Two Thanksgivings and a Farewell

Marcelline separating beans for our Thanksgiving succotash.

Rebecca and I are sitting here in our bedroom this evening still reeling slightly from the just-ended whirl-wind tour of Grandma Jean.  It seems like she just got here. She arrived exactly 2 weeks ago on Sunday evening on a Brussels Air flight to Bujumbura, and departed in the same way this evening.  

Rebecca and the boys took her to the airport while I stayed home to lead the small group Bible study that meets on our house on Sunday evenings.  (Rebecca was able to stay for about half of it.)

I said reeling because this was a very full week, which included, among other things, two Thanksgiving dinner celebrations on Thursday and Saturday.  But I don't want to get ahead of myself here.

Monday really felt like a 'getting back to work day.'  Coming off the retreat the past week meant catching up on a lot of email and other administrative tasks. Ruth and Krystan as well as Jodi were still at the house until Tuesday morning, although they all had made dinner plans to visit others on Monday night so we had a fairly quiet dinner together with just Jean and the kids.  

Probably as a result of all the activity and travel of the past several weeks, illness began to set in and affected many of us.  Both Oren and David have been sick with bad sinus infections and fever, and sadly Jean got hit with it as well.  Both kids missed school during the week at least once, and David was out for several days with high fever.  So doctor appointments and starting a regimen of antibiotics for both boys and Grandma Jean were part of the week's offerings.

Wednesday was probably the low point of the week as far as illness as it seemed everyone but Rebecca and I were in bed with fevers, and we considered whether going through with our ambitious Thanksgiving plans for a large dinner with Burundian friends the next day was a good idea.  We did not want to cancel it as there had been considerable planning and preparation put into it even the day before. Among the things prepared were several crafts, like little turkey napkin rings constructed by Grandma Jean and Oren.  

We weighed our options and decided that in our experience, most of the viruses we have contracted here go away in about 24 hours so we did not change our plans to proceed with the Thanksgiving meal. 

Last year we had invited a group of Burundian friends to share Thanksgiving with us at our house.  My parents were visiting at the time and it was a great opportunity to have them meet several of our Burundian friends all at once.  We decided to recreate the event again with Rebecca's mom.

This year we included many of the same friends to join us again.  We had Onesphore and his two children (his wife is still doing a medical residency in France), we had Zenon and his family (he is a partner from Campus Intervarsity ministry), and Zachee, Bridget and Tim and our program officer Felix. With Jean and us we were a group of 15.   It was good that most of these folks had some knowledge of English which meant Jean could talk with them as well.  (At one point in the evening she recounted the Thanksgiving story from the Native American perspective of Squanto—the Indian who assisted the pilgrims.)

It was very nice to share this meal with Burundian friends.  We did our best to make some traditional Thanksgiving favorites and came up with some great hybrids of Burundian and American food.  Succotash was not hard as white beans are available here, as are sweet potatoes (white, not yams), as well as regular potatoes and pumpkins (for pie).  Recently some stores around here offer rotisserie chickens for sale, so I bought 3 of those as well.  

The real challenge was to be the cranberry sauce (for me the sin qua non of Thanksgiving ‘fixins’).  There is no way to get fresh cranberries here and to date, I have not seen any cans of it imported.  Rebecca came up with an awesome substitute though by using a fruit we find locally called a japanese plum or tree tomato.

I have not seen these fruits in the US before, but here they are quite common.  They have a very deep red interior and a thick skin that looks like a plum.  The taste is generally very tart and astringent.  Usually it is squeezed out as a kind of dressing on fruit salads made with mangoes, bananas, and pineapples.  They are not very good to eat alone unless you really love sour fruit.

But as a substitute for cranberries it was almost indistinguishable and in some ways even better.  Rebecca wrote down the recipe, however if you are not in a country where you can get Japanese plums (tree tomatoes) it will probably be hard to reproduce.  But here it is.  

Fresh “Cranberry” Relish for Burundi

(guaranteed 100% cranberry-free)

Add into blender:

4 medium carrots (sliced into pieces) OR 2 carrots and 2 apples (seeded and quartered)

8 – 10 Japanese plums (Tree tomatoes) 

* to do this, cut plums in half, and scoop out flesh and purple seeds from each half into blender with a teaspoon. Use everything but the outer skin.

1 orange with peel still on (quartered, remove seeds and tough center section)

Juice of 1 lemon

½ cup sugar

½ cup pineapple juice OR ½ cup other juice (apple, mixed berry)

Blend until a smooth consistency, about a minute. If the blender has trouble, add a little more liquid, either juice or water.

Pour into a dish, chill and enjoy.

