Milestones: My Very First Sheep Slaughter



 


Some of the kids and I on Korité

I wish I could begin to explain the blur that has been my life these past few days! With each new experience, each new acquaintance, I begin to think now I understand Dakar, now I know what the city is all about…and then it goes and proves me wrong, showing me yet another one of its dizzily unique facets.

My niece Saphi in the courtyard of our home

Wednesday was Korité and by far the most unusual, albeit wonderful, day I have had here so far.  I woke up at 7:30 with my older sisters to make a steamy cauldron full of porridge-like stuff they called monkey bread…and whose leftovers the maid later proceeded to help me bury in the backyard so that people would stop commanding me to eat!  The rest of the morning was spent on the roof cutting up vegetables of all sorts for a sauce to go with the sheep the men were busy preparing.  I had the good fortune (or so my brothers tell me) of arriving on the terrace just in time to see its head severed from its body…and perhaps the worst part of this story is that I was still able to thoroughly enjoy eating our celebratory lunch of mutton and French fries!

Throughout the next few hours a steady stream of visitors arrived—as Papy Jo is one of the oldest and most respected men in the immediate vicinity, everyone came to us, so the day flew by with lots of hand-shaking and salaam-aalekum-ing/greeting. Just as soon as I figured things were about to quiet down for the night, a posse of elegantly dressed Senegalese women stopped by and eventually a whole group of our family left with them for what I imagined to be a short walk.  And hence my surprise when we arrived at the end of the neighborhood, only to have stopped in front of an electronic bumper car arena, the type of attraction I would expect to find in Six Flags, but certainly not in a residential area in Senegal.  It made for a pretty surreal ending of my day, playing bumper cars in Dakar with a whole group of women in prom-like dresses…and at midnight, no less!  Definitely a Korité to remember!



Ile de Gorée


In the days following, I have eaten at an Ethiopian restaurant on a rooftop terrace strongly resembling something out of Aladdin for a friend’s birthday; I went to my first big soccer game,  the qualifying match for the African Cup and watched our team win (go Lions of Teranga, aka Hospitable Lions!); I wandered the beautiful beaches of Ile de Gorée, home to both communities of artists and the infamous Maison des Esclaves (former slave trade holding place); and last night I helped throw a neighborhood-wide birthday party for my now two-year old “niece”!  All in all, it’s been a week!  An overwhelming, exhausting, exhilarating week, and yet the funny thing is that soon this will all be normal, soon this will all be routine…at least that’s what I keep telling myself!  In the meantime though, I am prepared to eat a lot, be stressed out a little, and laugh at myself always!

Yours Truly,

Amy Diallo/ Janelle  
 

Standing on the western-most point of Africa