tabaski.

{ November 29, 2010 @ 2:42 pm } · { Uncategorized }

Last week, we celebrated Tabaski in Nafadji, or as I refer to it, Senegalese Thanksgiving.  I call it this because the way I was explaining Thanksgiving to my Senegalese friends is that it is like the American Tabaski.  (I could not really get anyone to explain the story of it to me so the best I can do is to point you to the Wikipedia page because that will be a much better explanation than “a month after Ramadan ends, we party!” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabaski)

 

In the days leading up to Tabaski, I could hardly get any work done.  First of all, all affectés such as teachers, my counterpart, principals peaced-out of Nafadji to go home for the holiday.  And everyone who has left Nafadji to work, i.e. lots of men who go to Dakar or work for the mining companies came back home.  So it started to feel like going home for Thanksgiving when you and your high school friends hang out at the local bar and catch up.  Except that everyone was sitting under trees and drinking tea.  Also there was hair braiding everywhere. Including me.  Six hours. I have a lot of hair. I looked like a fool (pictures to come).

 

So the day of Tabaski begins just like any other day. Watching a sheep being slaughtered, and gutted in front of my face, and the man doing it laughing real hard at my uncontrollable terrified facial expressions.  Then I was told to go put my outfit on, so I put on my outfit I wore for swearing-in and had my braids all done, I was set.

 

The thing about these holidays is that when Senegalese women dress up, they look gorgeous.  The colorful fabric, the whole complet and the hair, the earrings, they just look fab.  When a silly white person like me does it, I look like a fool.  The outfit can be gorgeous but it just quite doesn’t work somehow.  It’s like you put a dress on a pig and its still a pig, am I right?

 

So I had the outfit on and my sister decides to parade me around the village.  I felt like I was about to be at a dance recital in my tutu and everyone thought I just looked adorable.  I was called a vrai Malinke woman by many of my friends in the village.  Not gonna lie, of course that made me feel great.  I think somewhere around there people were going to the mosque to pray, but I don’t really go around those parts, neither do most people, but I saw some people dressed up headed that way, mostly men.

 

Then as we were sitting under the tree, hanging out like any other day, I slowly started to see men and children walking/biking around with handfuls of raw meat in their hands.  There is something about sharing your slaughtered sheep with other people that is part of Tabaski.  (Gotta make sure you don’t bump into anyone with a handful of raw meat in their hands…)  Then about an hour later I saw women and children with bowls of cooked food on their heads.  So from sharing meat to sharing cooked food.  There was just a mélange of meat and food all over the village.

 

Then I was told to get out of my outfit for lunch but ended up wearing a bib instead.  (Reason number 27 I love my host family: I get to wear bibs on holidays.)  Now if people ate lunch like this every day, I would be hollering at Michelle Obama to be helping me with child obesity programs.  This lunch consisted of the slaughtered sheep (who knows which parts of the sheep I was consuming), and pasta cooked in straight up oil. And bread. My gosh. Delish for about two bites and then you realize you are eating unidentifiable animal parts cooked in fat.  Needless to say, my tummy did not feel so great for the following two days.

 

My sister then took me to go hang out with her ladies.  Groups of women are universal.  When I go hang out with my sisters “groupe” as she calls it, I feel like I am in a book group, or on desperate housewives.  We sat around and drink tea or warm powdered milk and gossip while the toddlers hit each other and poop on the ground.  When a man came in we giggled and made fun of him until he left us to our gossiping.

 

There is also this one woman in our village who is good friends with my host sister who is tiny and plump and a little firecracker and makes people cheerful and dance wherever she goes.  She literally walks into where we are hanging out, dances a bit, and all of the sudden everyone is standing up and dancing and beating a plastic water container.  And then she sneaks out dancing and everyone continues.  Great having a person around that spreads cheer like that.  She should be everywhere!

 

Dinner equals same as lunch.  Had to force myself to take enough bites to still feel celebratory and not be rude to refuse a holiday meal.  At dinner, I found out that the big middle-school soiree was postponed because the generator was broken and there was no music.  Secretly relieved there will not be music blasting until 3am and I would be forced to dance and watch 12 year olds be awkward while oil is sloshing around in my stomach, I set out to go around the village to greet.  Everyone was all tuckered out, it was pretty cute. As I went from house to house people were groaning greetings and prayers at me as if drunk from the party.  The village was quiet by eleven.

 

All in all, holidays in Senegal, not terribly different from American ones.  We sit around with family, spend time together, drink beverages, eat absurd amounts of unhealthy food and pass out.  Souuunds about right.