I Wash My Mouton One Leg at a Time...

Sorry, couldn't help myself!

But really, it was sheep washing day at our house which involved bringing all the 12 or so sheep out from their tiny corridor, dunking them in a big tub, dousing them with dish soap and giving them the scrubbing of a lifetime. The sheep were not at all happy, but since the food for the Tabaski holiday coming up this November is all based around sacrificing and eating the sheep, I guess everyone tries to keep them as clean as possible.

Speaking of eating sheep, I was quite excited last night when dinner was served, because it was brought out on a huge flat platter instead of a big bowl, which meant something other than rice and fish was on the menu. The base was onions, there were fries and olives strewn about, and big chunks of meat on bones to top it all off. I was thinking, great, Bbq! I have been fortunate to eat lots of beef and sheep, because I think meat is quite expensive here versus fish.

Anyway, for our dinner, the meat itself was quite good, and there was a wide selection between the parts we were eating such as shoulder bones and ribs, and so forth. Slowly as the meat pile dwindled everyone began to rip apart the pieces to get to every last morsel of meat and somehow in the shuffle, the tongue found it's way over to my eating zone. I was really left with a dilemma, because one of the Baby Daddy's had already been nicely serving me meat, which I tried to eat but it was mostly grizzle so I slyly tucked it away into some onions, and now this stinking tongue was there, all fleshy but a tongue nonetheless. There was no way I was putting it in my mouth!

Luckily Fatou picked it up and started tearing off a chunk when Seynebou mumbled something in Wolof that I took to mean "That's the tongue" and Fatou looked at it and tossed it back in to the dish.

I really have started to eat how much I feel I need to eat, rather than eating more when the ladies say "Asslay, mange!" because seriously, these ladies know how to eat. Luckily I know how to say "Soulna" which means "J'ai bien mange" in polite Wolof which gets me off the hook from stuffing myself on a hot day.