The Tour de Thies begins...

Well, Thanksgiving came and went. Coming from a severely weird family, I am not all that used to making a big deal out of Thanksgiving. Despite this, I took a trip down to Kaolack for the occasion and got to celebrate it with some fellow volunteers down there. Even with our meager resources, we (myself not included in any cooking activities) were able to cook 2 turkeys and even have mashed potatoes and pie! The dinner was, to say the least, awesome. Before dinner, we even managed to get a small football game in, so it was definitely an all-american day for us. I came back on Friday and have been keeping busy ever since. Tomorrow I will be going to Thies to get an outfit made for Tabaski. Seeing as how 90 to 100% of my recent conversations in Wolof have revolved around the upcoming holiday (Tabaski is the Muslim new year), I feel that I need to look appropriate for the occasion. Essentially, this means that I will be dressing like a donkey in the circus come next Tuesday.

Tabaski itself should be quite interesting. Most families buy a sheep and kill it on this special day. Our family, however (being the "patrons" that we are), will most likely buy two, if not three sheep. The men in the family will help the father cut the sheep's throat, and then it will be eaten in a grand feast. There will most likely be a lot of sitting around all dressed up, and discussing how much food there is and how good it is. It's somewhat strange how quickly I've gotten used to the gender roles here. Granted, my family is about as Wolof as you can get, but the culutral differences are still striking. For instances, the three wives spend the majority of their days cooking meals and cleaning/taking care of the children. During meals, there are two bowls served. One bowl is for women and very small children. Usually, this bowl has around 10-12 people around it. The men's bowl, however, only has 5-6 men around it, and we get to use spoons. Furthermore, when the men are done eating, the women are allowed to come over and eat what's left from our bowl. Just writing that last section made me realize how wildly different gender relations are out here.

I've decided to be somewhat adventursome and bike to Thies tomorrow. It's 45km there (about 28-29 miles), so the trip there should take me somewhere around 3 hours. I'll get to Thies, buy fabric, give it to the tailors with my requests (I'm getting a grand bubu made...aka I will look like a picnic table), and then come back to Ngaye Mekhe after lunch. All in all, it should be about 5-6 hours of biking, so I'll probably be fairly exhausted by the end of the day. So I'm off to get my beauty sleep for now, but hope everyone back home is doing well and enjoying the cold (it still gets really really hot here during the middle of the day...). Ba suba ak jamm!

(Picture is of 3 of my brothers here, Ibrahima, Fallou Gallas, and Ahmet with my A's hat on).