Tabaski is Coming!

We apologize for our writing hiatus. I came down with a nasty bug which gave me extreme nostalgie for orange juice and chicken noodle soup and now Neal seems to have picked up a (thankfully less fever-inducing) version of it.

I promised a sheep update, so here it is. This year, Tabaski (officially Eid al Adha) will fall on November 6th.  On Tabaski, every Muslim family sacrifices a sheep in commemoration of when Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, but God had him kill a sheep instead. This means that almost every family in Bamako needs at least one sheep, which leads to some pretty amusing sights in the weeks leading up to the fête. The Fulani, an ethnic group known for their herding, descend on Bamako with A LOT of sheep. On a side note, some of our Fulani neighbors (they live in Bamako year round) have started trying to make me learn Fula greetings, which is not helping my language confusion. Anyway, all of the sudden there are small herds of sheep everywhere, shepherds walking through the neighborhoods looking for takers. The larger and more attractive the sheep the more expensive it is, so most herds contain an impressive range of sheep sizes. Sheep can get really expensive (up in to hundreds and even thousands of dollars) so most banks offer special Tabaski loans to help you pay for your sheep, advertised with nice posters and billboards with very impressive looking giant, clean, white rams on them. Based on what I've learned about Malian banks I shudder to think about the loan conditions.

Then, people start taking sheep home. Last week I passed several sheep on top of a bus headed out into Mali's regions, presumably accompanying family members who work in Bamako going home for the holiday. Keep in mind these are live sheep, on a luggage rack. It's approximately equal parts hilarious and horrible. Yesterday I saw this year's first example of two guys on a moto with a giant sheep upside down on the passenger's lap between him and the driver. Our family hasn't gotten a sheep yet, but I think I heard my host mom talking about it this morning. We're on high alert to make sure they aren't planning on having Baba slaughter the sheep (they keep talking about taking him to mosque, which is the prerequisite for sheep killing), a huge honor which he doesn't really want. Unfortunately we haven't gotten any good sheep pictures this year, but here is shot of my family's mouton from 2009, along with my cousin Issouf. He (the sheep, not Issouf) was charming and also quite delicious.

The other most important part of Tabaski is, of course, the clothes. Our fabric has been purchased and dyed. It looks very nice, though everyone says Neal's is prettier than mine for some reason. My host mom took his measurements last night and is taking the fabric to the tailor as we speak, I am going to woman tailor this evening with Fadima for what is sure to be a semi-hellish ordeal leading to a beautiful garment. Prepare yourselves for pictures.