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| The house |
Most people who know me know that I love Thanksgiving. I
love the huge meal, baking, and gathering friends to eat! Before I left the US
in September, my Dad asked me what I wanted as my “last meal,” and I said
“Thanksgiving!!” and we had a full spread before I left for Africa. So when my
Kisumu friends started talking about renting a huge house in the hills and
celebrating Thanksgiving for a whole weekend, I was super excited!
It turns out my friend that had started organizing the
weekend getaway had to go back to the States that week, so I volunteered to
take over planning. I reserved the house, gathered tons of money from my
friends, and went shopping for enough food for 18 people for 3 days. We were
headed to a place called Kweisos House (Kway-sos) that is about 1.5 hours away
from Kisumu on a huge hill overlooking the valley full of sugar cane farms.  |
| 3 carts! |
One of the cool things about the place is that if you pay
$20 per person to stay, you can bring any food you want and the property
provides 3 cooks to make all your food! So, I made a menu for our breakfasts,
lunches, and dinners and then bribed a Kenyan friend to go to the vegetable
market for me and buy enough fruit and veggies for all of us for the whole
weekend. I bribed another friend to help me head to the grocery store, and we
filled 3 carts and his entire SUV with food and supplies. I also pre-ordered
two turkeys from a local company, and just to put it in perspective, two 10
pound turkeys cost me almost $85….EIGHTY FIVE DOLLARS! Crazy!
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| Life sized beer pong, and discussing our strategy |
I arranged carpools for everyone, and on the Friday
afternoon after American Thanksgiving, we all headed up to the house! The property
itself was actually a main house with 3 bedrooms, a small but well-stocked
kitchen and a huge back porch. From the porch you could see the pool, a cute
tree swing, and a view straight west back over Kisumu to Lake Victoria. There
were two other small cottages near the main house, and all together there were
enough beds for 16 people (but we squeezed a couple extras in on the couches
and cots!).
On Friday afternoon I had arranged for us to all play Beer
Olympics – it’s a team, tournament-style competition that tests both
coordination…and drinking skills :P We had a really fun time playing life-sized
beer pong (like normal beer pong, but you use a bucket and a kickball and put a
whole can of beer in the bottom), and various other games. I’m still not
entirely sure which team scored the most points by the end of the evening, but it
was clear we were definitely all winners ;)
For dinner we had a giant meal of spaghetti and meat sauce,
a huge salad, and homemade bread I had baked before leaving Kisumu. The chefs were pretty great, and they turned
some ground beef, cans of tomatoes, and random veggies into a tasty meal! I had
also gotten us 15 liters of boxed wine, and it was a beautiful evening to eat
al fresco, watch the sunset over Kisumu from the dining table on the porch, and
have a glass of wine with a bunch of friends!
I decided I absolutely LOVED my new Kisumu friends when they
gave me a standing ovation before the meal for organizing the weekend. I was
mildly embarrassed, but I was really glad everyone was having a good time,
appreciated the effort, and was so easy to please!
We played card games and most of us hung out until pretty
late into the night. There were fireflies everywhere, the night was perfectly
clear, and for a while we laid in the grass and just watched shooting
stars. It was a great start to a
relaxing, food-filled and fun weekend!
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| The kitchen |
Day Two – THANKSGIVING!!
On Saturday, even though I stayed up entirely too late, I
woke up early and headed into the kitchen to get breakfast organized and talk
to the cooks…it was a big day! We had eggs, bacon, toast and fruit and lots of
coffee. Planning for that many people to eat and drink is difficult, and I
totally forgot to cater to the British tea drinkers. And even though I bought 80
eggs, we went through way more than half for the first breakfast! Live and
learn :P Once breakfast was over and the staff had done the dishes, it was time
to get serious! I had put the turkeys in huge buckets of brine the night before
because they were still frozen solid…they were thawed, thankfully!
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| In the kitchen with my menu |
But there were so many dishes and so many people in the
kitchen that I had no idea how to delegate and organize everyone! I had printed
recipes for everything, and decided to just write down a huge list of what to
cook and divide it up. I told the staff what we were making, started up all
three of the old gas ovens in the little kitchen, and got them started with the
peeling, chopping and prepping.
