This week Mali celebrated both Independence Day (Sept 22) and Seliba/Tabaski (Sept 24). Independence celebrations are easy to describe: almost nothing happened. It may be different in larger cities with a federal government presence, but in my village, it was business as usual. I asked multiple people and got the same answer: that while people noted the date, it was only celebrated by children. Mali has an annual independence fabric which is sold at all the markets but the only people wearing it were girls under 15, and myself, to commemorate the holiday. The young kids got together and played various games but the adults seemed to treat it as any other day.
Now, Seliba was a different story. I intentionally woke up early and rushed to put on my best Malian clothes, not knowing what to expect. This was a slight lapse in judgement because almost the entire village went to the Mosque in the morning and I had to wait for them to return for the action to start. No harm done as this allowed me to cook myself a great egg sandwich for breakfast.
This new breakfast development is actually a much bigger deal than it sounds. Up until last week I had been eating three meals a day provided by my host family. The meals are a tad lacking in variety but I had been getting along just fine with the exception of one: breakfast. Lunches and dinners are typically either toh or rice with different sauces, but breakfast was always seri – a bland sugarless rice porridge. I have always considered breakfast to be my favorite meal of the day and it was tough to pull myself out of bed for seri. I had a nice propane stove, various pots and pans, a small unfinished slab of teak I convinced a confused carpenter to sell me as a cutting board, and even a table to put all this on – I was just missing one thing: eggs. Every day I am constantly surrounded chickens. Everything is “free range” here whether you like it or not, and the countless chickens just roam around all day getting into trouble. I hadn’t seen any at my weekly market, but I figured it shouldn’t be too hard to find eggs, right? Wrong. I started asking around and every single person scratched their heads and said, “someone who sells eggs? No idea where you’d find that here”, usually while a chicken was simultaneously stepping on their foot. I have yet to meet a single person here who doesn’t raise chickens, but every single one of them raises chickens for meat, not eggs. It is far more profitable (and desirable for everyone but me) to keep letting those eggs turn into more chickens. After my very well connected homologue (counterpart) asked around and came back with nothing, I gave up hope. His son will sell Kami eggs (small quail-like bird) but that’s more of a summer thing. I did have a fallback which I had known about the whole time but was hoping to avoid: the large town two-over from mine definitely sold all the eggs my little heart could desire but this was the bumpy 15km road I was complaining about in my previous post and I was afraid they would all break on the ride. However, I typically bike that route weekly anyway and was desperate enough to give it a shot. I bought a full carton of 30 eggs, taped it together and carefully slid into my backpack, and thankfully, there was only one casualty! Now I eat a combination of eggs, onions, and MSG every morning and emerge from my house with a smile.
But I digress. In following the story of Abraham, all Malians who can afford to do so, slaughter at least one sheep. Upon returning from the Mosque, my homologue came to excitedly announce that he was about to slaughter the sheep. I had requested he do so, taking on the mentality of “Malcolm, this is the real world, where meat doesn’t come in neat, pre-cut, refrigerated, Styrofoam packages”. This request has also gotten me invited to quite a bit more animal killings than I had initially intended but I’m learning lots. For being conducted outdoors and on the ground, the process was surprisingly neat and organized. The sheep was pinned to the ground with its neck over a small dirt dam, the throat was cut, and it was held until the sheep had bled out. A small hole was made in the skin of one if the hind legs, and my homologue’s son knelt and began to blow. After the lower half of the sheep was inflated, the rest of the skin was removed by knife and given to a small child who ran off with it. I asked what was going to happen to it, and was told that most of the village residents give their sheep skins to the Head Imam who sells them and uses the proceeds to repair the Mosque – a nice idea in my opinion. After we had removed the prime cuts, myself and the adults proceeded to eat them fresh of the brusse grill (metal grate balanced on rocks) we had created, while making the kids finish the butchering work. The rest of the day pretty much just involved eating copious amounts of food and hanging out with people. I tried to keep a mental list of which parts of the sheep we ate, which turned into which parts we didn’t, which ended up just being the brain and gentiles. Many people came and went throughout the day and my homologue and I remained planted in our seats as the food kept coming.
My village has an “above average” Christian population and even a church (keep in mind that the national average is about 2 or 3%). The visible outcome of this is mainly that there are pigs roaming around. Religion in Mali has been pretty interesting to see. The vast majority of the population is Muslim, but are quite open and accepting of others. During Ramadan, the Christian pastor came around and celebrated with everyone, and to my surprised, he has never asked me any religious questions. With the exception of one really curious visitor from Bamako, my religious practices, or lack thereof, have not been brought up at all. Despite the openness towards others, there are really only three choices of religion in Mali: Muslim, Christian or Animist. People won’t care which one of those three you are but you have to pick from that list. It’s not that people dislike other religions but simply that they have never heard of things like Judaism, or understand the concept of being Atheist or Agnostic.
Thus ends the long string of Ramadan-related events/holidays so now I have to hold out until Noel (Christmas).
