Tabaski and Our President

So Tabaski turned out to be fantastic. Tabaski is not the Islamic New Years, which I thought before, but the day to remember a story that happens to show up in the Koran the Bible and the Torah, when God told Abraham to kill his first son, and after Abraham had shown his devotion to God by clearly intending to do just that, an angel appeared praising Abraham, and providing a sheep to be killed instead. To honor this day, every full-grown (i.e. married) man is required to kill a sheep, which means (by one estimate) about 650,000 sheep lost their lives lost Saturday. (There are of course more married men than that in Senegal, but not all of them can afford their own sheep, as they can get quite expensive, about 600 US dollars.)

For Tabaski my family went to Koalack, because that’s were the majority of my host father Mohamed’s family lives now, and where he grew up. So last Thursday my host mother, father, sister, niece, two brothers and I all took the bus, along with all of our bags—and of course our sheep. At one point we took a taxi, crammed with seven people, all our bags, and the sheep in the trunk. The bus ride was cramped and hot and long, but nothing too bad, the most startling part (for me, the Senegalese didn’t bat an eye) was the number to sheep strapped on to the roof, their feet tied together and ears flapping in the wind.

When we got to Koalack we rested for a while at one of Mohamed’s sister’s houses (we stayed several hours because they insisted on making an elaborate meal for us) before venturing to the big house, where the majority of the family activity took place. Since we got there around 10:30, the majority of the household was asleep, but we tramped around anyway ferreting out every conscious person so we could all exchange formal greetings and shake their hands. After that we went to yet another sisters house where I immediately fell into bed.

The day before Tabaski, our first full there, I had a paper I needed to write for my Islam class, which turned out to be a bit of a blessing because it gave my a legitimate reason to hide from the family until I was feeling a little less overwhelmed. My family in Dakar had hinted that everyone hadn’t necessarily liked all of the past students who had come to visit, and they hoped that it would be different with me. I was feeling the merest bit of pressure to be charming, which always makes me edgy. It turned out that they did like me (alhumdililah!) and I figured out the best way to get a very large Senegalese family to like you is 1) eat a ton whenever food is out in front of you and explain loudly about how wonderful it is, 2) use whatever Wolof phrases you know over and over again (and over and over) again, and 3) make friends with the kids. There was a four year old there named Adja, who spoke no French at all, but for some unknown reason adored me, and would spend a lot of time sitting on my lap, playing peek-a-boo, laughing, and just generally being adorable. She won me all kind of points, as well being a lot of fun.

The day of Tabaski, we had to get over to the big house early, so that everyone could start cooking. (I wasn’t allowed to help on the grounds that I might have hurt myself.) By everyone I of course don’t mean everyone, I mean the women. The men and also the children got dressed up and went to the Mosque. After the Mosque, all the men changed out of their boubous and into their gross grimy clothes, and started getting ready to kill the sheep. Since the family was so big (somewhere between 40 and 50 people) we had nine sheep to kill. Nine. We dug a hole in the middle of the compound for the blood, and then the men would bring the sheep out one by one and hold their necks over the hole. The entire family stood behind the men, as if they were posing for a picture, presumable to see the sheep get killed without being in the way. Even though in theory each man is supposed to kill his own sheep, Amate, who was the oldest brother and thus the chief of the family since their father had died, decided it was better if he killed them all himself. It was hard to watch, especially when they got to our sheep. Yawu (he was named after a famous Senegalese wrestler) has lived with the family since I got here, so not only do I know his name, I know which family members he liked best, and where he liked to be scratched behind his ears. I couldn’t watch them cut is throat, but instead hovered near the back, where the women all gently made fun of me for being scared. It wasn’t entirely true, but since I don’t know the word for “traumatized” in French, I just went with it. The sheep would flail a little after they were dead, until one of the younger boys cam over and would yank its tail.

