Tabaski 2009

On the morning of Tabaski, everyone was up early to start preparing all the food for the day. I asked what I could do to help and was given a huge bowl of onions to dice. (Onions are a major ingredient in a lot of Senegalese dishes.)

I’ve never claimed to be much of a culinary genius, but before arriving in Senegal I’d say I was fairly confident in my abilities to at least cut up onions. Not so much here. The women here don’t use cutting boards, or even sharp knives. Rather they take a (usually) dull knife, place the onion in the palm of their hands, and proceed to dice it up in their hand. In the past when I’d offered to cut up the onions, no one let me…I think they were worried I’d hurt myself. I wasn’t quite confident I could do it either, but I decided to give it a go. Well I made it thru about ½ an onion before my eyes started watering so badly that I nearly cut my finger off. Needless to say, they promptle took that job away from me. I’m pretty sure they’ll never let me near onions again, but at least we all got a good laugh out of it.

Still trying to make myself useful, I volunteered to pound the pepper instead. My Mom and sisters looked at me skeptically for a minute, but then they seemed to decide that was a task I could handle without injuring myself. So I sat myself down in front of the big mortar and pestle and started pounding away.

About an hour and an absurd amount of ground pepper later, my arms were starting to get rather sore. [You don’t even realize what a blessing pepper mills (or pre-ground pepper for that matter) are!] At this point my Dad walks out and announces that its time to kill the sheep… and I took that as my cue to escape for a shower. Watching them slit the sheep’s throat? No thank you!

After showering and donning my new, slightly clown-like dress, I headed back into the courtyard. Thankfully, the killing part was over, but the sheep was still laying in the sand, bleeding into a hole. Once it had bled out completely, what did they do with said hole and all the blood? Cover it up with some sand and move on with the day. Yep, super sanitary.

And then the fun really began… the Mauritanian guy showed up to butcher the sheep. In our yard. (Usually the head of the family does it, but my Dad hired this guy instead.) I would have gladly excused myself at this point, but there was no way my family was letting me out of watching. So, I grabbed my camera instead and prepared to observe from a safe distance.

I’ve already posted pictures of some of the butchering process here, but allow me to tell you about my favorite part… The first thing that had to be done was to get the skin off. In order to do this, the guy cut a whole in the skin on the sheep’s leg and literally proceeded to blow the animal up like a balloon. Yep, that’s right…a sheep-shaped balloon. But the real kicker? While I’ve heard from other PCVs that their Dads used bike pumps, etc. to accomplish this task, our guy used his MOUTH! I was a bit dumbfounded. If you look closely at the pictures, you can see the guy with his mouth on the sheep’s leg as the animal gradually inflated. Yuck.

Well after that shocker, the butchering proceeded as you’d imagine it would. My family certainly enjoyed themselves laughing at how uncomfortable I was while watching the whole process. It was especially fun when the butcher started advancing towards me holding the sheep’s recently decapitated head in front of his face like a mask. This experience just confirmed for me that I infinitely prefer the American way of doing things…aka the meat arrives at the supermarket in neat little packages and bears almost no resemblance to the animal/animal parts that it came from.

Once the butchering part was finished, my Mom and sisters took over again. First, they grabbed the liver and threw it on the fire. Then they took the laundry basin full of everything else and started dividing it up. Some we’d eat later that day, some went in the freezer, and some we gave away.

Next up? A mid-morning snack of liver fried with onions and potatoes, yum! Thankfully, they gave my Dad and I a separate plate and, since he pays much less attention to what I eat than my Mom and sisters, I was able to eat around the liver without getting any grief. I’ve tried more new foods than I can count since getting to Senegal, but I don’t really feel like liver needs to be one of them.

Well after all the excitement of the morning, the day definitely settled down. We ate another meat-tastic lunch, took our post-lunch naps and then everyone got decked out in their new outfits. (I, being far too cheap/poor to buy a second new outfit for the day, put on my complet from Swear-in again.)

A big part of Tabaski celebrations is going around to visit people and asking their pardon for any faults you might have committed against them over the past year. Also, all the kids run around from house to house showing off their new clothes. It’s kind of like trick-or-treating, but people give out coins instead of candy. So, after all the kids in my family took off, Yaay, Baay (Dad) and I piled into my Dad’s ancient Peugeot to make our rounds.

And that was pretty much it for the big day. After visiting 6 or 7 houses, we headed back home, ate some more meat, and I passed out. Over the next couple of days, visitors continued to come and go from the house to ask my family’s pardon. We also ate a ridiculous amount of sheep and all I can say is thank goodness my family can afford refrigeration! Regardless of whether a family has a refrigerator, they continue to eat meat for days after Tabaski, and I’m sure I would’ve gotten a major case of food poisoning.

And on that lovely note…ba bennen!