This weekend is
Eid al Adha which celebrates the sacrifice that Abraham almost made of his son. It has all sorts of symbolism in the Muslim faith and is a big big deal where we live. I got this text message the day before Eid from the Ministry of Health:
Be keen always to slaughter animals at the slaughter house. Using gown, gloves and boots while slaughtering or handling blood and body fluids, protects you from acquiring the Haemorrhagic fever infection. Wish you a Happy Eid.
Wow. Now that gives so many clues about how life here is different than the US! I relish little cultural gems like this. Most families of course prefer to slaughter at home. Some will hire guys to come to do the actual slaughtering but many still do it themselves and drag the carcasses to the nearest open dustbin. Our old house was right next to a dustbin and we had 7 years of carcasses bloating and bits of it being dragged by dogs and cats and such across our front step. And the flies were another story!
Mercifully, our current home is much further from the dustbin and we don't get the ensuing flies or smells! Here is a smattering of our day yesterday which was the first day of Eid.
Layla now understands the concept of Halloween in the US so she is telling everyone that Eid al Adha is like Halloween for arabs....not
quite right but kids do go around ringing doorbells and getting candy all day (=
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| You can see the empty plastic chocolate container in front of Layla...she was handing it out all morning when the doorbell rang. One set of neighbors gave us the plate of chickpeas and another neighbor gave us something I can't identify but the sauce was amazing. The stuff to dip in it was very mysterious!! |
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| In the evening we visited the family of a student of mine. There are 9 children in the family and the youngest is my student. I thought it would be interesting to meet this family as the sister speaks a great deal of English and enjoys foreigners. She was quite eager to relate to us....this isn't always the case (= I can't take pictures of the ladies so here is Sofie and one of the little boys. I asked Elsbeth and her kids to come with me as I didn't want to go by myself. |
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| We were there for two and a half hours before any food showed up! The sister apologized profusely.....the food had been cooked at her uncle's house and he had gone on a visit and no one could find the key to his place (= They eventually showed up. The plate with darker meat on the left was cooked in the ground in a tanoor. It is FANTASTIC meat. The lighter colored plate on the right has bits of stomach and such and is cooked in vinegar. Ummm. ugh is all I have to say! The very front plate is beans, then there is humus and "cheese" which is the white creamy substance. Then olives and bread in the background. |
Driving home last night we saw some strange lights and dust flying in the air so we went to investigate and it was a family putting the meat in the ground! It was really cool. They had three or four men throwing the dirt over it but you could already smell the meat so maybe they had just been checking the progress. They usually cook it overnight. Yum yum!!
