Happy Thanksgiving! While I wasn't the states to celebrate today – know that I was definitely working (and surprise Dad – I cooked!) on Thanksgiving. During every training the trainees have a "Cooking Day" where we prepare a meal Samoan style similar to what they do on Sunday. All the trainees family provided food items (such as Taro, chickens, coconuts, etc) and cooking materials (coconut leaves primarily), so there was more than enough food to cook. We started at 8am and the first thing we did was make the umu which is a rock oven on which Samoans cook Sunday meals. While that was going on some people husked the coconuts which requires one to take a coconut and show it down onto a spike on the ground. That was hard because if you judge the distance wrong you can drive the spike into your hand and it took some effort to peel the coconut shell off. While that was going on some trainees (including myself) go to crack open the inner coconut shell using a machete. That was fun and easy because it required brute force and not finesse – which is not my forte. After cracking the coconut, people then scraped the inside of the coconut out using a scraper attached to a bench. That was hard because the technique of scrapping is hard to get down in only a few tries – we were taking 2-3 minutes to do one coconut while Onafeia (who is like 60+ years old) took only 30 seconds to do one. At the half way mark we had our first killing of the evening – we got to kill a pig. We didn't do it by cutting the pigs' throat but instead got a long stick, placed it on the neck of the pig and choked it to death. It was a strange experience watching another creature die in front of me but the pig was definitely a fighter it took like 15 minutes to finally get the job done. Once the pig was dead, the village people who were helps us shaved the pigs hair off to make it as clean as possible. I then went to squeeze the juice out of the coconut cream for the palusami (which is coconut cream wrapped in taro leaves used for eating taro). After doing that we got to make our second kill by choking a chicken with our bare hands (only Josh, Julya, Ryan and myself actually did this) once again the chickens are fighters they did not give up till the very end which was quite impressive to watch. Also, we did have turkey for Thanksgiving but it was the kind you would buy in a store – we didn't get to kill that one ourselves. The last thing done before putting all the food on the umu was the gutting of the pig which we just watched the village people do – they first slit its throat to pull out the esophagus then cut its belly and pulled out all its internal organs, now that was a sight to see. While the process was bloody it was not as bloody as the US process. And to top it off, Fale had a video camera so I got to tape parts of the cooking day activities and definitely got the gutting of the pig on tape – that's a keeper! Once we were all done preparing the food we placed it all on top of the umu and covered it with taro leaves. We then left for a bit to weave baskets for carrying the food – these baskets were made from the leaves of the coconut trees around us. My uncle, Tusia, showed me how to make a basket and while I was successful in doing it, it may take me a few tries to actually remember the process.
Tusia helping me weave the basket.
About 20 minutes after putting all the food on the umu, it was cooked and ready to be served (the temperature of the inside of the umu was easily 500 degrees or more). So in all we cooked turkey, pork, fish, shrimp, taro and palusami for Thanksgiving. After cooking, we then served the village council our Thanksgiving meal in the same way we were served during our ava ceremony – so we went all out with the fa'asamoa meal. So we were done with the entire process at about 11:30am (cooking enough food for the matai's, our families and ourselves) and then took some turkey home to share with our families (they're only use to eating the turkey tails not the actual turkey). At 12pm, we left for the beach of Vavau (on the southern part of the island) to celebrate Thanksgiving amongst ourselves. So we had our thanksgiving dinner at about 6pm CST/7pm EST which is about the same time my family and friends were eating back home – I don't know if its true, but if so that would be awesome. So my first Thanksgiving in Samoa was spent on the beach – not a bad substitute.
Where we spent Thanksgiving.
And while I got to share it with the 13 people I'm the closest with in Peace Corps we also got to share Thanksgiving with Group 73 (another capacity building group like ours) who was at Vavau for their midservice conference. So I was definitely surrounded by my PC family – with people to whom Thanksgiving actually means something.
Group 75 and 73 sharing Thanksgiving.
While I tried to do my best in conveying how amazing and full this day was, words can not describe it. I have plenty of pics which I will post as soon as I can but this was a good day of being thankful for what I have and that I am able to do something like Peace Corps at my age. So while there was a lot of killing today, know that I do not have a bloodlust (but after today, I can see why kids here have very little problems with violent movies like Kill Bill – they see animals killed at least once a week). So to end this entry I just want to say I'm thankful for both my American family (who accepted my leaving to do this) and my Samoan family (who accepted me). I'm thankful for my friends both here and at home. I'm thankful that I get to see and share all these experiences with you back home – makes the holiday not feel so lonely. Now the countdown is on till Christmas (and swearing-in)! Manuia aso ava fa'afetai! (Happy Day of Thanks!)
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