New Years Resolution

I’ll be better at updating my blog…

So, after the girls soccer finals, I went directly to Niamey to go meet my mom and sis who were coming in for the holidays.

Of course by holidays I don’t just mean Christmas or Hannukah. This year Tabaski one of the biggest Muslim holidays was falling on the 18th of December. If you remember from last year, Tabaski was the holiday where I posted the picture of me grinning with a big goat carcass in one hand and a big knife in the other. It’s the holiday where everyone buys a big goat, slaughters it on the holiday and then eats and shares with neighbors more meat than anyone knows what to do with.

I’ll admit I really struggled with this. I really agonized over it. When I told people my mom and sis were coming the first question almost everyone asked was, “so, you getting a goat?” To which I did my best to nervously laugh away the question. The bottom line for me was this: I’d been a vegetarian for something like thirteen years before coming to Niger. But I decided to put it on hold as I felt many of my reasons for not eating meat don’t apply as well to Africa as they do to America and also in order to have a richer experience. So, whereas I had been eating meat (not a lot but enough), and thus paying for someone else to do all my dirty work, I had no real reason to resist buying a goat of my own and participating in the holiday this year. So I did.

I didn’t actually kill it myself. That has to be done by a malam, or someone properly studied in Islam. Nor did I do all the initial butchering work since I had no idea how (removing the guts, skinning it etc.). Though I did force myself to bear witness to the process and will admit it was fascinating (to separate the skin from the body one cuts a hole in the back of the goats heal and then inflates the whole thing like a balloon… weird but amazing). Anyways, then there was a whole lot of anxiety that followed relating to how I was going to distribute the meat. Normally during Tabaski one gives away lots of meat to ones neighbors and to others who don’t have money for a goat of their own. With none of my mom, sister or I being particularly serious meat-eaters we were giving away almost all of it. Anyways, I was moderately stressed trying to decide who to give how much to and if I give to this person do I give to that one, etc…

Thankfully a young neighbor of mine came in to rescue. And the 11 year old girl wielding the knife, twirling it in the air while directing her little brothers where to bring the separate pieces, finished in half an hour what I had agonized over for about 2 days. And of course she topped of her performance by asking me directly (as Hausas love to do) “You can’t do anything can you?” Heh heh.

More to say on all of this visit. Bottom line is that it was awesome. But I’ll wait until the rest of my sister and mom’s pictures arrive. Or hassle my sister and have her send you the link to the ones she posted online with little commentary… Probably more fun like that anyways.

PS. Getting stuck in Niamey we went for a little boat ride to burn some time with some other stuck Peace Corps families on the Niger river and saw some hippos. Pretty cool...