This semester I have been fortunate enough to get to witness some very important events. I was in Dakar for a large part of Ramadan and the celebration of its end, Korite, and now, a little over a month later, I am in Mbam and we've been celebrating again! Today was Tabaski, a Muslim holiday celebrating the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael that always takes place in the months after Korite.
I have been looking forward to Tabaski for a number of weeks now, especially after I learned that it is a holiday marked by eating all day long. The reason that so much eating gets done is that Tabaski is the ram-slaughtering holiday. Every household buys a male sheep and butchers it in the morning, eating all the pieces as the day wears on.
The days before and after Tabaski are always taken off work and school in preparation for the holiday (everyone leaves Dakar and heads to their villages...we had lots of company!), so naturally the celebration started the night before. After taking our tea and eating dinner, I headed off with the ladies of my house (actually just Khady and Sayjo and some of their pals) to a dance. It was at the elementary school, which made me laugh, but the school made a better forum than the party in a field I went to the week before, so I went with it. The dances in Mbam always feel like barn dances to me. The moon was full and the music could be heard all through the village. One thing that strikes me about fetes in Mbam is that there is a serious mixing of generations. Last night I went with ladies of high school age, but at the dance there were many people younger and older than any of us. The age range was quite honestly early teens to mid thirties. But that is normal for Mbam. The Senegalese habit of staying out all night apparently holds true in the village as well. I was made fun of for being a party pooper when I decided I wanted to go home at 2:30 in the morning...by a fifteen year old. But the party was very lively and I learned a dance that hails from Guinea-Bissau called “The Obama.” Obviously a night well spent.
But the adventure didn't end when we left the dance! Sayjo and Khady and I walked home and woke Kumba up to let us in. After returning from the restroom (you have to go outside to access it), Kumba was out in the yard looking around. She looked at me with a look of bemused alarm and said “LE BEGUE, IL EST PARTI!” She was referring to the ram that had arrived on the top of a bus with our visitors from Dakar earlier in the evening. Apparently he didn't want to be breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and he had made a great escape effort just as we arrived. He was still wandering around the courtyard, but started to run as he realized we were coming for him. The entire house woke up to the cries about the escaped sheep and the whole lot of us ran around, weaving through the road and the yards of our neighbors, trying to catch the sheep. I was useless, laughing too hard to do anything and way too afraid of my lack of skills even if I did get close to the sheep. But there was something really wonderful about running around at 3 am trying to catch an escaped sheep under a full moon.
Poor sheep. I fell asleep to his perturbed “baaah”s after he was more securely attached to a tree out back. But I didn't sleep long! The ladies of the household wake up very early the day of Tabaski to finish preparing the sauces and vegetables they started preparing the night before. That way once the men return from the mosque to kill the sheep all that remains is the cooking of the meat! So after sleeping very few hours, I woke up and went out to see what was going on. I was fairly useless because I don't know how to cook anything, but it was interesting to watch. Senegalese women are pros at making food for the masses, using huge pots over open fires to make gigantic batches of onion sauce and french fries.
The sheep was still sitting and bleating sadly- knowing, I think, what awaited him. And he was right to be afraid. With the return of the men from the mosque at around 10 am, they set to work digging a hole to drain the ram's blood when they decapitated it. I was pretty excited to see the sheep get butchered actually. I had never witnessed the butchering of an animal before and I was really curious to see how it went. So the men dug a hole (using machetes because I have stolen all the shovels for my projects at the school) and the poor sheep was laid to rest. I was fairly surprised by how quickly they managed to remove the skin and finish the cutting of the meat. The whole process took maybe an hour. And they were using really dull knives. I was also impressed by how calm I was watching a sheep get killed. All the guys were making jokes and trying to get me to help and playing with its testicles (obviously the 8 year old and the 16 year old were taking the lead on that one). Oh yeah, and the guys were butchering the sheep on the door to my host brother's hut. Typical.
With the sheep freshly killed, Binta and Kumba set to work preparing the liver, which would be our breakfast! It didn't take long (remember they did all that preparation before!) and before you know it we were eating a delicious breakfast of lettuce, french fries, freshly slaughtered sheep's liver, and a rich onion sauce. So tasty! And it was only 11am!
The whole day passed in that sort of fashion. We hung around the house, making attaya, visiting, getting visits, and eating various parts of the sheep. I can't be sure exactly which parts I ate, but I do know that I ate a lot of things that I would probably not appreciate knowing the identity of. Actually I know I ate intestine and probably some testicle and a bit of the jaw, so I can't imagine that there is much more unknown that could bother me. There was a lutte and a dance tonight, but after last night's adventure, and looking forward to another adventure tomorrow, I think I need a break.
Oh Tabaski! What a rush. The sheep was too much. And we ate the entire thing. Literally the entire sheep, with the exception of its horns and its hooves (which are saved for another festival thirty days from now), is now gone. Oh begue!
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