On Wednesday Nov. 17, Muslims celebrated the Eid, the feast of the ram. It is also called "Tabaski," to remember when Abraham sacrificed a ram instead of his son Isaac. Classes were cancelled for the holiday so a carpenter named Jibo took me, Jacquline & another Peace Corps volunteer named Tim around for the festivities. The day started with morning prayers, people cooked and ate with friends and family all day. I celebrated it in Senegal two years ago with my host family, but this time was different, it was much more colorful & vibrant... and included a horse festival.
I went up to the village of Sabga to watch the prayers which took place next to a breath-taking view of the mountains. Most of the villagers in this village are Fulfulde and are herders. After prayers, everyone walked to the mosque and watched the horse festival, where riders raced across the square and made their steeds jump and prance. The audience cheered for the most showful riders, and horses were adorned from head-to-toe in neon yarn and fabric. Then... came the slaughter and roasting of the ram. I spent Tabaski with two different families that day. Do you like the grill? And the little boy in charge? It was one memorable feast!
Jacqueline & I in front of our house.
This month has flown by and it's Thankgiving already. Sorry I have been neglecting this blog but hey, Happy Turkey Day... or rather Chicken Day! For me, there will not be turkey, but a roasted half chicken Jacqueline and I ordered from a local restaurant. We are celebrating with our own accompaniments of mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, njama njama vegetables (bought ready-made from a local bar or "food mommy").
Since we're on food, this is the local food I've been having:
fried plantain dodo
boiled plantains with tomato sauce
eru and water fufu
ndole (bitter leaf)
vegetable njama njama with corn fufu
fried grasshoppers
rice and meat/tomato stew
beans and puff puff (fried beignets)
achu (mashed white beans with palm oil sauce)
scotch eggs
fish pies
spicy pepper soup with yams
meat tripe (which they call "towel")
grilled fish with "baton de manioc" (a stick of tapioca)
sugar-coated groundnuts
local produce: avacados, bananas, papaya, tomatoes, eggs, oranges, pineapple
soya (grilled meat killed that morning)
I will try to get some pictures of the food up later. I tried baking with a dutch oven, since we don't have an actual oven. What I did was put a baking tray on top of a little can inside of a large pot, and heated it covered on our gas stove top. I made white chocolate and cranberry scones. According to Jacqueline, they were more like cookies but I think she was being nice. They were more like rocks. But they tasted good if you ate them fresh, drizzling some sweetened condensed milk and sipping some hot lemon green tea. It was a luxury- creating an afternoon home-away-from-home. However baking here is more of a hassle than not, so it won't happen again for a while, haha.
There are moments that can define our entire experience and make us think, it was all worth it. This past Friday was one of those moments that will be hard for me to forget- it was graduation for the first batch of 500 level students at ENS! It was incredible to be there in all the anticipation & festivities.
It was the middle of November, but better a little late than never! These graduates will be sent off as teachers in secondary schools with a government contract of 10 years. I sat there in the stands facing a sea of robes, soaking in all of the proud parents, the triumphant students, the paparazzi and and speeches. This is what it must feel to work in education :)
I have been swimming in a sea of fluidity on campus. The key word is: flexibility. I've definitely had to flex it here many times with a fluctuating time table, which means the school schedule changes. For example, I had scheduled a discussion on Thursday at 12pm but another professor suddenly scheduled his class at that hour, so my discussion was apparently canceled without my knowing. Classes are still being added on and starting a month into the school year. How do they do it?
The location of classes changes daily as students and teachers try to claim a classroom, meaning you need to get to class EARLY. Or... students arrive 30 min. early to eventually wait around long enough to discover that the professor has shown up an hour "late." There are both worlds on this campus- one is early while another is late. The rest of the student body (including my baffled self) is left waiting.
Classes nominate "class coordinators" who pass information to the rest of the class when they find out things from the teacher, like a change of time/location. They are in charge of documents that need to be photocopied for class, collecting money so people who want a copy get one. Everyone is part of the huge grape vine to transfer information, either by word of mouth, or phone calls, but most likely the first. Like today I was told, "There is a rumor that there may not be classes on Thursday so people can clean up the campus for graduation on Friday." Ooh... how did you find out? I'm always curious to know. Or at 5 minutes prior, "Did you know about the staff meeting today?"
Yes, culture shock. I thought I was used to African time, and rationalized it in my head. But it is tough when I am actually going through it.
Classes share classrooms. It can get very loud with large lecture halls and concrete walls. On Monday I shadowed a research class that wandered around for 30 min. before finding a space to settle down. The lecturer found a classroom large enough with three sections of desks with descending stairs towards the front. A Computer Science class was taking place on the left side of the room, and the English lecture took place on the right side. The English prof was walking up and down the stairs to talk over the noise and repeating herself twice in order for the upper section & lower section to hear.
This can be frustrating yet I know I cannot be here simply to groan. It's just the fact that some things happen, some things eventually happen, and some things never happen. It's life, no? But on the same token there are things that should and need to happen that are put in a pile labeled "TO DO EVENTUALLY." I'm still attempting to go with the flow, with a lot of endurance and patience. The whole community is finding ways to keep moving on and somehow the system holds together. Flexin' it, until next time.
