Saturday, November 10, 2012

Xamuma Aida; garab u cassia laa


We celebrated Halloween in my village on Wednesday.  It was a belated Halloween put on hold until Tabaski celebrations ended a week after the holiday began.  I was fortunate to have two special guests – Blaire and Jennie – two study abroad students living in Dakar who spent the week with me.

I had told my family the previous day that we would be celebrating an American holiday, but I refused to give them any details.  Wednesday, after lunch, the festivities began by us dressing up in costume.  It was difficult to determine costume ideas so that they would be recognizable by my village, but we managed.  I decided to dress as a tree; I attached branches and leaves throughout my body, wore a green shirt, and a brown skirt.  Jennie dressed as a cat and Blaire dressed as a duck.  After donning our outfits behind closed doors, we burst out of the room, yelling “Happy Halloween!”  We were greeted by complete silence; no one knew how to react to our weird dress.  But I explained what we were, and they all understood.  Soon they were referring to our relatives: fellow trees, ducks, and cats that they spied outside.  We also all danced around, trying to dance like the object we were dressed as.  They all got a kick out of that.  Throughout the day, I kept telling people “Xamuma Aida; garab u cassia laa” (I don’t know Aida; I am neem tree.)

Phase 1 of Halloween complete, we went behind closed doors again to begin phase 2.  I had bought a squash for the occasion.  I had debated this decision for awhile, not wanting to waste food in a country where hunger and malnutrition are commonplace; ultimately, I determined that it would add to the festivities, and a large squash was only 200 cfa (less than 50 cents) which hints at how prolific they are.  (Nevertheless, my family did comment later on how orange the inside of the squash was, implying that it would be delicious to eat, but now I had wasted it.)  We cut the top off and gutted it inside, saving the seeds to eat for dinner.  We then pranced outside carrying the hollow squash and a knife.  The three of us carved a face in the pumpkin, watched closely by all the children.  They huddled really close to us, curious as to exactly what we were doing and not wanting to miss any step of it.  Needing to feel involved, some adults gave us tips on how to carve best and tried to help.  But everyone got a kick out of the squash with a human face and especially liked it when we placed a candle in it at night.

Now we moved onto phase 3 of Halloween: reverse trick-or-treating.  With the door wide open for everyone to see inside my room, we began to make cookies.  We made delicious no-bake peanut butter oatmeal cookies.  Dozens of pairs of adult and child eyes watched eagerly as we mixed the ingredients in a pot on my gas stove (a large gas canister, like a car-camping stove).  They were all seated on two benches outside or on the cement slabs curious as to what we could be concocting.  They eagerly saw us drop the formed cookies onto trays to cool down and stayed even after we told them we’d have to wait a bit before they could eat them.  But, it was now time for juice – a big treat in the village.  We made about 4 liters of mango juice and began passing it out to adults and kids alike.  At first, the kids were taken by surprise that they were included in the festivities since usually only the adults are given these treats, but they were so happy.  They also waited patiently as we passed the cups around, serving 7 people at a time and then returning to my room to fill up again, before serving another 7 people.  We served everyone sitting in my compound, all the random wanderers who came to see what the commotion was about, and my few neighboring compounds.  The juice finished, we then began to pass around the cookies.  Everyone was astounded by the taste of these cookies, and we happily passed them out to about 100 people (saving some for ourselves, of course).

So Halloween in village was a success.  Everyone had a ton of fun, enjoyed laughing at us, and kept telling us that our holiday was nice.  And, there is nothing like home-baked cookies, costumes, and jack-o-lanterns to make a few Americans living in a different culture extremely