An American Thanksgiving: November 25 - 27

American holidays are challenging topics of conversation. For instance, imagine trying to explain Halloween to a deeply religious group of South Africans. As a matter of fact try explaining Halloween or Thanksgiving to anyone! Do you use the myths of the holidays, the Hallmark versions, the way that you and your family celebrate the holiday, or the most historically accurate description- whatever that is?

We also found our American families to be a source of great amusement during the holidays. We had a number of family members that asked “How do South Africans celebrate Columbus Day?” or “What are the people in your village doing for Thanksgiving?”

We decided to bring Thanksgiving to South Africa and celebrated by inviting all of our neighboring Peace Corps volunteers to spend the weekend at our house for a Thanksgiving potluck dinner. We also invited Ma, Dora and Baregile (our language instructor) to share in the festivities, which they found both interesting and highly entertaining. A few of our guests arrived Friday evening with the majority showing up on Saturday and staying through Sunday. We even had a few surprise visitors from across the province! By Saturday morning our small kitchen was bustling with activity. The aroma of Thanksgiving was alive and well in our small South African village, with only one small omission, turkey. Since many of us are vegetarian and the challenges of finding, transporting, storing and cooking a full turkey were a little overwhelming, we decided to skip that small detail. However, the mostly vegetarian spread was as appealing to the eyes as it was to the mouth and we were soon overstuffed (with the omission of our meat-loving South African friends who were utterly dismayed that you could have a celebratory feast without meat).

Although the food was delicious, the highlight of the weekend was the chance to share and reflect with our colleagues. These may be the only people in the world that can completely understand what we are experiencing. We treasure these opportunities to learn from each other and talk about topics such as interactions with the Peace Corps administration, how we are adjusting to our communities, funny stories, language mishaps, successes, and ideas for the future. One topic of conversation that is always brought up when a group of volunteers gather together is corporal punishment. All of us are witness to some degree and form of corporal punishment on a daily basis. Since we were not told how to react or deal with this reality of rural education, there are a variety of different approaches to the issue. Some volunteers are able to ignore the issue, others have chosen to use the first three months as purely an observational period and not confront the issue until they have built relationships with the teachers, some have tried to start non-confrontational conversations around the topic with teachers, and a few have decided to take a firm stand against this illegal form of discipline. Some have gone so far as to threaten to report teachers to the board of education and the police. No matter what our approaches to or beliefs about any of the discussed topics, the act of talking about them with our peers allows us to learn from each others’ successes, mistakes, and novel ideas.

On Sunday as everyone headed back to their villages for the final stretch before the end of the quarter, the challenge of explaining Thanksgiving became much easier. Thanksgiving has always been a time to spend with family and friends, to celebrate each others successes, to support each other, to rejuvenate ourselves in the company of loved ones, and to share in activities (cooking, eating, service, TV, games, etc.) that infuse in us a feeling of camaraderie and joy.

pictures: the spread; our PC family