After all the sheep were dead, everyone got along with the business of butchering them. Someone tied their sheep up in a tree right next to where I was sitting, and so I watched the whole process, fascinated and mildly horrified. I took a bunch of pictures of the process, not because I thought anyone would really want to see them (I don’t know what I’m going to do with them now) but to prove to myself that it was really happening. The women set up several little grills and were cooking meat as soon as the men cut it off of the carcass. They all started with the liver (took me a while to remember the word, and thus understand what part of the animal I was eating) and Astou handed me a morsel and said with great solemnity “this is Yawu’s liver.”

After the big midday meal (of sheep of course) the children put on their fancy Tabaski outfits. It’s tradition on Tabaski for children to go around to houses demanding money, which adults are obligated to give them, and my little sister Coumbis was anxious to go out and collect her loot. The adults had fancy Tabaski clothes too, but didn’t wear them until the next day, as they was still a great deal of gross dirty work to be done. The next day when we finally did get dressed up, we went visiting all around Koalack, which took about 4 hours, and involved maybe 4 miles of walking. Astou told me that you could tell how much the economic troubles were affecting people, because in years past you would be given drinks (probably soda, maybe local juice) at every house, no matter how many glasses you had just had, whereas this year we were only given drinks at a handful of houses. It was clearly painful to people that they couldn’t afford to offer the kind the kind of hospitality they prided themselves for.

Before I went to Koalack, most of the Senegalese I talked to about it (who weren’t part of my family) told me that it would be awful. “It’s much hotter than Dakar, there are a million mosquitoes, it’s so dirty…” And it was all true. Koalack was hotter (though not nearly as hot as Dakar in September) the drinking water has salt in it, so that I don’t understand how everyone doesn’t shrivel up from dehydration, and there’s trash everywhere, including floating in the open sewers. But being part of such an enormous, friendly and welcoming family, and feeling closer to my Dakar family than I have before made me love Koalack.

We took a bus back to Dakar on Monday, this time with a great deal of meat instead of a sheep. I had been feeling a little listless since then, probably in large part to the lack of sunshine. I had assumed that the dry season, when it never rains would mean no clouds, but it’s been overcast most of the time lately. Friday however, the sun did peak through a little. We didn’t have any class in the morning, and so when Shani called me and suggested we go on an adventure, I took her up on it. We took a car rapid to Oakam, which is a village that has been swallowed by Dakar, and wandered around the windy dirty roads. The president recently commissioned an absurd and expensive statue of “The African Renaissance” (which most of the Senegalese view as an uncalled for tribute he is making to himself) to be built in Oakam. We decided we wanted to go to the beach, or at least see the water, and since the statue (which has just been finished) is the biggest landmark around, and since it’s on the ocean, we made for the statue. After several sketchy wrong turns (where we followed a random woman into what looked like an industrial site until thee guard told us we weren’t allowed and pointed us toward what looked like a goat-path through the brush) we emerged in front of the statue, where there was music, lots of people in their best clothes, and guards surrounding the area. We went over to talk to the guard, and he told us that the President was there, inspecting the statue before its grand opening on the 12th. “Ok, so it’s a private event then,” we said. “ “Oh no, of course not, go on in!” We made friends with some of the women dancing to the music, and the stunningly beautiful little girl they had with them, until eventually the president rode by in his car, standing in the sun roof and waving to the crowd. Shani was a bit more exciting about seeing him then I was (I think he’s a pretty awful leader, all things considered) but I what was so excited about was that we stumbled across it; that our random foray led somewhere so wild made me feel like it truly was an adventure.

After the president had driven away, Shani and I continued our search for the beach. We ended up on another small footpath through the bushes, and over hills (one of the only hilly places in Senegal) until we got spit out at the beach. The sand was black and we were flanked on either side by sheer cliff faces, edged by huge black rocks at their base, where the waves were crashing in. Neither of us had brought out swimsuits, but we ran into the water in our clothes anyway, laughing and running with the waves buffeting us about.

It was, all in all, one of my best days in Senegal.