Probably the mzungus enjoyed this addition the most, I think the Burundians could have taken it or left it.  But they did have a great time together and we are glad to have a reason to get together with Burundian friends in the evening.

Thursday was not the only Thanksgiving dinner we had though.  Through Oren’s school we have connections to a few American parents.  One of them, Olivia, has a daughter in Oren’s class.  She is here with her husband and 2 children.  He is part of the UN mission here working as a lawyer to reinforce the capacity of the Burundian justice system.  She invited us to a real American Thanksgiving dinner with TURKEY!  (It was brought in through the diplomatic pouch of the Dutch embassy, I think.)  

There are a handful of Americans who have children at the Ecole Belge, it includes us, the Horsts and an American woman named Ann Glick who is married to one of the diplomats with the Dutch embassy.  We were all invited to share Thanksgiving together at Olivia's house Saturday evening.

We took Jean and the kids and went over in the afternoon on Saturday.  The only thing I can say about the food is it was fabulous.  There were 2 small turkeys cooked to perfection as well as filet mignon, pork stuffing, sweet potato French fries, all other standard Thanksgiving offerings including pumpkin and shoo-fly pie (complete with flies that had to be shooed!).  Rebecca’s cranberry sauce may have been the runaway favorite though.  This was a group of people who could definitely appreciate the importance of it, and would also miss its omission at a meal claiming to be Thanksgiving.  I think she passed on the recipe to several people there.

What was interesting about the event was the unusual concentration of Mennonites there.  Besides Rebecca and Jean (bretheren) we had the Horsts who are Mennonite, as well as Ann Glick who is Mennonite as well.  Since there is no Mennonite church in Burundi I think that every Mennonite in the country was at that dinner, completely by serendipity. (Olivia did not know this about the invitees at all.)   When it was time for a pre-meal blessing, Ann suggested we sing #606 (a version of the Doxology humorously nicknamed the Mennonite National Anthem because it is so well-known by all Mennonites.)  It is quite impressive to hear with all the complex harmonies and parts rendered seemingly spontaneously.  There were a few guests from Ecuador and Benin (UN colleagues) as well as the other Americans who seemed quite impressed by it.  I certainly was.  I think the propensity of Mennonites also accounted for the tastiness of all the food as Mennonites are some of the best cooks of simple, traditional food in the world.  (If you don’t believe me, check out the More With Less Cookbook.)

It was really great to have a second Thanksgiving meal with this culturally very diverse group.  It is also always interesting to hear about the work of other expats who find themselves here in Burundi.  There is a fairly large UN mission here, but unless they have kids in Oren’s class, we are not likely to have much interaction with them.

The kids also played very well together as they are all in the same school.  I will certainly not forget it soon and will probably see if something like this can be created next year.  The fact that we had the chance to share a tradition cross-culturally, but also participate  in it with those who share our own cultural traditions was a special blessing this year.

Sunday was our last day with Grandma Jean and we took her to church in the morning.  I am happy that she decided to assist Rebecca with the Sunday school class she is teaching.  Rebecca has been offering an English medium class for non-french speaking children at PTI.  There are quite a few ex-pats who come to the service, particularly from Kenya and Ethiopia, which are Anglophone.  She is up to about 20 kids now and it is a really good class.  (Thanks to some very good curriculum we brought with us from the US this summer.)

I am glad also that Jean took some pictures of the class to get an idea of just how modest a Sunday School classroom at the church is.  As you can see there are no desks or even chairs.  Children sit on the floor.  There are no supplies whatsoever, but fortunately we have a stock of crayons and Rebecca photocopies pictures for them to color.  Other crafts are very limited because it is almost impossible to buy things like straws, pipe cleaners, cotton balls, and other kinds of craft supplies.  Nonetheless she makes do and the kids seem to really like to be there.

We came home in the afternoon and Sunday and actually took out, cleaned up and started to decorate the Christmas tree.  Oren has been very excited about doing this and to share some of the decorating with Grandma Jean.  (In case you are wondering about the tree, it is artificial, made in China and pretty scrawny, but seems to have held up well the past 3 years.)

Sunday evening we had our small group again.  Jean needed to be dropped off about half-way through so Rebecca started with us then took Jean and the kids to the airport while I finished with our group.  

There was much to be Thankful for in all of this.  We had a great time with Grandma who helped us out a lot in her first week and has even committed herself to help us in the future with a campaign to get some good children’s books sent to Burundi to share with our partners who run schools.  (Particularly the Hope School for the Batwa).  It is always a tremendous blessing to have ‘representatives’ from our families and friends at home to bring their love and support out here.  It is true that absence does make the heart grow fonder.