Tobaski, Take Two

Once again the holiday of Tobaski has hit the Gambia, which means lots of fancy clothes, attaya drinking, and meat eating. This year had a definite leg up on last year since I knew my way around village and had plenty of people to go chat with. I also dressed to impress, although I didn't take it as far as most of the Gambian ladies (skipped the heavy makeup, matching shiny bag and high heels, etc.). Mostly Tobaski is just going around to all your friends houses to spend time with each other and compliment each other on your good looking new clothes. Kids and women also go from house to house saliboo-ing, which is like trick or treating except really it's prayer-or-treating. Their hoping for money or candy, but if they don't get that at least they get a prayer.

Here is our Tobaski ram before, enjoying its last days of good eating and... life.

And here it is after. We ate meat for three days afterwards. Please consider the fact that there are no refridgerators in my village. By day three I was saying no thank you. But one of my favorite parts of the first day was going to my neighbor's house in the evening where they had friend up a big plate of meat and onions that we ate with bread while sitting under their mango tree.

Here is me and my host sister. She's not in her full going-out gear yet, but still. The point of Tobaski is to look as glamorous as possible, so everyone buys the most expensive fabric they can afford and has as much glitter and embroidery and sequins and hoo-has added to it as possible. And then they do their hair as fancily as possible and traipse around in high heels through the sand.


This is Mba's son Molamin and a friend's daughter. Molamin had a new suit for Tobaski but his pants were too big. You can't see it in this picture, but he decided to forgo the pants entirely.


One of my host fathers, Bajere, looking like a stud in his sunglasses before going to morning prayers.

And here's a picture of the full effect: ladies in their finest.

Sorry for the long delay since my last post. It's not always easy to get up the motivation to actually get words and pictures up on this space, but I'll try to do better. Up next I'm headed to Tendaba to do some training for the new group (that's right, I'm old hat here, folks). Lots of holidays coming up including Christmas, my birthday, Hannukah, New Years... I'm going to try to get up country for at least one of those occasions. Just a plug, but if you're thinking "What should I possibly give a Peace Corps volunteer for this upcoming holiday season?" the answer is: Vacation Money! (Sending love in the form of letters is also great).