Saturday, December 22, 2007

Tabaski Sauce

(disclaimer - this post is not for the weak stomached!)
I survived my first Tabaski and am back in the city having JUST finished a 50K bike ride. (The internet cafe is air conditioned, so it's a good place to cool off!)
Tabaski started out much like Ramadan: everyone wore their best clothes and prayed together in a field (see previous picture), but after the prayer everyone rushed to the village center for a mass slaughtering of sheep. Since every family is required to kill a sheep (in memory of the sheep Abraham killed instead of his son), we're talking somewhere around 30 sheep, necks slit, in a pile, twitching on the ground. I'll spare you all the pictures. The rest of the day was spent cooking and eating. Everyone in the village also felt compelled to give me a pile of their meat, and by the end of the day I had amassed over 10 kilo's, piled into a bucket. Keep in mind that when I say meat I mean every part that once belonged to the animal: bones, stomaches, intestines, everything. Now some of these are actually quite good; the liver's tasty, as are the kidneys. But the stomach I just can't stomach. I ended up giving a lot of my loot away to other families. The meat fest was followed by a lot of dancing and drinking of tea, late into the night.
Now I'm getting ready for christmas in the city with other volunteers and, hopefully, with a little less meat.