Tabaski

Warning: This post contains blood and guts

Another Senegalese holiday come and gone...if I'm not mistaken its my last one. It went much as one would expect; men to the mosque in the morning, followed by the killing of some less-than-appetizing animal, hours of cooking for the women and sitting for the men, eating copious amounts of oily macaroni with onion and meat sauce and, finally, putting on fancy clothes as the sun goes down. The general program remains the same no matter what the holiday. Since yesterday was Tabaski, the animal of choice was the ram that's been bleating outside my door every night this past week. Needless to say I wasn't sorry to see him go. We killed a total of 4 rams among the men of our household, slitting their throats and letting the blood drain into a hole in the ground. The slaughter didn't go off as smoothly as last year, and two of the rams took a good 3 minutes of sawing and hacking at the spinal column with a dull knife to dispatch. The men then proceeded with the still-kicking carcasses to the mango tree, which they turned into a slaughterhouse of startling efficiency. I observed the undressing of the sheep from the lower branches, perched well above the clouds of flies and safe from errant splashes of feces and blood. Many hands and a few sharp machetes made quick work of the bodies, thus concluding the most exciting part of the day.

Teamwork

  
 

Talk about grabbin' a sheep by the balls

Prime cut