Hunting Down and Burying the Thanksgiving Turkey

When we were invited to join our friends for a traditional Thanksgiving meal we were really excited. We had immensely enjoyed Thanksgiving with them last year, and this year was no different in that regard. What was different is that last year, their church had raised a few turkeys so it was not a problem to get the main course, whereas this year, there was no clear way to find the meat.

Loren, our host and friend, and I began the hunt. We made phone calls. We searched the web. We talked to friends. We queried others in Uganda on Facebook. We even wandered through the neighborhood chasing down birds when we heard the classic "gobble gobble" call of the elusive beasts - literally! What we discovered was that the birds we heard were already sold. The local shop sold frozen ones for 33,000 shillings a kilo. At that rate, a 22 pound bird would be $131, and we had over twenty people to feed.

Finally, we ended up buying a live female from the market in a town near ours, negotiating the price down to $30 for bird that definitely didn't tip the 10 pound point. The turkey was joined by 2 of Loren's chickens who were refusing to lay eggs, and Loren's husband and sons "dispatched" them.

The kids and I had been studying the original Thanksgiving celebration from early American history this term, so our hunt for a live bird felt a bit more authentic. Just to add more flavor (literally and figuratively) to the birds, our friends buried them. No, not permanently, but over hot coals, surrounded by hot bricks, and wrapped in banana leaves and foil a few feet under the ground for several hours! The guys dug them up as the guests eagerly watched, sniffing the air appreciatively.

I found it ironic that in order to keep the meat tidy and clean, the entire underground poultry package was wrapped in chicken wire!

Everyone recognized that all that effort was worth it the minute the final layer of banana leaves was opened, and we saw the glory and smelled the roasted aroma of what was to be the main attraction of a delicious feast.

Our hard-earned birds were joined by local white sweet potatoes, stuffing with herbs from Loren's garden, butternut squash from her garden, mashed "Irish" - what white potatoes are called in Uganda, gravy, crescent rolls, cranberry sauce from a can (a nice find here), pumpkin pie, and ice cream - ALL of it homemade except for the cranberry sauce. And when I say "homemade" I mean everything from cooking an actual pumpkin to mixing cream, sugar, vanilla, and milk for amazing ice cream!

Loren and I had a few scares with the electricity popping on and off throughout the day, but we managed to get the whole happy affair on the table and served. When the electricity went out again for the night right before dessert was served, we sat back and relaxed, enjoying the candlelight and company, extremely thankful for the good Lord's provision of tasty local food, the energy to make it all, and the blessing of sharing it with good friends who are our on-the-field family.

That being said, I think we might have a simple Christmas dinner. I'm thinking...sandwiches?

To Kampala and Back

After nine years in East Africa, I still am able to look about and recognize how different life is here. The differences were very apparent to me yesterday when we drove to Kampala to get immunizations for Cooper and to do some shopping. Kampala is about 20 miles away from Entebbe, and it usually takes more than an hour in the car to get there.

The government knocked down several buildings and walls which were "encroaching" on the road, so we observed people working on the rubble several times as they tried to rebuild their businesses and homes.

The traffic is unbelievable when compared to the rules of the road in America. Motorcycle taxis zip in front of us and around us weaving in and out of traffic, occasionally even going in the wrong direction. A two-lane road becomes three lanes at a driver's whim. A bus and a van had an accident and were choking up the round about (and hey - that's a difference - we have round abouts!). It's hard to describe how people drive here but here's an example of one thing we saw.

The speeding driver of an SUV passed us in oncoming traffic, and three times he intentionally swerved and pushed oncoming public-service vans off onto the shoulder, where they could have easily hit pedestrians or motorcycles. In that stretch of road, we passed two sets of traffic officers and a police vehicle, and no one did anything. It was very much like that driver was playing chicken; in other words, it was horrifying.

As we left the clinic where Cooper got 4 shots, 2 Bandaids, and 2 pieces of candy, we were approached by men on each side of the car trying to sell their live turkeys from shopping baskets. Not exactly the frozen food aisle in November!

The billboards are sometimes boring, but often amusing. My favorite one, which sells chicken meat, says, "For the love of nice chicks with fat thighs!" and has a photo of a lady biting into a piece of chicken. I honestly can't tell if they're trying to make a pun or not.

Kampala is divided here and there into shopping districts which focus on one type of item. There is a road for fabrics, a section for hardware, a produce/meat market area, and the one we drove through was for office and paper products. It boggled my mind to think of having to get out of the car (if you could find parking!) to buy things like a stapler, a ream of paper, and pens - dozens and dozens of little shops, one on top of the other, crawling with customers. And how do you choose where to shop? You choose the place where you have the best relationship with the clerks or owner!

As always, we like to watch what will go by on the back of a boda boda (the motorcycle taxis). Yesterday we saw a man with a great big Nile Perch. There was a lady with her traditional gomesi, the fancy shiny dress with shoulders that come out of a Star Trek episode. A whole family on a boda. Two ladies with a blanketed baby sandwiched between them and the driver. Piles of mattresses. Piles of cooking bananas. Piles of pineapples on the back and front of the boda. Wood sticking horizontally out into traffic. Stacks and stacks of egg trays - how do they do it without cracking them on each pothole and speed bump? It's great entertainment!

The titles of stores are always amusing. During one stretch of road for about 1 or 2 kilometers, I wrote the name of every shop with a spiritually derived name: Hosanna Investments, Noah's Ark Takeaway, Mother Mary Supermarket, Holy Family Complex, Ebenezer Carpentry, and The Divine Grocery Store. How's that for shopping incentive?

Brightly colored dresses are hung outside clothing shops on very un-American hangars. These hangars hold the dresses by the shoulders but continue on down and span out into a huge semi-circle to insinuate nice round hips!

As we arrive into Entebbe, we pass by a small bay of Lake Victoria called Sesse. For the past several months it has been flooded from all the rain we got earlier in the year - the dirt walkway had disappeared, and the bottoms of the palm trees were submerged. The little beach is back now, and it's open season for laundry at the beach. People wash their clothes and then lay them out on the grass to dry - not what you see in America when you're at the lake or beach!

Although the traffic is always truly dangerous and incomprehensible, I'm grateful that I was able to notice some of the fun parts of African roadside life yesterday in an attempt to convey the wonder of it all to you.

Making Chicken Enchiladas in Uganda

1. Buy fresh ingredients in the market.
2. Buy a frozen chicken, being grateful it's not a live one.
3. Make tortillas from scratch.
4. Boil chicken, remove meat from bones. Feed skin and bones to frenzied dogs. Freeze the broth.
5. Boil beans, drain and mix with onions, garlic, and tomatoes.
6. Chop onions, garlic, tomatoes, and green peppers for sauce.
7. Figure out conversions from "can of soup" to powdered soup mix plus water.
8. Figure out conversions from "can of Rotel tomatoes" to chopped fresh tomatoes.
9. Discard cookbook's ideas about rolling the tortillas, dipping them in sauce, and filling them with chicken.
10. Grease the pan, layer the ingredients, insert it into the oven.
11. Make guacamole from avocados from the garden.
12. Make salsa from scratch.
13. Pretend the plain yogurt is sour cream.
14. Comfort distraught daughter who swallows her loose tooth along with the guacamole.
15. Enjoy all 20 minutes of a dinner which literally took days to completely prepare.
16. Wash dishes, pots, and pans.
and finally,
17. Thank the good Lord for a great house helper who makes this possible so I can teach my kids at home, keep up with my toddler, and still be reasonably sane by dinnertime.