Tabaski

WARNING: This post contains graphic images, viewer discretion is advised

Oumi, Samba Gaye and Birame in their Tabaski best

  While all of you at home were planning menus and grocery shopping, the people of Senegal were getting ready to celebrate their own Thanksgiving-like holiday; Tabaski. Every family kills a ram in remembrance of Abraham's test of faith where God asked him to sacrifice his son, then they put on their fanciest clothes and sit around eating meat and potatoes and onions until they can no longer fit into said clothes. I was looking forward to Tabaski as a change of pace, but like most Senegalese holidays it was pretty anti-climactic...basically everyone spent so much energy and money in the weeks before getting new clothes made and buying new shoes and picking out their ram that when the actual holiday arrived it was almost a let down. There also wasn't much mention made of the actual reason for the holiday. Tabaski reminded me a lot of Christmas in the US, when everyone is so concerned about shopping and material things that they completely forget the meaning of the holiday in the first place. Even a deeply religious country like Senegal has managed to secularize one of their most important holidays and turn it into nothing more than another reason to spend money on things that they really can't afford. Maybe Senegal and America aren't so different after all.

How many Senegalese men does it take to kill a ram?

As far as holidays go this one certainly won't go down in the history books for me. I spent most of the day trying to eradicate a termite colony that had chewed its way into one of my storage trunks and being interrupted to greet distant relatives that I'll probably never see again. I did take a break to help my family butcher the rams. Since there are 5 adult men living in our compound we killed 5 rams and ended up eating left-over (and increasingly rancid) meat for the next 5 days. I'm in no means a squeamish person and I have no problem killing animals to eat, but after watching the way these animals were dressed (or undressed...) I opted just to eat a bit of the liver and leave it at that. The intestines weren't treated with much care and barely rinsed before being thrown into the bowl of meat which they then contaminated with fecal matter and E coli and who knows what other diseases. As starved as I am for protein in this country I just couldn't convince myself that all of the bacteria would be boiled out of those.

Preparing the onions and potatoes

Turning the mango tree into a slaughterhouse

Sheep's clothing

Why you should be careful when handling small intestine

Bassirou "cleaning" the intestines

Modous fancy pants were a little too big

No meat goes to waste

A 50lb ram reduced to the sum of its parts