Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. We’re stopping classes at noon to prepare a dinner. I’m in charge of Team Stuffing. We have been buying bread for the past two days, but it’s not getting stale despite being cut and placed into pillow cases. The next step, if everyone is not grossed out, is to spread all the bread out in the sun tomorrow and ask Dorthea, who stays in our house during the day to keep it clean, if she would watch the bread and make sure insects and birds don’t get it. She doesn’t speak English…only Kinyarwandan, so I’ll need a good night’s sleep to try and ask her. The sun can be really intense around noon, if it isn’t raining. A huge pit has been dug behind the cook house up at the center. Tomorrow, really early, a wood fire will be started and the turkeys will be placed on the coals with more coals placed on top. Potatoes have been peeled and huge charcoal fire pots have been pulled out. Team stuffing has a great big pot and hopes of broth. If not we’ll be making it tomorrow. My job in the morning is to talk to Dorthea and then make sure we have oil and charcoal. After that everyone will come to Amahoro House and begin to make stuffing.
Thanksgiving is over and it took 6 hours to make stuffing for 75.. We chopped what seemed like a hundred onions and small celery that was mostly leaves and garlic and a bucket of carrots. We made broth on charcoal fires and browned bread and picked out ants. Finally, Sarah, one of team stuffing, stepped forward and declared herself as chief stuffing maker. She made small batch after small batch, adding spices and liquid. Other team stuffing members stepped forward to stir. When it was finally done, we called Mupe…he’s in charge of training. He said he would send a car down, but when it didn’t arrive, Joel, the only male member of team stuffing other than Nelson, picked the vat up and started up the road with Nelson in tow trying to persuade Joel to turn back and to keep the vat from falling. People stopped on the road to encourage Joel and his pot of stuffing. A lady gave him a piece of paper to put between his hand and the pot. The rest of us left home and went to the Boomerang for a wine.
Here are two pictures....one is of our language classrooms and the other is of MY language class with Tito as our teacher of the day!!!
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