Hello Again, Sorry for the delay in the post. Everything was closed Wednesday and Thursday for Tabaski.
I also haven't been able to post pictures the last couple of times but it seems to be working again which is great!
Tabaski came to a slow start. I got up at 8am to make sure I was available to help with whatever may need to be done, but at that time the ladies were all lounging around. There was no breakfast, so I went up and read my book for a while, and ate cookies from my secret stash. Supper the night before was lack, a sort of rice pudding but made with some kind of baked grains and vanilla yogurt all over it. It was nice, but not as nice as the cheeseburger I am going to eat at the JFK airport will be in a week’s time.
So by about 11 someone came up to my room to ask why I wasn’t watching the killing of the sheep… luckily I missed the actual throat slash (the gash in the neck was quite substantial!) but came in just in time to watch the sheep cleaner begin hacking away at the carcass with a machete. The process of cleaning 5 sheep was actually rather civilized (aside from a very muscular and sweaty man literally hacking at the carcasses). It took place in the sandy courtyard between our house and the next underneath a little tree. The kids were running around, boys were helping separate the guts from the good stuff, and one little girl even delighted in playing with the severed sheep`s head.
The meat-man would hack off major sections, and the ladies went through and separated out massive chunks of fat (still leaving behind a ton of fat though) from meat and bones. The guts were buried in a deep hole in the soccer field. The liver was bbq`d first as a sort of late breakfast (which I passed on) and the rest of the lunch meat was seasoned and bbq`d. By the end of the sheep killing, there were literally buckets and buckets of meat. It all seemed a bit strange because 1 sheep can feed a family for about a month… I was expecting a serious meal after all their work, but lunch was a disappointing spread of onions, stringy over bbq’d meat and french fries. I heard other people say their Tabaski was a let-down as well, and yet others said they felt eating all the food they were offered was as big an accomplishment as climbing Mt Fuji.
Anyway, after all that I went for a car ride to the University where Awa`s (scarily dilapidated) restaurant was to put bags and bags of sheep into the freezer. It was neat to see the university. They have 1500 students there and offer a full spread of courses apparently. I could see that the university was well planned and comparable to something you would find at home, with the exception that everything was in a state of serious neglect.
Getting out in the car was nice because we could drive around and see the apparent lacking in sheep, and the excess of sheeps hydes piled here and there. A pile of such hydes began collecting early on in the day by our house. A few boys were incharge of piling them neatly, and by the end, the pile was almost as tall as one of them. Then a "car rapide" (colourful bus, cheap mode of transport for people) came along and they hauled all the skins into the bus. No bags. No apparent care for where they landed. I can't say where they were going but I am certainly going to look out for where I sit next time I take a care rapide!
So then Tabaski Part II started a few hours later which involved everyone dressing up and… what? I have been wondering about that for weeks since I have never been aware of this major Muslim holiday and there was a lot of hype leading up to the days of tabaski. The ’and what’ ended up being everyone dressing up really nice, spending at least an hour putting on make-up and arranging their weaves, and dressing up the kids and… drum roll please… sitting on the couch! So we sat on the couch and a procession of neighbours stopped by to say hello. This lasted for the entire evening, and there was a round II on Thursday as all the ladies had a second outfit and another round of visits the next evening.
There was a reverse trick or treat element to Tabaski as well because some of the idea behind having all that meat is to share 1/3 with a neighbour and 1/3 with the poor. So all around our neighbourhood kids were seen carrying bags of meat to their neighbours. At the end one would expect an even balance of meat given and received but that’s no matter I suppose.
By about 8pm I was ready to head out with the other volunteers. Every Wednesday we have Quiz Night at this bar called Taverne so the proprietor, a Moroccan lady and excellent cook, treated us to a mouton of our own. She served it on couscous with this nice sweet onion sauce. The meat was soft and juicy and completely delicious.
All in all Tabaski wasn’t quite the big hoopla I was expecting, although I suppose if it was in my neighbourhood where I knew everyone and everything then I would have been a lot more fun. It was fun to have had a dress made up for the occasion. Most of the vcolunteer girls had a dress made up and a couple of guys wore Boubous which is the outfit men wear on fridays to go to Mosque.
So that's what I know today!
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