Our first eleven days in Sénégal were the last eleven days of Ramadan. While I knew about the basics of Islam: Allah, Mohammed, Mecca, five pillars etc. I didn’t know what happened after a month of fasting. This weekend I learned what the Sénégalese do to celebrate the end of Ramadan.
Saturday, we prepared for the fête even though no one knew whether Eid (I think that’s what it’s called in English, though here they call it “Korité”) would be on Sunday or Monday. What? How can they not know when one of their two BIG holidays is going to be?? Well: the moon decides. So Saturday night some official person somewhere was watching the sky and seeing if the moon showed up (which it did) meaning Korité would be Sunday, as expected.
Sunday morning arrives and I put on my silk wrap skirt (since I knew everyone would be dressing up, I thought I should put on something nicer than my usual cotton skirt). Head downstairs, and see my host mom making the oatmeal like millet concoction called Laax (lakh). While that boils, she moves on to the “lait caillé” which was a HUGE HUGE bowl of sweetened vanilla yoghurt to which she added a medium sized bag of sugar, a can of sweetened condensed milk, and about 30 packets of Vanilla flavored sugar. They like sweet things here. (most places don’t even advertize that they have diet coke!). around 9:30 strangers started showing up. (clearly they were strangers to me and not to everyone else) then we were all served a huge bowl of this stuff, served hot even though it was about 85 degrees out. I ate some but couldn’t come close to finishing, the thing is, my host mom thought that she was giving me a little bit “just to try” but It was a large serving!!
After a little nap time (and a lot of reading Empire Falls) it’s time for lunch. Everyone is dressed really nicely in brand new boubous. Then we settle onto the mats on the floor for our delish lunch. There was some mutton AND chicken (which apparently is uncommon, usually one or the other). After lunch I started chilling with my nephews who DO speak French. We played gamecube. Anyway that was what went on yesterday but what I didn’t see was that the kids went around (almost like we do for Halloween) to get money from the neighbors, one of my nephews told me that one person gave him 10,000 CFA (22$ish) that buys a lot here. Needless to say it was a good day for him. All in all the was a good day for me too, but my host mom thinks that I don’t eat and is shocked that I don’t want to watch TV all the time (I know that you are all shocked by this too, but the TV here is just not that good! So I’d rather read).
My host sister borrowed my camera to take pictures so I’ll try to get those up soon.
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