Tabaski

Today was the Muslim fete Eid al-Adha, otherwise known as Tabaski here in Mauritania. It is also known as the festival of meat, so you can imagine how much I look forward to this day haha… I started out the festival last night spending some time with my family and watching Arabic Food Network (mostly American/English food shows with Arabic subtitles). After about two hours of watching cooking shows I made a comment to my host mom about how none of the shows had any side dishes or veggie plates, it was strictly meat dishes. She was like duh, it’s the fete of meat tomorrow haha… I don’t know how I didn’t put two and two together.

This morning started off with everyone in the family working on our meal preparation early and me hanging around being skittish knowing that the ram tied to the tree in our courtyard was going to be killed soon. It is called the festival of meat because it is the celebration of the day that Abraham (Ibrahim) was going to sacrifice his son Isaac (Ishmael) and then God replaced Isaac with a ram to reward Abraham for his obedience. So sure enough sometime in the late morning I saw the ram untied from the tree by some men I didn’t know and made my way back to my room for a good hour so I would miss the gross part… my family had a little laugh but completely understood that I would much rather be in my room reading a book then in the yard with them killing a ram. Then the family gathered in our salon while they finished up food prep… it actually smelled really good and the soccer being played on the tv was kind of reminiscent of watching football on holidays back home. For lunch we had meat with onions in gravy and french fries (all in one bowl) with bread to dip in it. My host mom made me my own personal bowl with just the onions, gravy and fries… it was sooo good (normally Mauritanians eat family style to the extreme- one big bowl for everyone, usually around 10-15 people, with your hands).

After lunch we all dressed up in our tabaski finest and I wore my very first female boubou. Enjoy the pictures, I hope they make you laugh as much as I laughed at myself. My host mom had made it very clear that for the biggest fete of the year no normal complet would do (the wax print, short sleeve, tight fitting, matching top/bottom outfits I normally wear). A boubou was very necessary for this fete. So she had some people bring over hand dyed (and pretty expensive) fabrics and I choose one for her to make the boubou for me. When I came out of my room in my outfit the kids in my family had a field day… I finally looked like a Mauritanian woman (the complets are for girls before they have kids and at my age I should probably be wearing a boubou by their standards).

Here are some pics of my huge, traditional female boubou that my host mom made. it is a big dress/sheet thing with a match wrap skirt underneath.

The rest of the fete was much like the past fete (to celebrate the end of Ramadan about 2 months ago). The other Americans came over to my house to visit my host mom then we went to greet and eat with other friends of past or current PCVs. It was a long exhausting day but went pretty well. Also, there are only 2 fetes really celebrated in Mauritania each year so im done with them for a while, phew!

The picture on the left is all the Boghe PCVs (my sitemates) and my host mom in our salon and the picture on the right is me and my little host sister, Yiy (age 4).

The picture on the left is some Mauritanians in their Tabaski finest and the picture on the right are two little boys who were sooo cute in their traditional chaftans and pants.