This week we celebrated Thanksgiving at the Peace Corps Training Center. Living everyday in another culture has given special meaning and enthusiasm to unique American traditions like Thanksgiving, and our group of trainees made an incredible feast that nourished the soul as much as it did our appetites.

Fifteen roast chickens, squash, mashed potatoes, creamed greens, biscuits, deviled eggs, quiche, cookies, chocolate, apple pie, iced tea, and bissap juice made for an amazing meal that really felt like home. After eight weeks of eating thiebujen and other Senegalese cuisine, it was a nurturing treat to eat food that our tongues and tummies recognized and welcomed. And for once we actually did the cooking, taking over the training center kitchen blasting Creedence Clearwater Revival as people chopped, stirred, basted, and baked into the late afternoon.

We sat outside family style and were joined by our language and tech trainers. This was a very big deal as the weekends are sacred to our Senegalese friends, for the most part the only time they have during our training to spend time with their families in Dakar and Thies. That they left their loved ones to spend the evening with us was a true sign of friendship and appreciation.

As we manged and manged and manged, one of our elder volunteers Chuck Ledlam got up to share a history of Thanksgiving with our Senegalese trainers. Chuck worked 30 years on Capitol Hill and is smart, tough, seasoned, but a fantastic bullshitter. In his typical rhetoric we have all come to both fancy and at times ridicule, he filled the crowd with visions of goodwill and “thanksgiving,” describing an idyllic meal between persecuted English pilgrims and their kind Native American hosts that made me think of my elementary school social studies class. With puffy orange doilies and a chance to go the mall to start Christmas shopping, we actually could have been transported to American holiday mania. Maybe it’s just naive idealism, or maybe I’m just young, but I always have to give credit to how well US consumer culture, public education, and humanity’s affinity for historic revisionism warp the truth as to how our country came into being, from the arrival at Plymouth to the “election” of George W. Bush in 2000.

Luckily the real meaning and good intentions behind Chuck’s speech were not lost on my cynicism. The spirit of being with those that you care about was the message that we knew he wanted to share and what happened next made that more than clear.

Adam, the volunteer that initiated our Thanksgiving feast, got up to thank everyone for their hard work and great food and suggested that we all go around and say something that we were thankful for. Personally I prefer spontaneous sincerity to forced expression, and having just come off the heels of Chuck’s dreamy and largely exaggerated account of the history of this holiday, I was not terribly excited to get up and share with the group.

But the folks at the other end of the horse-shoe of our dinner table started and thanked all of us for being new and excellent friends, for having great families that supported their decision to come to Senegal, for the chance to be here to do such an amazing job and learn along the way. Many of them started tearing up as they said what they were thankful for, and damn it if the rest of us, our Senegalese trainers included, didn’t start doing the same. By the time his turn came around Mr. Cynical here had glassy eyes and a giant lump in his throat. I got up and through a crack in my voice gave thanks for loved ones back home, for new friends here, and especially for our Senegalese trainers who I was sitting with and who have made my time here so amazing. I really meant it when I said that they are truly some of the best people I have ever met. I did not expect to be taken by the moment so strongly, nor did many of the folks at the table. Our trainers were in tears and I felt bad for rolling my eyes at the idea of sharing my thanks with everyone.

For me our Thanksgiving reinforced the fact that we have come so far in such a short time in Senegal. Our bond as volunteers and as friends with our Senegalese trainers is so strong after such a short time. Our language skills have progressed, our technical know-how isn’t bad, and our outlook for the future is positive, if a bit more realistic. We are getting more accustomed to Senegalese culture, but we are still and will always be Americans no matter how much thieboujen we eat.