Tobaski

The holiday of Tobaski / Eid is the biggest muslim holiday celebrated here in the Gambia.  Therefore, the slaughter of millions of rams, goats, sheep, and cows is accounted for on this one day.  Gambians tell you if you are not eating meat on Tobaski, your holiday is not sweet.  This year we had Tobaski in the city in our new compound.  It was very nice and Ben helped hold the ram while it was being killed and helped Bala, another member of our compound butcher the ram.  I will spare you the gory pictures.  So the whole day we sat around and had a ram bbq in our compound which was great! We tried many different parts of the ram that day – liver, kidneys, heart, and testicles are the ones we could name.   Honestly, it wasn’t bad and we’ve eaten a lot worse here (namely cows foot, ew).  In the evening of Tobaski everyone dresses up in their newest, nicest outfits and walk around town.  This is also the time when children come around asking for ‘saliboo’.  Saliboo is directly translated to prayers; however the children are looking for money, not prayers and are quite upset if you only give them a prayer.  Tobaski lasts about 3 days, and we saw ram in our lunch food bowl for about a week!