So the morning of Korite I woke up (at the blessedly late hour of 10 AM no less) to the smell of my sister cooking several hundred beignets right outside my front door. Nothing says, "Today is going to be a good day!" quite like walking out of your room and being immediately handed more little balls of fried dough than you know what to do with. I'd like to say I showed a little restraint and didn't eat them all, but really...who are we kidding? I probably put on several pounds of beignet weight because of the celebrations. And beignets was only the start of the eating fest because, as my sister said while chiding me for the millionth time that I don't eat enough, "Its a holiday, its necessary to eat A LOT." Other things on the celebration menu included:
- lax - millet with milk and sugar so its kind of like porridge, but sweeter
- sauce - some type of meat (no idea what) in a sauce with onions and fried potatoes. it tastes pretty delicious, but in typical Senegalese fashion, the meat is cooked to death so its kind of like chewing on a piece of tire, haha
- lots of different types of juices that I tried to awkwardly refuse and/or took two sips of and then slyly threw out my window because they were made with unfiltered water and I'm too freaked out to drink it
Other big events of the day included my sister Maimouna visiting from Dakar with her husband and two sons. My nephews, Omar and Mohammed, are pretty adorable looking little kids, but don't let that fool you...they are major troublemakers. For example, we eat all of our meals from communal bowls, so everyone has their own section of the bowl and you keep to your own side. This is a rule that everyone, even little kids, knows and abides by pretty strictly. Nevertheless, on Korite, Omar got a real kick out of reaching ALLL the way across the bowl and into my section with his "I've been rolling around in the sand all day" little hands just because he knew it was gross and not appropriate. Yeah, he's trouble. Not only has he gotten several beatings from my family, but he's even earned a slap or two from Jackie and Alex, which is really saying something.
Anywho, also on Korite all of the little kids get dressed up in their new clothes and run around from compound to compound asking for money. Its kind of like trick or treating, and I'm not entirely sure what the point of it is, but its tradition. They all looked pretty adorable, especially the really little ones in matching outfits, so I decided I needed to get my camera and take some pictures. I tried to just take some on the sly, but I forgot about the flash and as soon as it went off, the jig was up. I was completely swarmed by at least 12 kids, which made getting decent pictures pretty difficult. But I was just happy to have made it back out of the mob with my camera still in tact.
Other than that, I spent most of the day just sitting around my compound waiting for something exciting to happen, haha. After a while it became pretty apparent that the big party I was expecting wasn't actually going to happen, but I was still waiting for everyone to at least put on their fancy outfits. I had asked my brother the night before when everyone gets dressed up and he said around 6. I'd been hanging out at Josh's house and I noticed his family getting dressed in their party outfits (including his adorable chunk of a little sister Ndiaye who was sporting a dress reminiscent of Cinderella and flip-flops that said "Princess" on them), which I figured meant it was time to head home and get changed myself. I got back to my compound, but everyone was still wearing their everyday clothes so I just sat down outside with everyone feeling rather confused. Then one of my sisters started jokingly giving me a hard time for not putting my new complet on, so I explained to her that I was just waiting for everyone else to change before I did. Turns out I was the only one in my family who bought new clothes for the holiday, probably because my family is rather poor. As you can imagine, I felt like a total jerk after that, but I decided it'd be even more awkward if I didn't go put my outfit on since they knew I bought it specifically for Korite. So I put the complet on and had my sister show me how to wrap my hair so that Jackie could come over and take some family pictures.
And that was pretty much the extent of the day. A little bit anti-climactic really, especially after looking forward to it throughout the whole of Ramadan. Well I think that's about all for now...next time: a post about our glorious mini-vacation to the beach!!
No comments:
Post a Comment