It was a lot of work, and almost everyone ended up wandering
by the kitchen, seeing me elbow deep in pie crust or potatoes and volunteered
to lend a hand for a shift J
By about 2pm I had both turkeys, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, 2 apple
pies, 2 pumpkin pies and a pumpkin crisp in the oven. We had green bean
casserole, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, squash, chocolate cream pie, and home
made bread baked by the cooks. I had even found cranberry sauce! Everything was
into the ovens and heating away on the stove (with 3 cooks to monitor it all),
so for the first Thanksgiving in a while I got to go relax before dinner!
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| Croquet! |
The whole crew piled into cars and we headed to the owner’s
house to play croquet on their giant, sprawling lawn. They had a gorgeous
property about 2 miles away surrounded by farms and hills, so we invaded to
enjoy their lush gardens and lawn games. We had a spirited and incredibly long
game of croquet (my team won!!), but it started to drizzle and we were all
getting hungry, so we went back to the house to have our dinner!
We got back to the house and everything was perfect: the
turkeys looked done, the pies were brown and bubbly, and everything that should
be served hot seemed ready! So we set up a big buffet of food and dug in! It
was all pretty good – I had to make a lot of ingredient substitutions, and it’s
hard to cook on 60 year-old-gas stoves, but overall everything was pretty
yummy!
I loved the reactions from people who had never experienced
Thanksgiving before:
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| The spread |
“Why are there so many carbs?”
“What is green bean casserole?”
“Why are there 5 different kinds of dessert?”
“I am so full I think I am going to throw up, but I’m going
to get seconds.”
Priceless!
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| The crew! |
We completely tore apart both turkeys and demolished the
stuffing and green beans before people even went for more. After some creative
turkey carving, we ended up having enough for everyone to have seconds, but I
was amazed at how much we all ate! Not much survived for the
next-day-Thanksgiving-leftover-breakfast ;P After dinner we all collapsed in
various heaps and draped ourselves over chairs, moaning and groaning.
We watched another exquisite sunset, played more card games,
and had coffee and digestifs to try to prepare for dessert. In typical American
tradition, we all ate at least 3 kinds of pie even though we were stuffed
already. It was hilarious to watch people go from full to devastatingly
stuffed. The first-timers were in agony, but most of the Americans were in
stretchy pants and not looking much worse for the wear.
Again, we stayed up mostly all night chatting and goofing
around playing card games – another fantastic day and evening in the books!
Sunday – Waterfall hike and home
Sunday I decided to take a day off from coordinating the
kitchen. Luckily, a few other ladies jumped in and thought up an amazing way to
stretch our leftovers and remaining eggs and breakfast food. They made a big
egg/stuffing/turkey bake, which was way better than it sounds. We all rolled
out of bed in waves, had leisurely cups of coffee and breakfast on the porch,
went swimming in the pool, and lounged around. Nobody really wanted to leave
and go home, so we decided to hike to a local waterfall.
We piled back into the cars and drove about 10 minutes away.
We parked the cars just off a small dirt road one what seemed to be someone’s
farm, and walked about 2 minutes into the woods before we heard the water – it was
much less of a hike and more of a short Sunday stroll, but we found a beautiful
little water hole being fed by a rather modest waterfall. A few people had been
there before and said the waterfall was much bigger and more powerful last
time, but I still thought it was pretty cool!
The water was surprisingly cold, and most of us weren’t
feeling brave enough for a dip, so we dangled our legs in the water and enjoyed
the scenery, all procrastinating and postponing the journey back home. After
the swimmers were sufficiently cool and our snacks and drinks had run out, we
had to admit that it was time to leave Kweisos.
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| The waterfall! |
We all reluctantly went back to the house, packed up, and
said goodbye to the awesome staff. We poured the rest of our flat keg beer into
jugs for them, and hit the road. It was a really great weekend, and I had a
blast with the Kisumu–Kweisos Krew. It was fun to organize, and next time I’ll
be sure to buy more eggs ;)
You can find all the pictures here: https://kristynspictures.shutterfly.com/10065
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| I was awarded the Olympics Trophy for organizing :P |
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