Tabaski

Tabaski, as I've mentioned, is a Muslim holiday commemorating Abraham's sacrificing (or his willingness to sacrifice) his son Isaac.  In memory of this sacrifice, the head of every Muslim household in Senegal (who can afford it) sacrifices at least one sheep.  My family this year killed two sheep and a goat.  Here's the goat, post-mortem.

My papa, who had been very ill and feeble in the last few weeks, was suddenly in great form yesterday.  His breathing wasn't labored, he was moving in a spritely way, and he was talking and laughing effortlessly.  He killed one or two moutons (we've given up calling sheep by the English word, and now I always think of them in French) before getting tired.  Then Youssou's friends Rawan and Gallo took over with a couple other neighborhood boys.  I watched something like 6 killings, which were not too bad.  Luckily for me, our house is way too small to kill animals in, so they dug a hole outside down the street and several other families joined mine in killing moutons over the hole.

Next, they prepared the carcasses for eating.

My family preparing moutons under the trees

My little cousin got some blood on her hand

Papa laughing and watching the younger men work

Lots of activity at Theresa's house, where they killed six moutons.

Then the cooking started, and it continued pretty much throughout the day.  Mama did most of our cooking, and I helped by making fries.  

We ate lunch and then I met up with Billy for a while and we walked to his friend Luke's house.  We talked for a while and then I took a nap.  Then I got all dressed up and started touring around the neighborhood saying hi to friends.

It was a good day, and the food was plentiful and delicious.  My family is kind of weird, I've been realizing.  Something that I don't understand at all happened in the morning and resulted in some people in the neighborhood being mad at my papa.  So my parents were both very tense and stressed and yelling at everyone.

I have been trying to spend more time at home and get closer to my family, but I've been realizing that my family just isn't close.  If I spend time at home, I can watch TV with whoever happens to be in the living room, but generally my family members don't interact much with each other and don't do much at home.

I also realized that my little sister doesn't have any friends.  She'll sometimes hang out with the little kids in the neighborhood, but they're all at least five years younger than her.  I've not once seen her with someone her age or older who isn't family.  I feel kind of bad for her, but she doesn't have friends because she's not friendly.  She's never once done something nice for me or said something friendly.  I went out on a limb the other day and let her use my computer, and she broke my headphones, closed everything I'd been using, and wrote on and looked through my Facebook.  When I explained why I wouldn't be lending her my computer again, she didn't apologize, she just checked to see if her mom had heard what I was saying.  Most of my interactions with her consist of her walking into my room uninvited and saying, "Erica, do you have ____?"  If I say no but she suspects that I'm lying, she starts looking through my stuff (this is common) and I ask her to leave.

So I'm feeling sort of cheated family-wise right now, but I have some benefits that other people don't have, like a key to the front door of the house.  I'm allowed to go out whenever I want and no one cares, which is quite nice.

Did I mention that Youssou has malaria?  He's a lot better now, but it was sad that he couldn't do much of anything for the holiday.

Saturday we're taking a field trip with our Islam class to Touba, the holiest city in West Africa.

I think that's about it for now.