Turkey dinner

Last night we celebrated Christmas one more time before everyone left for the holidays.

This time, though, we had a more traditional Christmas dinner – turkey (imported from South Africa), stuffing (with mix imported from the U.S.), mashed potatoes, gravy (imported from the U.S.), cranberry sauce (also imported from the U.S.), green beans, salad, apple crisp, chocolate cake (from a box imported from the U.S.) and oatmeal cookies (with mix imported from the U.S.). I don’t think I realized until just now how much of that meal was imported from elsewhere in the world. It may seem ridiculous, but none of those items could have been made (except, maybe, the gravy and oatmeal cookies) without importing certain items via a friend at the U.S. embassy.

Certainly some imported items can be found in Rwanda without having connections to the embassy, but most often they’re incredibly expensive. For example, a small bottle of Listerine mouthwash sells for almost $30 and a can of tuna is around $4. However, even shopping for items that are locally produced or imported for more reasonable costs is an experience. Fresh fruit and produce are certainly the easiest; there’s always someone walking down the road with a basket full of mangos or bananas or pineapples on their head, and the market is full of people selling all kinds of vegetables. Shopping for other food items, though, is something of a game. There are certain items that you can only find at BCK, certain ones that should be bought at City Market, and certain things that are best from La Galette. Still there are other items that require even more creative shopping. For example, the orphanage in Kimihurura takes orders for bagels on Thursday afternoons, one of the supermarkets receives shipments of Philadelphia cream cheese every few weeks, and numerous smaller shops occasionally have other specialty items. So a shopping trip for groceries is more like a game of hide and seek around the city.

I feel like I should also comment on the fact that it seems like I’ve been writing about food a lot lately, with Thanksgiving dinner, my Christmas dinner and this turkey dinner. I’ve been writing a lot about the food itself, which is certainly exciting as a change from the usual Rwandan cuisine, but the significance of these dinners is more related to the gathering of friends and the feeling of home. In a country where the weather is constantly sunny and over eighty degrees and where many holiday traditions are absent, it would be easy to miss the comfort and excitement of the Christmas season, but thankfully gathering and celebrating with good friends make the holiday season much more real.