A few tasty treats

Today is Tabaski. At least that is what they call it here. It is based on a story that I think is quite similar to the Bible story of Abraham sacrificing his favorite son, who is later stopped by the Angel Gabriel? Am I totally mixing this up? In any case, in the story that I have been told here, Ibrahim is going to sacrifice his son Ismaellah according to God’s wishes and at the last moment, Ismaellah is replaced by a ram. So on Tabaski, every head of family buys a ram to sacrifice. This morning we sacrificed 6 rams, and thus I have just finished my third meal of the day of ram meat and onion sauce. Yum. I won’t eat for another two weeks to be sure.

After that, we all get dressed up in nice new clothes and go around visiting people’s homes. We ask forgiveness for our sins from other families in the neighborhood and then we wish them health and prosperity in the coming year. So here are a couple pics for you. Enjoy!

Wow, it has really been a long time since I wrote. But I'll make it up to you.

Tonight after I was sitting in one of the women's rooms in my house and talking with a group of them. Three were married, two were not, but certainly of the age to be married. Soon the discussions got pretty racy. For everyone's best interested I prefer to leave out the details (and you can imagine how much of the conversation I got, with my extensive Wolof vocabulary) but the part that was really funny is only PG-13. It went something like this:

Woman 1: Why don't you bring FD (names have been changed) back to the US? She could braid hair, clean, everything
Woman 2: Yeah, she'll even give sponge baths to the toubabs and wipe them after they go to the bathroom
(raucous laughter from all around)
Woman 2: I saw that, I swear, the toubabs take paper and wipe when they go to the bathroom

(at this point I am still not getting the Wolof phrases and I am thinking, what are they talking about.... shaking my head no...)

Woman 3: That doesn't make any sense, it would get all wet

Woman 1: no, they hang it on a little stick and tear off a little piece, wipe and then they throw it out. If you want you can even clean your hands with the paper when you are done ...author's note...*okay, maybe a little off on that part, but close enough*

Woman 2: see I told you!

At this point I intervened and had to admit that yes, the toubabs like to use little bits of paper in the bathroom. I talked a little bit about germs and why most americans are terrified by the idea of a turkish toilet and a lack of toilet paper. The women understood the germ thing very well, but they still think that users of toilet paper are completely alien. Ahh, another Peace Corps goal satisfied, sharing American culture the world over....