A Guatemalan Thanksgiving
Friday, November 24th, 2006
The turkey was locked in the bathroom. It had pooped everywhere. But we´re getting ahead of ourselves… let´s begin from the beginning.
Pete and Pete, our two new friends from Minnesota, bought a live turkey at the market for 175Q (about $25). It spent a happy day living in their bathroom, nestled under the sink.
Pete and Pete had killed chickens, pheasants and even a dove before and explained to us that they had learned this skill from their fathers who had learned it from their fathers, who had learned it from their fathers. They are very Minnesotan.
We arrived at their (and Zil´s) house just in time to say our last goodbye to the bird, whom they had dubbed San Marcos. The three of us (Megan, Zil, and Sarah) huddled outside the bathroom with our cameras as Pete and Pete soothed San Marcos by stroking its feathers before tying its legs together. Then they put the little poppet in a bag and brought it outside. As we all hovered over the Petes and San Marcos with our cameras, the boys wrung our feathered friend´s neck. It was like wringing out a wet towel. Then, since it hadn´t quite bit it, they cut off its oxygen supply for several minutes. This all resulted in San Marcos becoming quite dead.
Or so it seemed.
Pete #1 started to string the bird up by its legs in order to aid the loosening of the feathers… or some such thing. As he stood holding the bird, which had been really quite dead for about 5 minutes, the bird let out a final frenzy of wing-flapping. It´s poor snapped neck hadn´t quite killed off the brain´s desire to flee from danger. It was like in those horror movies when someone has been dead for several moments when suddenly their grayish hand grabs the pretty girl and everybody in the audience screams. In this case, Zil screamed and ran away. Sarah didn´t scream, but did run away. And Megan stared intently.
The next morning, Thanksgiving day, we ran into Zil on our way to school. She showed us a picture of a freshly plucked San Marcos and informed us that Pete and Pete had been working on derobing our friend all morning. They had done a magnificent job.
We then spent the afternoon listening to an ex-guerrilla talk about the Guatemalan civil war, shopping in the outdoor market for camotes (yams), and then whipping up some scrumptious candied camote surprise to bring to the evening´s festivities.
All in all it was a wonderful Thanksgiving. We ate with a bunch of other language students from different schools who all had a connection to someone who lived with Pete, Pete, and Zil in “Yoga House.” We ate stuffing, mashed potatoes, pies, green bean casserole topped with funyons, gravy, and, of course, San Marcos, who was particularly tasty.
So, here´s a final “thank you” for good food, good pheasant like creatures, and all the very good people that we´ve met on our travels.
-Megan and Sarah
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