Do they celebrate Thanksgiving in Africa?

The concept of hosting a dinner, in thanks-as-a-gathering - that evolved into a worldwide celebration or holiday, is the same as other types of Thanksgiving: Christmas (in commemoration of the Catholic faith in Christ - to celebrate His birth), Lunar New Year (as an occasion to gather families as a tradition to their ancestry that has migrated from mainland China and carry on the belief of bringing together their red-packet bearing relations, in food and show of faith), Deepavali (the Hindu faith’s Christmas tradition), Hannukah (the Jewish Christmas), Eid (similar to the Christian Easter tradition of renewal and rising from death), the Japanese celebrate renewal in Spring festivals Hina Matsuri or their Hanami spring blossom traditions, - and countless other globally recognised, propagated and widely celebrated religious and cultural traditions.

When these traditions are recognised deeply in our lives - wherever we live, and strengthened in our mobile lives, even as we migrate to different cultures for work, we contemplate their passing and establish more grounded lives. We live them out as cultural migrants, and sometimes they deepen the destination-culture, with addition to their diversity quotients, and the pivotal need to inhabit places that widen our minds, and contribute a more profound experience of humanity.

Sometimes, as it happens in most advanced economic cultures, or societies - and in my experience, it is the ones who embrace diversity that have the most exciting cultures - are organised into being equipped to welcome, and deal with these wandering nomads - into their lay cultures. And levels of acceptance have widened by their “cultural budgets”.

As you would in your homes, to welcome guests and “feed them your culture”, the need for a global stance to widen minds, and take them out of their cultural darkness, would bring to light several problems of migration and mutual learning to a more ideal level.

As a student, i have been blessed enough to travel and experience several study scholarships and opportunities to manage this way into my adulthood. Sometimes, we collaborate with groundwork to establish the “norms”, but mostly it’s to establish our individual traditions, melding with a collaboration with a global tradition as well.

Has a culture been bullied into submission to control their citizenry into “melting into the woodwork” or as one person put it: “get expats to become locals”? I don’t think there’s a need. There’s enough space in our minds to pave way into understanding, with a healthy amount of curiosity, and a normal gusto and capacity for learning languages, we can weather the bottom level-dwelling that we can sometimes become as we weather issues as recessions, dips into economic situations when the immigrants are politically pointed out, or become the active culprits.

The cabinetry has dignitary to deal with this, so we, the citizens don’t have to. They have the proper ideal training, and composed language-mastery to calmly represent in matters needing a more sensitive approach. And this is why we choose them to represent countries, and become cultural envoys to place our nations in its much-needed detailed correspondence with all the other (vast numbers) of countries, and countless cultures that have interwoven, delicate minute-to-micro nuances invisible to a country’s normal polity.

We are always welcome to dine with them as they become a migrant person’s country-within-a-country, in the embassy which holds a neutral ground for establishing what was known as foreign diplomacy or international relations.

I wonder if the American Embassy is holding one in a fortnight. I can’t get the visions of a wonderful table, with the massive gravy ladle in the wait. That’s turkey.

Before the massive festivities, and before we all sit down to think of a line or two to be truly thankful for - 20 years after the Millenia - i think we can be sure, we are uttering these in heartfelt communion with the people we love, and are held dear to. (Or in their memory, at least.)

Here’s to a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Gobbled.

Up.

Into throes, and molar masses and drops of sincerity that we are communed, alive, and nowhere near the borders of war, famine, thirst, stagnation, disease, despair, and our issues lie around the “where am i eating today”, or “what am i cooking today?” where i live in the very wealthy 54-year-old nation of second-generation migrated Asians.

(Who happen to like very spicy food.) I am in my second week of learning to make hawker food - and my oesophagus is seriously burning.

Some cultures, probably aren’t as lucky.