (I never used the word). As we lounged in front of the TV, we watched people slowly drop off. Alex fell asleep on the floor, lying down with one leg crossed over his knee and his shoes still on. Nik laid on the floor and when we asked him if he needed a blanket he replied “No thanks, I’ve got my iPod.” The rest of us went to bed again shortly after midnight and had another fantastic night’s sleep.

In the morning I woke up to find Paula mopping the kitchen floor. Paula had also done the largest share of the cooking. And washed the lion’s share of the dishes. And probably paid the largest portion for the groceries. She is an absolute angel and we all love her dearly. David and I had to drag Nik out the door and after three matatus and a bit of walking, we arrived at the Peace Corps office. I greeted a few staff members and then went to see Enos (my Peace Corps supervisor). It was the first time I’d seen him in over six months. Carly and Tom were both already in there, so I had to wait a bit before he had time for me. Fortunately, he quickly approved my plans to travel to Tanzania (to see Jodie and Jackie!) and Loitoktok (to meet the new education volunteers). This’ll be my first time using vacation days. We also quickly caught up (he knows most of what’s going on at my site because of my monthly reports) and quickly discussed food security (a passion of our new country director), upcoming audit’s by Peace Corps’ Inspector General, and he gave me a USB stick since Peace Corps is now issuing them to volunteers.

I ran over to talk to Tim (the public health APCD) quickly about the USBs. Since he is a fantastic resource on trees, I was trying to convince him to put some materials on the flash drives for new volunteers so that volunteers can might be able to access info quickly on trees (for example, lots of education volunteers find themselves involved with tree planting projects in their communities). It seems like he’s pretty enthusiastic about the idea. After that, we grabbed a quick pizza lunch in Nairobi (the trick to affordable stays in Nairobi is to find the places that have 2-for-1 specials on certain days of the week) we hurried to the bus station to head back to site. I was excited as we traveled that Greg actually understood one of my jokes when I referenced South Ossetia and Abkhazia (I promise, this one was hilarious). Greg and I rode the bus with Erin and Paula and it was a really nice trip. We even got to see Janet (she is Erin’s boss at her site) who I adore.

It’s nice to be back at site, although I don’t see getting a full night’s sleep for a bit longer…