While our friends and family back home were out shopping for great deals on Black Friday, I was having a very different kind of Black Friday in Kenya, Africa. All day, my team and I felt like we were in a holiday movie while we shopped, prepare food, and listened to Christmas music on our Thanksgiving Friday. After spending the 24th really homesick and thinking of our families’ gathered together without us, having a perfect day with our Tambo and Kenyan family was just what was needed.
We live down a long dirt road which has been all mud since we arrived at this unusually rainy time. This set us up for a very rocky start to our holiday. About halfway down the road, the tire of our van met a deep puddle it especially liked and decided to stay in it. This left us and the van tipped sideways-me in the back corner shaking! It felt like we were teetering and I noticed I could touch the ground from outside my open window, probably not a good sign. After carefully climbing out, it was time to lift and push. Long story short-it was nothing more than a funny story to tell our kids over and over again one day and we were safely back on the road.
We had fun emptying out grocery stores of items that people here had never heard of or used before. Heading home, we even ran into one of the other Xsquad teams in town and found out they live right near us! The rest of the day was mostly spent in the kitchen bringing out our own family recipes and traditions. While singing and dancing to Christmas music with our extended Kenyan family, we cooked potatoes, casseroles, sweets, mac-n-cheese, cornbread, etc. The only thing missing was turkey- it’s super expensive here. My favorite part was letting my new Kenyan brothers, sisters, aunts, and all taste new things as we cooked and be amazed. A marshmellow, a fried onion, a green bean, so many new ingredients were so exciting, so we knew dinner would be fun!
With so many hands and lots of fun, preparations were surprisingly smooth for all of our first Thanksgivings without moms, dads, or family back home. Everything being made from scratch, mostly over fire made us feel like pretty hardcore women! All 22 people sat down to eat and by the grace of God, there was plenty of food with just a little left over!! It was most of the Kenyan’s first Thanksgiving celebration and they were literally eating it up. It was the most joy I’ve experienced on the race and just so fun to see their enjoyment of a celebration that I don’t even care that much about at home.
This year brought a whole new meaning to thanksgiving. After eating and just being amazed at how much it really felt like Thanksgiving Day, I mean we even watched football (soccer), we had our nightly devotional. I was asked to lead it and was happy to do so. We have been going through Psalm 136 morning and night and memorizing. It was very appropriate for a thanksgiving celebration. It is the “his love endures forever” passage. Verse one starts, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.” So that is what we did. We went around the room and all of us said something or many things we are thankful for. It was such a blessing to listen to the little boys, the teenagers, the aunts, parents, and all of those who stay at our home and hear all of the wonderful things God has done for them. Days like this are why I am here, why spending special days away from my loved ones are worth it, and what will change the way I view a country, an ethnicity, or a day.
