Lots to be thankful for….

A few weeks before Thanksgiving my fellow Canadian VSO and I decide we will host a big party so we can celebrate our national holiday while here in Guyana. We soon have 12 people from six continents, including two vegetarians and one vegan coming for dinner. So how many “live and pluck” chickens will we need? How many pies should we bake?… How will it all turn out?… Well things go like this…
Thursday – I realize I better start cooking pies in advance as my oven is so small. I bike to “Nigels” the elite supermarket that carries expensive imported goods and sure enough they sell canned pumpkin and cream.. for a price!. 8 thousand GD dollars later I have my ingredients, including the makings for vegan tofu pumpkin pie. Whoops I overbought and now am challenged to transport it all home on a bicycle…much maneuvering and swearing later I do successfully tie six cans of pumpkin and six cans of cream to the sides of my bike and balance eight Chinese take out foil containers that I plan to convert to pie pans, in my basket on top of flour, shortening, sugar, and tofu. I spend the night making pie crust.
Friday - Noooo!….My fellow Canadian is sick with the flu and won’t make it to G-Town for the weekend, so I have lost my co-host and am on my own. I am very sad at this news and will miss her company. I must steal up the courage to purchase two “live and pluck” chickens all alone. I have researched where I think the cleanest “shop” is to place my order. So after work I boldly step inside the chosen store and ask for two chickens. It smells strongly like poultry and wet straw (not a particularly nice smell combination)…and oh sweet Jesus I can hear the birds in the back. Welcome to the food chain I think as I nervously await my orders completion. An alarmingly short time later, two large bags are placed in front of me, oh God did one just move…no haha just my imagination; it seems I am a bit jumpy. I am charged 4 thousand GD dollars for two large fat recently alive and freshly plucked chickens, which after the cost of my pie ingredients seems like a bargain. I get them wrapped in newspaper and stuff them in my basket and quickly cycle home in the blazing sun to my salmonella free refrigerator. I wash them in the sink and notice they need a bit more …ahem...plucking. So I set to it and think of my grandmother homesteading on the prairies as I remove a hundred or so quills one by one. Finally I am satisfied and pat them dry, rub on salt and herbs and place them covered with a towel in the fridge awaiting their big day tomorrow. I bake four pies and have to ask my neighbor to store two in her fridge as I am already out of space. It’s Friday night and fellow VSOs are in town for the party and we all go out till late drinking and dancing to celebrate “Thanksgiving Eve”…yay!
Saturday – Party Day!
I get up at six slightly hung over, and notice I have a terrible heat rash, the worst since coming here spreading from chin to knee. I look like a plucked chicken with angry red welts all over…is this “live and plucks” revenge? Itchy and painful rash aside I must start party preparations and quickly bake four more pies including two vegan ones and I’m very thankful for my 11 thousand dollar blender. A friend has spent the night and over coffee she and I make up party games, create giant turkey decorations and write a wall plaque asking “what are you thankful for?” She leaves at noon and there is still much to do for I must haul containers of drinking water upstairs, and then damn it I run out of propane mid pie cooking so must go buy gas and re-hook it up the tank to my stove. Much swearing and maneuvering later I successfully complete a job that is usually more in the male realm of responsibility. Water and gas secured I then hike in the heat over to Sheriff St. to buy adult beverages, my rash burning in the sun. I over-buy and need to take a taxi home, the driver does not offer me any help to unload my ten bags of groceries and sits idly by in his A/C’d cab smoking as I make three trip up to the flat…doesn’t he know its Thanksgiving? The afternoon flies by as I clean the flat, peel potatoes, prepare the live and plucks and on a whim also make a dozen chocolate cupcakes. By 4 pm I am all set with my cupcakes decorated in candy to look like turkeys, 8 pies cooked (vegan and regular), beverages cooling, 2 stuffed chickens set to go in oven, and the flat spotlessly clean, but decide I also need flowers and ice to make things party perfect. With no flower shops within a thousand miles I cycle up to the canal with scissors in hand to “harvest” a few wild lotus flowers. I park my bike with the kickstand and climb down the bank to a wooden board that crosses the canal so I can reach in and cut flowers. This goes really well and I collect a nice bouquet, but then hear a funny noise and look up to see my bike topple over and slide into the canal…F****!!! I rush back across the board and wade into the muddy, slimy, weedy canal water to fish out my bike which has sunk up to the handle bars. A few more seconds and I might never have known what happened to it, I would likely have walked back with my flowers and presumed it stolen. Much swearing and maneuvering later, I am slimy to the knees and my bike is gross but at least I have it. I cycle back slowly with flowers in one hand and my flip flops and bike streaming a muddy trail behind me. I wash my bike off by throwing buckets of water on it and this method gets it pretty clean actually and it even dries quickly in the hot sun. So canal sinking trauma over I then set off once again on the bike this time to buy ice with the goal of getting it back to my freezer before it melts. My basket drips icy water onto my knees as I blast homeward pedaling hard. I am required to do an entire fridge/freezer re-org in order to fit in all the damn ice in as it seems I over bought again. Despite the attrition of how much melted on the return trip, I still have to chop the bags down to make them fit inside the door. Whew…I didn’t plan for ice and flowers to take more than ten minutes so I am now running late and must rush to get my chickens in the oven and shower and clean myself and my ugly rash up. I come out from the shower to discover that the damn lotus flowers have tipped over their juice jar vases and water has spilled everywhere and I must re-do the entire table setting and mop up a huge flood…hmmm…maybe the message here is you shouldn’t steal lotus flowers…they also smell kind of bad.
The party finally starts and we drink, socialize, and have a fabulous feast of channa, curried eggplant, corn fritters, stuffed squash, baked peppers, rice and black beans, fresh fruit and lots more, all on top of my complete traditional thanksgiving dinner featuring the roasted live and pluck chickens. Which turned out very well if I do say so myself, other than the side effect of the oven increasing the mean temperature in the flat to about 50 degrees. The chocolate cupcakes from a mix prove to be much more popular than my home made pie and words are exchanged over who gets the last one. I end up with at least six whole pies un-eaten, apparently in the battle between chocolate and pumpkin there is no contest.
Throughout the night my international party guests fill out the poster sharing what they are thankful for, and besides the ubiquitous loved ones, health, world peace etc. we are thankful in no particular order for: “frozen towels, ice, insecticides, rat poison, karaoke, moth balls, cheap limes, cheap beer, cheap rum, cheap vodka, the swimming pool, umbrellas, plastic bags, mosquito nets, blenders, the VSO library, the spice shop, bus conductors, clean bathrooms (when located), hammocks, cameras, Skype and for each other’s company… And what great company it must be for the last guests leave at 5am… It's a party complete with too much food, inappropriate Christmas and rap music popping out of my iTunes all night, hilarious Dutch party games at 11pm that showcase our cultural deficiencies, second helpings of dessert at midnight, a 3 inch cockroach sighting and it's subsequent squealing slaughter at 1am, drunken dishes at 2am, musical horror movies at 3 am, stinky lotus flowers thrown out at 4am and lots and lots of leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast….. Happy Thanksgiving everyone, there is lots to be thankful for wherever you may be living.