Yesterday was the Islamic holiday Tabaski. As I had never heard of this holiday before coming to Senegal, I'm going to guess that a lot of people potentially reading this have no idea what it is, either. This holiday is based off of the story of Abraham in the Old Testament, where God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son, and then at the last minute God gives him a sheep to sacrifice instead. To recognize this holiday, each Muslim family sacrifices a sheep. As Dakar is mostly Muslim, there are a lot of families who practice this. Many families also choose to sacrifice more than one sheep. One student's family sacrificed seven sheep, even though there are only eight people in her family. Multiply several sheep by thousands of families in Dakar... That is a lot of sacrificed sheep.
Needless to say, I had not been looking forward to this holiday. My host family is Catholic, so we would not be celebrating Tabaski. I know that I should have felt as though I was missing out on a great cultural experience, but in all honesty I was pretty relieved. I decided to take advantage of this day to sit and relax in my room and read, perhaps get a bit ahead on future papers.
I quickly learned, however, that Tabaski is not something that can be avoided. I woke up to a chorus of braying sheep. I had to run an errand shortly after waking up, and I wasn't even outside my front door when I saw my neighbors going in for their first kill, with three other sheep standing by. As I walked along the road, there were already puddles of sheep blood developing along the curbs. Everyone passing me smiled, saying, "Bonne fête!" For the rest of the day, all I could smell and hear was sheep meat being grilled. By the end of the day, the cacophony of braying was replaced by an eerie silence.
I realized I could not look at this holiday through the lens of a vegetarian American with a Christian upbringing. I sat in my room, pondering the holiday of Tabaski. I felt that looking at this holiday with a negative light would make me seem religiously intolerant or close-minded. To try to put myself at peace with this holiday, I decided to compare it with Christmas. Tabaski is supposed to be the largest holiday of the year for Muslims. I think it is safe to say that Christmas is the largest holiday of the year for Christians. Both holidays have biblical/koranic roots, as Tabaski is based off of the story of Abraham I mentioned earlier and the act of giving presents on Christmas is based off of the story of the wise men giving presents to baby Jesus. Is there really that much of a difference between those two acts, sacrificing sheep (to later feast on them) and giving presents, if their intentions are to recognize religious events? Well, I reasoned, killing multiple sheep for one family is excessive, not to mention sheep are living beings who are being subjected to pain. Then, however, I thought about the excessiveness that takes place with Christmas in the United States. The entire holiday has been so commercialized and so blown out of proportion that for many people the religious meaning is lost. Is one really worse than the other? I concluded that though I would not personally be able to sacrifice a sheep, nor would I want to eat one, I cannot criticize the holiday. Not to mention, Thanksgiving is coming up next week and pretty much every American family will be eating a turkey. The only difference is that the families will be buying an already killed and processed turkey. At least the sheep taking part in Tabaski had somewhat cage-free, enjoyable lives before being sacrificed. I fear to know how poor the quality of life was for many of the turkeys being eaten by Americans on Thanksgiving. Chances are, those turkeys were bred and raised in factory farms and then were slaughtered and processed by machines. Although witnessing a sheep about to be sacrificed was not pleasant by any means, I have to give the people here credit for actually knowing the animal and the amount of labor it takes to get the meat.
After this introspective, rationalizing session on Tabaski, I found myself to be much more at peace with the holiday. I then finished the final Harry Potter book and Nervous Conditions, a novel for my African literature class. Finally knowing the ending of Harry Potter is bittersweet; it is sad to think that the saga is over. I am insanely jealous of everyone who gets to see the first part of the seventh movie tonight/in the near future. Senegal does not have movie theaters that show Western films, so I have to wait until my return to the US to see it. As far as the other book for my literature class goes, it was just a repetition of the themes from other works we have read in that class; basically, colonialism/Western influence is evil and has tainted African culture.
Upon thinking about all of these holidays emphasizing food, I decided to make a list of all the foods I miss from the US. To give a brief snapshot of what the list looked like, it contained (but was not limited to) the following: whole wheat bread, tomato sauce, blueberry pancakes (with real maple syrup, of course), macaroni and cheese with ketchup (childhood nostalgia food), blue gatorade, peppermint mocha lattes, tofu pad thai, chipotle veggie burritos, sunshine patties (the BEST veggie burgers ever), soy milk, oatmeal, almond butter, hummus and pita bread, strawberries, REAL orange juice, foods involving pumpkin, balsamic vinegrette, grilled sesame tofu as found in the Whole Foods salad bar, granola, and Trader Joes veggie fried rice.
I then tried to make a latte with relative success. My ingredients for a Senegalese latte: hot water, powdered milk, ovaltine, instant coffee, and sugar cubes. Not as bad as it sounds, really.
With just over a month to go, I find myself thinking of home more and more. This bothers me, because I really should be embracing the time I have left and making the most out of it. As the clocks went back an hour in the States, I am now an additional hour ahead. It is funny that this makes home seem even farther away, even though it is obviously geographically the same distance. Apparently our study abroad program is having some little gathering for Thanksgiving, so that should be nice. In many ways my friends here have become a big family to me, as we have all gone through similar experiences over the past three months, being Americans in Senegal.
That's all for now.
Léegi léegi!
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