Thanksgiving in Dar Es Salaam or “They Always Say That If You Want To Go To Silver Spring, Maryland, Just Go to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania”

As our final new location for this trip, I was skeptical of Dar Es Salaam. The biggest city in Tanzania, I had heard over and over during the course of the semester that Dar is loud, busy, not-walkable and, as the State Department often reminds me over email, pretty politically unrestful. 

Nevertheless, the last week in November we packed up our bungalows in Ushongo and left on a final sunrise-streaked motorcycle ride to Pangani, renting a daladala for the nine of us to Muheza. In Muheza, I visited my favorite air-conditioned mini market for the last time, and we boarded a bus a few minutes after arrival. 

In a deep sign of how far my standards have fallen since arriving in this country, I was thrilled to step off only seven hours and with only three or four cockroaches crawling over my shoulder from inside the bus windowsill! But, genuinely, the bus journey was not so bad, and it was made even better with the knowledge that it would be the last of this trip. I was not so sad to step off a Tanzanian bus for the last time.

Our Airbnb was lovely, a huge mansion with a multi-colored-lit-up pool and many balconies. Tired from the day of traveling and giddy with the feeling of being in a big city, we all ordered takeout from different spots and played games in the pool until our dinner arrived. I ate delicious hand-cut Chinese noodles sitting on a swing across from Neil. It was wonderful. From the pool we did some menu planning (our first real conversation about Thanksgiving) and went to bed on the earlier side, after a silly conversation on a balcony in which I shouted repeatedly “look at that skyline! We could be in Detroit right now!”, and yet another joke about Silver Spring, Maryland was born.

Thanksgiving Day itself started cold and sad. Our rooms had AC and real duvets, and I woke up the most homesick I’ve been in this country, yearning to be cold and clean and comfortable and home, and dreading a day of wishing I was home and pretending I wasn’t wishing that so deeply.

I hauled myself out of bed anyways and we headed to the supermarket, located inside a huge mall that felt very, very American. Over a serviceable iced coffee and a fine blueberry muffin, Txuxa, Sam, and I talked about how sad we were not to be home, and then decided we needed to banish all talk of home for the day. 

We parted ways, with plans to meet back at home in a couple of hours. One important detail from this day is that our phone data had run out, so none of us could contact one another, meaning I was just hoping and praying each person purchased the items on their portion of the grocery list but had no way of knowing if that was true until we had returned home, a ten-minute tuktuk ride away. 

Txuxa and I took off into the mall, and immediately had one of the silliest shared experiences of my life. Txuxa is from Vermont, and, like me, has a deep affinity for rural places and a deep hatred for malls and many things metropolitan. Knowing this about each other, we walked into the mall, stopped, turned to each other and said “I am so happy to be here… can we go shopping?”. Cue an honest-to-goodness teen-movie-makeover montage. We tried on short skirts and tight tops, flinging our choices between dressing rooms. We bought makeup, trying out lip glosses in patches on our wrists. We bought perfume, and high heels, and giggled, and picked out clubbing outfits for each other. It was ridiculous, and hilarious, and the last place I could ever have expected to spend a Thanksgiving morning in Tanzania. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. 

After nearly three hours of these shenanigans, during which we actively decided that we had done much for the group during our time in Tanzania, and that they would survive just fine for a few more hours without our share of the items (mostly butter and alcohol), we did actually go grocery shopping, which took a grand total of twelve minutes. 

We tuktuked back with Sam, who we spontaneously found again in the mall, and at noon I walked into the most serene scene I could possibly have imagined. Potatoes were cubed and soaking. Carrots were washed and peeled. Squash was being hollowed out and roasted. Stuffing was on its way into the oven. Not only had the gang (mostly Neil, thank you Neil) done just fine without us, but I realized that we were all certainly better off with us arriving home late, high on capitalism and no longer in grumpy moods. 

From noon onwards, I cooked, cleaned, chatted, offered advice, did many dishes, fixed our broken sink too many times to count, danced, and reveled in how well all of it was going. No one shouted, nothing was burnt or wrong, and as the cooking time wound down I found myself so profoundly grateful, and so genuinely sad that this shared cooking experience, full of 20-year-olds using all of our patience and knowledge to pull together something amazing, was coming to an end. I was so grateful for these people, for western supermarkets, for well-appointed kitchens, for the many lessons I’ve learned from my mom in my own kitchen. 

We sat down to eat at the ridiculously reasonable time of 4:15, and as I sipped mulled wine I couldn’t help remarking, incredulously and often, on how much better this had gone than expected. We had two roast chickens, meatballs, mashed potatoes, stuffing, roasted carrots, a squash and goat cheese salad, a cheese and dip platter, mulled wine, a pumpkin and an apple pie. The food was delicious, far better than I could ever have imagined, and my heart felt ridiculously full eating American-tasting food by a poolside in the largest city in Tanzania. 

We went around and said gratitudes, and as we did, three guests arrived, swelling our group of ten to thirteen. Two of them were friends of Sam’s, one being her host sister and the other being her translator during her independent study project in Dar. The third was our beloved Jackson, our favorite teacher/helper/friend, who underwent a ten-hour bus journey from Arusha to deliver our passports so we could renew our phone plans. Above and beyond, this man. We also learned, mid-meal, that he had brought our per diems for the week, fat stacks of cash we otherwise would have had to take out from an ATM, and in a beautiful show of one of my favorite human instincts, we applauded and shouted as in one voice, a huge wave rising up spontaneously at this small but thrilling information. We also learned that it was his first American Thanksgiving, and we were simply overjoyed that he not only decided to join us, but he even liked the food! Gratitudes upon gratitudes. 

I shared how grateful I am for this group of people I’ve been surrounded by, for the many laughs and the memories that have forever given this place a golden-tinged glow. As my time in Tanzania comes to an end, it’s hard for me to overstate how meaningful these friends have been, people I never would have met otherwise but are always and indelibly connected to this time in my life. How heartbroken I am that, in a few short days, this incredibly impactful time and place, this life we’ve created, will no longer be our day-to-day, but instead a memory, losing its edges every year. I am lucky to be a person who is often so happy it makes me sad. I felt like the most grateful person in the world.

After the meal and the dishes we jumped in the pool, an experience I bet I will never have again on Thanksgiving. We played as the sun went down and got out of the water only to eat pie and nibble on leftovers hours later. That evening, we played games and I called home. As hard as it was to see all of my loved ones gathered in one place, it was hard to be sad about where I was sitting and the day I had had.

Recently, reading Connie Schultz’s amazing newsletter, I was struck by her short and incredibly astute observation about spending holidays away from loved ones, from her perspective as a parent of grown kids: “This year, I have surrendered my power over Thanksgiving. Our four children are married, and this time they have had the nerve to prioritize other people they love. We’ll be together at Christmas. Life is full”. I’ve thought about it every day since, as the homesickness gets harder to keep at bay and as the thought of leaving this place and people becomes even more devastating. I am very very lucky to have it all. I am grateful to have something so profound to miss, and grateful that I filled that hole with a day I’ll not soon forget. 

On Thanksgiving night, I fell asleep that night with my heart and stomach full to bursting, in an air-conditioned room, in a house full of people who have made these days something remarkable. Life is so very very full.