Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We celebrated Tabaski with the family on October 5th (coincidentally, my 19th birthday). The day started with watching the men sacrifice one of the family sheep. This involves (warning: not-so-pleasant description ahead) slitting its throat, skinning it, and extracting everything edible from it. Turns out, there's not that much meat on a sheep; they're all bone and organs. The non-edible parts are put into specially dug pits in the roads, which are filled back in at each family's leisure, adding a bit of spice to walking home in the dark. On a more familiar note, Tabaski shares a lot of characteristics with Christmas. The preparation is hectic; we could hardly move for shoppers at the market the evening before, everybody buys new clothes and gets their hair done, and goes home to stay with their families. On the day, the streets were very quiet as everybody celebrated in their homes, the family spent a lot of time sitting and chatting together, or (for the women) preparing the food in the kitchen. Lunch lasted most of the afternoon, comprising at least three rounds of sheep with spicy onion sauce, bread, lettuce etc. eaten, as with most meals here, from a large communal dish. In the evening, everyone dons their new clothes and pays visits to friends. The women, especially, all looked fantastic in their boubous.
The day centred around friends, family, and food which reflects the Senegalese culture of hospitality strongly. If you're in the vicinity of a group of people eating, you'll be asked to join them (P explained that people don't often expect you to accept the request, it's more a sign of hospitality), and we often find friends, neighbours, or local kids eating with us at P's house. This, paired with the habit of greeting everyone you pass (at least with a quick "salaam malekum", or if they're someone you know by stopping to chat) creates a warm sense of community.
We've had some more time to explore Kaolack since arriving. One of the more notable trips was to look in the unassuming shops on the main road by the centre; we discovered that, by some act of God, we live a two minute walk from chocolate, ice cream, cheese, tinned fruit and veggies, Nutella(!), and cake. No matter how good the Senegalese food is, after a few weeks of spicy rice this is exactly what we needed. Granted, it'll cost you half your day's budget for a bar of chocolate, but it's 100% worth it. This is also the road from which it's much easier to get a taxi; doing this involves standing on the side of the road and hissing at ones that pass. If they've got a space free (by this, I mean there's fewer than eight people a five-seater car), they stop, you ascertain if they're going in the right direction, then squeeze yourself in, and pay your 150cfa (about 20p).
The market felt almost deserted after the rush before Tabaski. On our first trip into town alone, Zara and I had a chance to have a leisurely look around and do a bit of haggling. One seller quoted a pair of flip flops at £12, the next £1.20; there's definitely a bit of "lets see how ridiculously high I can make the price for the toubab" going on. On a recent trip to the artisianal market, we found that greeting the shopkeepers in Wolof and slipping "I live in Ndorong" into the conversation makes us more friends. In a lengthy conversation with one seller, we established that if a couple have been married for four years and don't have children, it's assumed that there's a medical reason. It was here that Zara decided that perhaps she and her fictional husband should have been married for four months, not four years.
Ndieme and Fatouba took us to the beach, which was absolutely beautiful at sunset, even if it did involve dealing with a group of young boys taking photos of us. Ironically, it's considered really rude to take pictures of people without their permission here (you'll probably get shouted if you get your camera out in a crowded place). Kaolack is inland so when I say beach I mean river beach, we're not sure if the ground was sand or mud, but it feels nice and squishy under foot. The water doesn't get much deeper than knee depth, although that's not necessarily a bad thing as it's uncommon to be able to swim. It was a lovely afternoon, cut short by the darkness creeping in and our need to find a taxi home. I tend to forget that you can't just call trusty Parker Cars when you're out of town at night; we spent a good half an hour flagging down cars (thank God for Ndieme and Fatouba and their excellent haggling skills).
Overall, we're starting to familiarise ourselves with Kaolack and how things work here. It's a brilliant town and I can't wait to get to know it better. Next on my list of places to visit are the Alliance Francaise (I've heard talk of a library), and Bluebirds; a restaurant which sells pizza and burgers and beer. Diapalante opened on Monday 15th October, so we've been busy meeting members, teaching and trying to fix the computers; I'll be writing more about the centre soon.
- comments
Mum Sounds fabulous. Random chat with strangers exactly like God's Own County of Yorkshire, but there the resemblance ends (plenty of sheep of course, but they are the woolly, rather than edible kind). Next time I will wire you cash rather than send you chocolate!