On Being Thankful, and Then a Little Less Thankful

This was my first African Thanksgiving. I don’t count last year, because I did nothing remotely Thanksgiving-y. No orange vegetables or pie or Turkey Trot or seeing people you haven’t seen in a while or a parade of any sort. This year, I was invited to a small dinner at the U.S. ambassador’s house: he and his wife, their daughter (my colleague), the ambassador’s brother (who happens to be the ambassador to Botswana), his wife, and two single diplomats.
I had my first feast of the day at a café over the border with the school librarian and her family (including her niece, my former student). I had a huge glass of a fuchsia berry juice and a delicious breakfast of warm bread and good-smelling things and green things and then the five of us crowded around a fat slice of chocolate truffle cake. I bought my own loaf of bread on the way out the door, which I tore off chunks of throughout the afternoon, while baking a sugar-dusted nectarine tart and goopy brownies (spraying powdered sugar and liquid chocolate on shirts I changed in quick succession after ruining for the night, three in total).

I was unprepared how very weird it is to have Thanksgiving with someone else’s family. No matter how wonderful they are, everything they do just seems wrong. (What is this cranberry sauce that appears to contain actual whole cranberries? Why isn't it a gelatinous cylinder that maintans this perfect shape after sliding out of the can? Where are all the noisy children and sullen teenagers and uncles who drop things and old ladies who down handfuls fo pills with sparkling grape juice? How can you have a white tablecloth? You should settle for a more practical and pessimestic burgundy to anticipate red wine spills. Why isn't anyone fighting? And where is my dad's yams with technicolor marshamallows depicting pilgrim scenes and my mom's laugh rattling the dishes in the china closet? It was wonderful, but not the same as being home.

The post-meal food coma was at least the same.  I had a nice refresher at the bathroom sink though, when I turned on the faucet, and unprepared for the splendid water pressure at diplomatic residences, thoroughly doused my chest. The water splotches were so dramatic that when I arrived back at the table I felt compelled to interrupt the conversation and explain my appearance, which was quickly one-upped by an embassy security person enthralling us with tales of assisting autopsies, being bombed, her new taser and vivid descriptions of executions. Direct Thanksgiving Table Quote: “What you couldn’t see on the televised version was that they actually shot him before they beheaded him. So, like, he was already dead when they started to cut the head off. And that gurgling sound you could hear--”

She was cut-off at this point by a more weak-stomached dinner guest and the topic of conversation changed abruptly (to gallstones, if you’re interested), much like I’m going to do right now.

I spent the majority of the next three days in the Chinese internet café. I had planned to hole myself up in my classroom for the break, to tackle pages of to-do lists full of stressful entries, things related to grad school, licensure, jobs, and words like transcript, Praxis, International Baccalaureate, Krakow and Kampala were crashing around in my head, when I realized the entire school had no internet.

And so, I ambled to the internet café, stopping en route to purchase some chocolate. I am not a fan of this establishment, namely because of the hostility of everyone working there. Secondly, I don’t like how the computers put weird things on my flash drive. Don’t ask me what these things are. And if you know, please don’t tell me. Thirdly, I don’t like paying for things that come free with my job; they can’t give us health care, but they sure don’t mind if we want to work weekends! I don’t even like computers to begin with and I especially don’t like a room full of them and stressed out people tapping away on them.

Day two I was there, a Mosotho couple was seated at the monitor next to me. Their baby was at another computer nearby, sliding a mouse back and forth across the table, hypnotizing herself with the psychedelic swirls the cursor made across the Facebook homepage. Her parents were doing something else, or not doing something else, much to their frustration. They called over one of the men who works there and the following conversation, which eventually escalated to shouting ensued.

Computer Confused Man: Can you help me [fill in the blank, I sort of missed this part].
Man Who Works in the Internet Cafe: No, you should know how to use a computer.
Computer Confused Man: Yeah, but can you please show me how to [fill in the blank]
Man Who Works in the Internet Cafe: No I’m busy!
Computer Confused Man: You are too busy to run your business?!
Man Who Works in the Internet Cafe: IT’S NOT MY JOB TO HELP YOU!!!

Computer Confused Man’s wife started begging the guy to help her husband, which he eventually conceded to do with a great deal of audible sighing and banging on the keyboard and mouse.

At least my eavesdropping prepared me for a quieter but equally unhelpful experience I was about to have.

Me: What are your hours tomorrow?
Girl at the Desk: Today or yesterday?
Me: No, tomorrow.
Girl at the Desk: TO-DAY or YES-TER-DAY?
Me: Um . . .
Girl at the Desk: Today?
Me: No.
Girl at the Desk: Yesterday?
Me: Sure.
[A long conversation in Chinese ensues between Girl at the Desk and another woman across the room].
Girl at the Desk: 8-6:30.
Me: Great, thanks.

I arrived the next day shortly after noon and asked for two hours on a computer.

Different Girl at the Desk: No.
Me: . . .
Different Girl at the Desk: We close at 1:00. You can have 45 minutes.
Me: [arrrrrrgggggggg]

So the Girl at the Desk really was telling me the hours for the day before, but I didn’t think she could possibly believe that someone would actually ask, “What are your hours yesterday?”

Back at work now, where the internet is obviously working again.