Devoid of family and the typical Turkey Day yumminess (stuffing, cranberries, mashed potatoes, and even the bird itself), it was obviously an unusual Thanksgiving Day celebration for us here in Kenya. However, we decided to share our national holiday with some members of our new Tumaini family. After our own Thanksgiving “feast” of vegetable curry, we had the Form Four students over to share our O So Traditional Pilgrim-like Platter of…banana bread (believe it or not, the local market does not have pumpkin pie ingredients in stock :).
Jonathan opened by sharing the Thanksgiving story with them and I ended the party with a silly game but the best part of the night was spent going around the circle sharing what we were thankful for in the past year. The kids took it rather seriously and we heard responses such as “I am thankful to God to be alive.” This could be taken as a cop-out if shared around the table with our families back home but here it represented an honest sense of gratitude for life in a place where death is more of an accepted reality rather than an unexpected disaster (we’ve already experienced one death in the local community, a husband of an elder in the church). It was a special moment to get a small peak into their life and heart through this Thanksgiving tradition.
To say the least, it was an abnormal day of Thanksgiving but it was full of fun and laughter. Plus, for at least one year of our lives, we dodged the post Turkey Day “I can’t believe I ate so much!” food coma. ☺
[Our experience without Internet communication for the past 11 days has left us with a greater awareness of our separation from loved ones. We are extremely thankful for all of you and hope that everyone had blessed Thanksgivings full of love, gratitude and yumminess]
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