Thanksgiving in true Mozambican fashion

So I invited myself to Gorongosa to spend Thanksgiving with the Mills’. Jordan’s parents were going to be visiting so I wanted to meet them and I def wasn’t about to spend it alone in Monapo, so I made the long journey down! Sidenote: I feel that I may need to clarify. When I say brian and jordan, I mean the mills’, the married couple that has oh so graciously taken me in = ] they’re pretty awe… I mean ok… (I know they, along with their friends and family members, read my blog and I don’t want anyone’s head getting bigger… Oregonians…) anyway so on the journey down I had been talking to brian and he said their power had been out, but we just thought it was from the weather and we kinda just assumed/hoped it would be back before the big day arrived. Jordan’s poor parents got the real moz experience sans energy which means no fans and romantic candle lit dinners! Luckily the weather was pretty overcast and not blazing hot, but still November in Africa is still summer… come Wednesday evening, the electricity still isn’t back so we cook an entire fiesta night dinner on two charcoal grills! Mexican rice, chips, salsa, queso dip, beans and dude it was friggin awesome! But if we thought that took long and it was a lot of work, we were in for a surprise! By Thursday morning we had just accepted the fact that the electricity would not be coming on and at 7am we started cooking! Peeling potatoes, boiling pumpkin, rolling out biscuit and pie dough, and most importantly, getting the charcoal grills going! We bought a giant bag of charcoal and a few extra pots to make a dutch oven and to cook in, and the boys went to go pick up the turkey… the very alive turkey! I guess you’re supposed to feed it alcohol so that it’s not so crazy when you kill it, but apparently our turkey wasn’t so thirsty cuz it wouldn’t drink the wine, although personally I think the turkey just has good taste and knows really bad Mozambican wine when it sees it, so the killing process was a little more hectic, but tikha, the mills’ ‘very excited over a giant bird‘ dog, didn’t help either. After the kill, that left 4 guys covered in splatters of the turkey’s blood, and tikha ripping out most of the turkey’s feathers, colin and espanhol tackled the rest of the defeathering and degutting of the turkey… it was not a pretty site. Well once the turkey was clean, since our dutch oven wouldn’t be big enough to cook the entire bird, we cut it into parts and marinated it and set it aside to get grilled. 13 hours, a lot of beer, and half a sack of charcoal later, it was pitch black dark with the romantic candlelit votive, and we ended up with regular and pumpkin biscuits, garlic mashed potatoes, a green bean and bacon casserole, stuffing, fruit salad, pumpkin and apple pie, turkey and gravy, all cooked on just 2 little charcoal grills! We stuffed our faces that night and I got to have delicious pumpkin pie for the next 4 meals! It was probably one of the most hard core peace corps experiences I have had, but it was a friggin blast and it definitely made me realize how thankful I am to be here and to have had the pleasure of sharing these experiences with some of the most amazing people I have ever met! I will also never be complaining about cooking another thanksgiving dinner where there are ovens, sinks and stoves, but I’m also very thankful for all the stores that sell pre-packaged thanksgiving meals! Oh glorious ralph’s thanksgiving box… how I miss thee = ]
Also a special shout out to my new best friend, pete! He’s the cyclist doing the ‘against malaria’ cycle I talked about last time and anyway he had made it into Malawi, but for some odd reason ahem alex ahem, came back to visit and spent thanksgiving with us in moz! Anyway one thing led to another and we became best friends forever and because that wasn’t enough he’s also my second best friend as well. Really sorry to all those out there who wanted those position, but he’s just really awesome and he has a british accent! I mean how can you beat that? Haha MISS YOU PETE! COME BACKKKKKKKK! Are you in Rwanda now?
Stuffed panda