While many Canadians gathered on the weekend with family and friends to enjoy turkey and stuffing smothered with gravy, I went to a traditional South Sudan Thanksgiving dinner Sunday night.
The meal was hosted at Gethsemane Lutheran Church, gathering members of South Sudan communities from Kitchener, Hamilton, London and Mississauga. They frequently get together to celebrate special events like the South Sudan Independence Day, a country that is only 3-years-old.
“They get together for their foods and they get together to worship and to stay on the same page with one another,” said the church’s pastor Robert Voelker. “Right now this group is going through a lot of grief because there’s a civil war in their country.”
South Sudan has been in civil war since December 2013. “Almost everyone has lost many loved ones in the last year,” said Voelker.
Since 2007, the church has been having weekly Sunday congregations in Nuer, the language of South Sudan’s Nuer tribe. As a community they share news of their homeland and support their families both locally and abroad, some of which are refugees who fled to countries like Ethiopia and Uganda.
Paul Tombura, a member of Windsor’s South Sudanese community, said that it is part of their culture to support each other. “We come together if there is a funeral, we come together if there is a birthday, we come together if there are any blessings in the families,” he said.
Thanksgiving in Nuer is called Muoc, meaning gift to God, and is practiced in South Sudan. Unlike having a fixed date like the North American festivity, the Sudanese base it around the end of the harvest.
Though someone managed to sneak in turkey as a dish — which is not part of South Sudan cuisine — I was treated to a plethora of spices and things that I had not seen before.
The breads served were Injira, yodiot and juray, flatbreads that could be dipped in wehga or muolukia, both mouth-watering green sauces. There was thim (barbequed meat), resh (fish pieces), manpulak (reddened chicken) and rin juayni (spiced meat and potatoes) and rus (rice), which mixed well with malakmider (a spicy meat and sauce mix).
I tried almosy everything except for dessert, madida (dessert pudding), but it was all so delicious and I welcomed the changes from the turkey, stuffing and cranberries that make up the traditional Canadian Thanksgiving.
Contact Jay Rankin via email: jrankin@windsorstar.com or Twitter: @_Jay_Rankin