This year, I decided to celebrate Rosh Hashanah as best as I could in village. To prepare for this, I needed a shofar. Every Sunday, I go to my weekly market. There is a man there who sells items used for mystical purposes: porcupine quills, conch shells, bright pink Fanta seeds, rabbit furs, live chickens, and much more. I approached him and asked him for a sheep's horn. He rummaged around his baskets of supplies and pulled out two horns. I'm not sure that they were a sheep's horn, but they looked the same. I chose the larger one for about 40 cents (about the length of my elbow to the tips of my fingers). Now came the first unexpected problem: there was no hole on the end. I asked him to cut the tip off, assuming the hole was close to the end. This proved to be incorrect; after he'd cut nearly 1/3 of the horn off, he still hadn't reached the hole, and he was exhausted from sawing. (He was using a hand saw and horns are hard.) To give him a break, I offered him to bring it home, take his time, saw it off, bring it back the following week, and I'd pay him for his labor. He seemed relieved, leaned back in his chair, and promised to have it cut to the hole and sanded smooth for me.
I returned the following week, and he called me over when I was still a few stalls away. He proudly retrieved the horn. It was now nearly half the size it had started out, but the hole was clearly visible, and he'd done a nice job of cutting it smoothly. I thanked him, paid him generously for his efforts ($1, which left him overjoyed), and happily placed the horn in my backpack on top of the 7 kilos (15.4 lbs) of vegetables I'd bought to give my host family for the week. I then went to my stall to teach the importance of moringa ("the miracle tree") to whoever stopped by my booth, and tried not to think about my excitement over my purchase.
Later, as I walked the 5 km back to my village, I decided to pull out the shofar and try it. I was alone on the path, no one would be able to hear me, and I could ensure myself of my abilities. With a large smile on my face as I laughed at the absurdity of blowing the shofar on a random bush path in Senegal surrounded by fields of corn, millet, and peanuts, I put the horn to my lips. Still walking (it was almost 5:00, I hadn't eaten lunch, and I didn't want to waste time in getting home to eat the food my host family had put aside for me), I blew into it. Only a squeak came out. I tried again, with the same result. Now I began to be worried - I was always good at blowing my brother's shofar at home, but this one was much smaller making it more difficult. So I stopped walking, took a deep breath, and blew again. Once more, I was rewarded with just a small squeak. I decided I was just tired from working all day and would put it away until Rosh Hashanah.
On the first night of the holiday, I arrived home just as it was getting dark. I pulled out my shofar, stood in my back doorway, and decided to surprise my host family with the call of the shofar. But, when I blew into it, I once again could only produce a small squeak. I tried again and again and again, but only squeaks came out. I continued to try for 15 minutes. Finally, my host brother came into my room, followed immediately by the rest of my host family. They stood clustered in the door and asked me if I was ok. I told them I couldn't get any sound to come out and held up the shofar. They stared at it and repeated their question, this time adding, "Lutax nga jooy?" (Why are you crying?) I started to laugh; they'd been hearing the squeaks of the shofar, my panting after each extended breath, and my sighs of exasperation and had assumed I was standing in my backyard crying to myself. All of them had sat quietly on the cement slab outside, unsure if they should interrupt until finally they couldn't allow me to weep by myself anymore. After I assured them I hadn't been crying and explained the shofar's significance, I decided the surprise was ruined (and impossible to obtain) and followed them outside. There commenced a long evening of the children and me trying to get a deep sound out of the shofar.
But it wasn't until the following day that I was finally successful. (On closer inspection in the daylight, I found the problem to be the size of the hole. It was very large and part of one side was also cut open. The only way I could properly blow it was to hold one side of my mouth closed with my other hand to prevent the air from escaping. I must've looked ridiculous.) The sound drew all the nearby kids over, and they watched as I produced this strange sound; none of them could get anything more than a small squeak out of it. One toddler was scared of it. She couldn't understand how noise could come out of a horn (an object she's completely familiar with).
To finish off my Rosh Hashanah observance, I ate apples with honey, cooked teighlach, and observed Tashlich with bread in the river nearby.
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