Thanksgiving in Ghana

I miss Thanksgiving in America. I miss the bite of the wind as I’m running from my car into my brother’s house. I miss the smell of sautéed onions and mushrooms that my dad used to cook every Thanksgiving morning. I miss watching the Macy’s Day Parade on television and getting all stupid and gooney when Santa shows up at the end. I miss the apple cider, the walnuts, the football games, the sweet potatoes, the good-natured ribbing of family we haven’t seen in ages. I miss it all.

In an attempt to recreate an American holiday here, I usually have to plan weeks or even months in advance. I kid you not. Turkeys are not that easy to come by here. You can’t just walk into the supermarket and pick up a 22 lb. Butterball and be on your merry way.
Last year, some of the obroni markets were selling turkeys, for about $75 each, just ahead of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Unfortunately, a lot of them didn’t sell -- $75 is steep, even for a rich white person. Up until July, I saw a couple of frozen turkeys in ShopRite, but they looked like they’d been through the wringer, and I think they were really left over from 2007 and they were being passed off as fresh. Not. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere within 15 feet of that thing when the cellophane was unwrapped. Can you say RIPE?

When I want a turkey, I have to put my “order” in for a fresh one with Herbie, a good friend of ours, months in advance. Herbie raises chickens and turkeys and the occasional goat and rabbit. And each time we visit Herbie, he points out our little gobbler, and we watch him grow fatter and fatter.

This year was no exception; my turkey order has been in place since the 4th of July. So, on Wednesday, Sly went to pick up our turkey which was to be plucked and cleaned. It was plucked, all right, but cleaned? Nope, as it turns out.

I like to make an herb butter concoction that I slip underneath the turkey skin, for flavor. But I couldn’t get my hand under there, for some reason. The skin was really thick and it was still attached. Let me tell you, I’ve been spoiled by the turkeys from the U.S., all of which were cleaned perfectly, with a little bag of giblets stuck in its butt, and a thermometer that popped out when it was cooked to perfection.

Fresh turkeys from Ghana are different. They’re walking around eating everything in sight minutes before they’re intended as someone’s meal. I’ve read that you’re not supposed to feed a turkey that’s to be slaughtered, in order to give it time to clear out of its digestive track. I guess Herbie didn’t know that, or wanted to grant the condemned turkey his last meal. But, there was a mess of crap (or soon to be crap, if we hadn’t already killed him) inside this guy’s throat and it was nasty.

Once Sly finishes cleaning this guy out, I scrub him out with some sea salt and get him ready for the oven. Problem is -- it is friggin hot here! It’s about 90 in the shade, and hotter still in our small house. Sly comes up with the brilliant idea that we’ll cook Tom outside on the barbecue grill. Sounds good to me!

We also don’t know how heavy this dude is, since there’s no little sticker that will help us figure out cooking times. So, we pull out our people scale and figure it out that way. As it turns out, he was about 17 lbs, which is way bigger than the one we got last year. Figure about 3-1/2 hours or so on the grill ought to do it.

The turkey is cooking, I’m assembling a bread stuffing like Dad used to make (only crisper and drier, as it turned out, but really the way I like it!), and getting the mashed potatoes and vegetables ready.

Now, all this time, the kids are at school – as I said, it’s not a holiday here in Ghana. Alex gets home early enough so she’s aware of the turkey on the grill. But we decide to trick the boys. I know, we are so mean. But, Sean deserves a trick. Here’s why: On Wednesday, he was teasing this poor exchange teacher at the school who is from Michigan, and who told the kids he was missing Thanksgiving. Sean, the gloater, couldn’t help but announce how his Mom had a turkey for the next day. The poor guy was probably drooling while he had to listen to Sean go on and one about how there’d be mashed potatoes and stuffing and gravy and this and that… So you see, Sean deserves this.

I pull out an empty chicken nuggets box from the garbage and tape it up, so it looks like it’s unopened. When the boys get home from school, there’s no turkey in the oven, as they expect, and there’s general disappointment from the two of them. Sean tells us that he bypassed lunch because of the turkey. Ha! Mike quickly asks if he can have sausage for dinner. Nope. I was able to stretch out this charade for almost half an hour. The pain/pleasure was tremendous!

Finally, in comes the turkey in the blue enamel pan -- brown and crispy and lovely. With all the fixin’s we could fix. The kids went for numerous rounds – Alex had two drumsticks; Mike had two wings and Sean had four servings of everything! Delicious.

The only thing missing was my family. Hope your Thanksgiving was as great as ours!