Thanksgiving with Native Americans

390 years ago, a group of Pilgrims had a celebration with some of their new Native American friends.  The same thing happened today.

We had gotten the advice long before we moved to Guatemala to make sure we took the time to "do familiar things" and "make things feel like home", and holidays are a really good excuse to do familiar things in familiar ways.  The typical Thanksgiving at the Colvett household includes throwing frozen hot dogs at passing cars, but since we don't have a freezer, hot dogs, or passing cars, we had to make other plans.  A couple of weeks ago, we decided that we were going to have a true Thanksgiving feast, complete with turkey and stuffing and stuffing turkeys like me.  So, with a little forethought, we had some friends bring some food from the US as part of a visiting team last week and we did a little out-of-the-ordinary shopping ourselves.  We also invited several people here who we are close to and had a great day.

The turkey, which is for some reason the centerpiece of the Holiday, was a special challenge.  We don't have an oven here in which to cook one and we didn't want to use a turkey fryer because we figured that setting fire to the Ulpan Valley would be frowned upon by the 7,500 people here, although it would teach the principle of "stuff and burn" to people who are more accustomed to "slash and burn".  So after doing some intense research (i.e. Googling for a few minutes), we determined that we could cook a turkey underground (like what might have actually been done in 1621).  So, yesterday we spent about 4 hours using machetes to chop down and chop up firewood.  We had some help from our Mayan friends here, and their wood was cut fairly cleanly but the ones we cut were basically turned into mulch.  The next step was to dig a hole:

The hole needed to be about 3' by 3' by 3', so this took some time.  Notice how nice and bright the sunshine is.  That lasted for about 45 more seconds.  Getting a fire going in a hole isn't as easy as it might sound, but it is as smoky as it might sound.  However, we borrowed a trick from the original Pilgrims and started soaking our firewood in kerosene.  I assume their 50-year old kerosene heaters they borrowed from other missionaries didn't work either, so what else did they need kerosene for than to create an explosive pit of jet fuel?  Speaking of which, let me just say "Poof! No eyebrows!" and leave it at that.  Here's proof of pre-poof:

You can see our good friend Roberto Caal in the background cutting up wood.  We'd given up long before this.  Next was the most sacred of all Thanksgiving traditions: the burying of the turkey where you usually park the Mazda pickup.  Of all the things to baste a turkey with, soil is pretty low on the list, so we once again followed the path of our ancestors and wrapped the turkey in aluminum foil, then in banana leaves (those grow on Cape Cod, right???) and then a screen mesh we typically use to screen outlets to spring boxes and then secured it all with rebar tie wire:

It was pouring down rain at this point, and well after dark, but to protect our fire we had constructed a plastic tarp over it, firmly secured with scrap lumber, broken fence posts, and I think a small turtle.  We were, however, quite confident that we could keep the turkey moist, since there was a nice mix of water and kerosene in its soon-to-be-occupied grave.  So about 10:00 last night, we buried the turkey and nervously awaited its exhumation this morning.  It did stop raining during the night, and most of the family stopped throwing up as well.  Here's Kris opening the poultry-geist this morning:

Put simply, it was the best turkey I'd ever had.  Really, I was chicken at first, maybe a little sheepish, and almost had a cow when I tried it because the concept still seemed fishy to me, but I really pigged out.  Our company was even better.  It brought to mind times growing up when Billy Ray Warren would write on a chalkboard all the things people said they were thankful for, or when Steve and Debbie Gampp in Boulder would invite a strange new couple from Alabama to their house to share the holiday.  It brought to mind the fact that my mother was with my aunt today and Ginger's sister was with her parents today.  We were right there with them all.  That's the great thing about holidays and being a part of God's family.  In this picture you see a bunch of lost Pilgrims and people like Manuel and Roberto and Julio and their wives and their kids and right there with them are people they've never met.  But they're all at the same table, and there's plenty of room and plenty of food.

We capped the evening off with a viewing of The Polar Express.  Movies have become a real favorite of people here, and it makes us feel like home.  Afterward, right at sunset, we said our goodbyes and said "hasta manana" to our friends, or in some cases "wulak chik alooy", which means "see you soon, friend".  And as we said goodbye, a huge rainbow spread across the east end of the valley, and this sight was on the west end:

Happy Thanksgiving.