November 23, 2006

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It’s all about friends and family and food, and as holidays go in the US, it’s one of the least commercial. This year marked the first time I had ever spent the holiday outside the US, and I decided to try to celebrate it in style by making Thanksgiving dinner for everyone at Bosfam. However, turkey is not exactly at the top of the Bosnian favorite foods list. After visiting three stores, I did not find a single one. Fortunately, we at Bosfam have a mechanism for solving such problems. At coffee, Beba asked ‘Alright, who has a turkey at home?’ No one did, but one of the women had a neighbor who raised turkeys and on Thanksgiving day it arrived.

This didn’t leave me quite enough time to prepare the meal on the proper day, so we scheduled it for Friday. Which was good, because then I had extra time to deal with my other culinary problem, namely, the paucity of celery stalks in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Celery root you can get, but the idea of stuffing made with celery root was not too appealing. A two-day, two-person canvas of all the markets and stores netted exactly three stalks. Fortunately I was invited to Thanksgiving dinner and there were some extra celery and carrot sticks, so I took a little doggie bag home with me and I was all set.

I started preparing our meal early Friday morning by heading out to the piazza, or open air market, to buy potatoes. As soon as I finished carrying the heavy bag of potatoes back to Bosfam, I was greeted with incredulity. Apparently it is an act of sheer silliness to go buy potatoes at the market without asking whether anyone has any potatoes she wants to bring from home. With the help of a couple of assistant potato peelers, preparations were in full swing when we received a visit. A couple from Iran on vacation here in Bosnia wanted a tour of the facility, and to shop in the gallery. And of course, they were to be offered coffee. They spoke English, so as resident English expert I was conscripted to assist with all of these activities. Meanwhile, the gravy was reducing itself exponentially on the stove, because even the lowest burner setting brings liquids to a steady boil.

I rescued the gravy, finished getting the food ready, and invited everyone up to the kitchen to eat. Their reaction was, well, underwhelming. This is something that takes a bit of getting used to here. It can be hard to gauge expectations and reactions when the language barrier is only semi permeable. It’s pretty clear that stuffing was an alien concept and not a big hit. As for the turkey and potatoes, I can say that they were all eaten, but then the bird was small and there were 12 of us. The only cranberries I could procure were two small packages of dried ones to use for tea. I did the best I could to transform them into sauce, but there’s a reason we don’t make cranberry sauce with dried berries. Everyone ate them by spreading them on bread like jam. I refused to yield on this point and ate them as we normally do.

So I was feeling a tad disappointed, particularly when I was faced with doing the dishes in a kitchen with no hot water, when Beba announced that the American ambassador’s people had just called and he would be making an impromptu visit within the hour. This turned out to be the highlight of the day. We had a nice visit with the Ambassador, who is a very engaging person, and I won’t lie – I was delighted to be able to spend some time with a native English speaker. My Bosfam colleagues had done a great deal to try to make the holiday special for me.

Although gift-giving is not traditionally a part of Thanksgiving at home, they gave me a small carpet, as well as a bracelet they bought me to replace the one I had lost a couple of weeks previously. This is the kind of thoughtfulness that routinely manifests itself at Bosfam, and it made me feel like I had a surrogate family for the holiday. But even so, I understood perfectly when the Ambassador said there is something different about celebrating Thanksgiving away from the States. I expect my colleagues would feel the same if they were to celebrate Bajram away from Bosnia, and this is no doubt a good thing, speaking as it does to an appreciation for home.