Sacrifice

Today is the second day of the biggest holiday of all year in Niger. In French it is known as Tabaski and in Arabic Eid al-Adha. In Zarma it is simply ‘Cimso’. It is the Muslim New Year holiday so the greetings I find myself saying every 10 seconds translate to things like:

- “Happy New Year, that it right now”
- “May your feet enter the new year a-walking”
- “Please forgive anything I did last year, as it is now a new one”
- “Where is my New year’s Present? (this one goes to people who first ask me for presents resorting to the idea that white people have tons of money and comeonly to throw money around, BAH. As if a Peace Corps volunteer has tons of money……)

So let me share with you this most important tradition of tabaski, the tradition that people begin preparing for months in advance, begin talking about even earlier and spend all of the two days executing: animal sacrifice. You see, tabaski always takes place 70 days after the end of Ramadan and since Ramadan is governed by the moon and consequentially shifts to be 10 days earlier every year, so does Tabaski meaning that that in 15 years, the Muslim New Year will be in July) Anyways, tabaski is celebrated in honor of prophet known in several other religions; Abraham. God told Abraham to sacrifice his son and only in the last moment did got replace the son with a ram. Consequentially the entire festival is dedicated to the killing of a ram (or goat or chicken if you are of lesser means). I, as a Peace Corps volunteer am of extremely small means, or so I told my villagers as the reason for why I did not “do cimso”.

Despite my eagerness to integrate in Nigeren Culture, I could not bring myself to partake in this tradition of buying and killing an animal and even though I got scolded for it, I feel like my money can be much better spent, even if it is buying and killing a sheep 6 month from now when the meat will be a million times more appreciated. Right now there is an abundance of food right after harvest season and everybody is doing cold season gardening. In April food will be almost gone and meat will be extremely hard to come by since the animals will also be hungry…. If I bring people presents of meat at that time, my money spent will be much more appreciated. I counted over 100 sheep killed and prepared in Sagafondo alone yesterday.

But I wasn’t completely culturally insensitive! Rather than meat, I made 30 little boxes out of folded paper and filled with peanuts and popcorn bringing to all village officials, women’s leaders and friends. This meant 5 hours of non-stop walking around and greeting people, repeating the aforementioned greetings and giving out presents as well as candy to children, this is after all their equivalent of Christmas and presents are not restricted to family alone.

It is now afternoon and despite my thought that I would be receiving lots of meat, not one person has come by as of now…. Yesterday was intestines day and I politely declined two or three offers. I know I said that I was excited about eating meat again but I don’t think I will ever be able to come to terms with eating the heart, lungs or kidneys of an animal. Hopefully the villagers have not forgotten about me and are just busy preparing it…. (Having posted this retroactively I can testify that the latter was true… over the next few days I received more meat than I could ever eat)

Anyways, I am off blow up the Pilates ball that Ryan sent me and to do a little modern exercise followed by a not so modern shower….

Some graphic Pictures of Nigerien New Year's Celebration. Sensitive eyes beware!