Back in October, also known as suicide month, I had heard, that there in fact had been several suicides. May be a coincidence. But the heat manages to intensify everything, the facts of life, emotions, etc. When it is 115F at night, the town of Maun doesn't sleep for days and everyone sighs at the relief of cold showers.
By the time I came back from LA, there still had been no rain. Then it came. Like true locals, we all came out of our flats and rejoiced as the sky poured on top of us. Miraculously, the rain was cooler than the cold water coming out of our taps.
Since I live with 2 other Peace Corps Volunteers in the same building complex, we contemplated doing Thanksgiving together. 3 kitchens, we'd be able to divide and conquer. For a couple months now, we had been eyeing a very pretty turkey next door which wanders around a chicken coup and gobbles on cue at 7AM each morning. Who would have thought I'd move to Botswana and hear a turkey gobble everyday or roosters crow every morning. I had never heard a live turkey before in my life, because there are so many wandering around the beaches of LA. Since I had been gone for awhile, we couldn't get our party plans together, (we weren't even sure if the turkey, after slaughtering and de-feathering etc. would even fit in one of our ovens); we decided to forgo the turkey.
I'm sure the first Thanksgiving didn't even have turkey. Since it's so deathly hot this time of year, some South Africans prefer to celebrate with meals of cold cuts and cheeses and salad instead of heavy heavy turkey and starches. We threw together a dinner with some friends, complete with mashed potatoes and canned cranberry, (along with some bacon cucumber pitas and pasta salad), and our very own Turkey Jerky to appease our American heritage.
Probably similar to how the first Thanksgiving was done, we sat outside and ate by candlelight with glasses of wine.
