My Thanksgiving Recap

Thanksgiving in Uganda means receiving a live turkey the day before. All was set for our gardener to bring a turkey he had scoped out (from his village) on Wednesday morning.  As I saw him walk in the gate, turkey-less, I went out to see what was going on. Well, apparently the man he had planned to buy a turkey from had sold ALL of his turkeys the morning before to some butchers in town. Oh Uganda!

So, Wednesday morning, turkey-less, with no plan, I created a plan B:  Call Melanie because she works in a village and surely there are some turkeys there. 

After a few hours, one of her helpful staff members had found some turkeys, but the own was still in the garden so we were not yet able to negotiate a deal.  Feeling the time crunch, I cancelled plan B and created plan C: I asked Peter, my gardener, to go on a "turkey adventure." About 30 minutes later he arrived with this nice one.

Mature turkeys have beards… coming out their necks… you learn something new everyday.  

(kinda weird and gross)

So, for those who have not had this experience before, after slaughtering the turkey,
you pour boiling water on it to help make plucking easier.

And then you begin.

And eventually you get to this.

After the turkey was prepped (I spared you the photos of that process), I started on the pies.
Two pecan pies, two pumpkin pies. All from scratch because that is the only option here.

And 4 pies, some stuffing, and 1 bathing turkey later, I called it a day.

Thanksgiving morning was busy finishing the stuffing and cooking the turkey. I am so grateful for the missionary community here. We had a HUGE celebration, including non Americans, with TONS of food. So yummy!

This is such a sweet photo of my friend Carol and another friend, Kayla's, baby.

And here we are. Stuffed and happy.

I did almost have a disastrous (but would have been epic) moment when I sat on my chair, that was on a slight hill, lost my balance and felt the chair starting to tip backwards. Flaring my one arm around (because the other was holding a plateful of pies), in my head I had a brief second slow-motion moment of seeing myself tip completely backwards and pour my whole plate of pies on my face. Luckily, I was able to catch myself before I fell, but that would have been a great story.