Sue & Debbie & Jerry go to Mali (photos #4)

Dance party at our house...yes we danced all three nights in village...line dancing, traditional dancing and a hip hop dance.

Keep on dancin...

Keepin the beat for the dance partay.

Ambaybem & Fatamatah

Parents Visit (pics # 3)

Debbie and Ashley in front of the Mosque in the village of Ende.

Always a good view in Dogon Country.

Visiting the ruins of the Tellum near the village of Ende.

Hiking up to the cliffs of Bandiagara.

Our friends in the courtyard of Chez Ali

This guy tried to attack Debbie but she got away.

Puzzle time...Ashley didn't finish.

Snack time...Sue brought seven pounds of cheese...

Our village threw a big dance for Debbie, Sue and Jerry.

Debbie teaching line dancing to the kids in village (Ashley and Sue are helping)

Kaja gave Sue and Debbie a bowl of peanuts as a gift.

Kalibombo at sunset.

Painting a world map on the wall of the school in our village so the children can learn geography with a nice visual aid.

Gotta love that smile.

We visited the guys in our village who are making dogon cloth.

Fascinating to watch these guys work with these hand made looms.

Umar pumping some water to help with the cloths washing process.

The Malian clothes dryer.

Sue learning how much she likes a washing machine.

A few more pictures of washing clothes in village.

Celebrating Jerry's birthday at the "Cheyennes" of Bamako (The Relax)

I forgot to put pictures of Jerry's 62nd Birthday party, his first in Africa.

Having fun with the parents (a few photos)

We got off the bus for a few minutes for a bathroom break.

The vent in our bus was a little broken but I fixed it with a coke can.

The empty bus during a short break.

We finally got to the Hotel Falais in Bandiagara after traveling for 12 hours.

Waiting to be picked up by a SUV we hired to take us to village.

We made it to village and we needed to go do laundry so we headed to the pump.

A brother and sister washing near the pump while we washed clothes.

Meet the Parents!!

So Debbie, Sue, and Jerry have arrived on the continent of Africa. Ashley and I had not seen them for 18 months...which is far too long. Today we have just relaxed...ate one pound of the seven pounds of cheese that my mom (Sue) brought and are headed off to try and find a restaurant with some live Malian music.

We will spend one more day in Bamako (the capital city) and then head deep into the interior of Mali for a real adventure.

We wish everyone back home a Merry Christmas...we feel so blessed to be spending ours with family.

Sending our love.

Enjoying cheese and crackers in the court yard of our hotel.
Relaxing the night Debbie, Sue and Jerry arrived.
Relaxing at 3 a.m. after a long flight for our parents.
Debbie and Sue holding up the African outfits that Ashley had made for them.

My baby brother is ENGAGED!!!!!

Aaron, or most of you know him as Bubba, just got engaged. I am so excited for him and his new adventure with Becky. Unfortunately, we have never been able to meet Becky, because we have been in Mali, but Aaron speaks very highly of her, as does the rest of my family. Welcome to the Martin family, Becky, hold on tight, it may be a crazy ride! We love you both.

Joe and Ashley

Right after the proposal.

Love it!

A few memories from Tabaski and some other photos

These are a few photos and a video from the Muslim festival of Tabaski which took place on November 28th in our village. This is the most important celebration of the year for our friends in village so Ashley and I made sure that we put on our nicest outfits and joined in the celebration.

Me sitting with Baba Gouno who is one of my host dads in Mali...he is one of the nicest men and continually supplies us with fresh guavas, limes, and other delicious local fruits from his garden.

Elders in our village gathered for a prayer on the morning of Tabaski.

The Chief of our village (the man to the right of the gentleman in the green), we eat with him every evening...he might be the coolest man in Mali.

Ashley lookin Malian as we walk around village and greet everyone for the Tabaski festival.

Ashley is wearing a traditional Dogon outfit (in our village the woman hand spin the cotton and the men weave the cotton into strips of cloth, then the strips are dyed indigo with a pattern and you get a beautiful fabric to make outfits).

WARNING: video is a bit gross

The killing of a sheep for the Tabaski meal.

Ashley and I ran out of gas for our stove top so we had to heat water over some hot coals.

Ami sitting in our door after fetching us some water from the pump also a little baby sheep that wondered up to our door.

Ashley and I biking to village had to make sure we stayed out of the way of the cows.

Fatimata and Ambaybem over at our house goofing around.

An interesting article...

Joe and I just finished up celebrating Tabaski(a muslim holiday) and Thanksgiving all in the same week. This was an article the director of Peace Corps Mali sent out, I thought it was rather interesting.

Happy Tabaski and Happy Thanksgiving. (What we wouldn't give for turkey, mashed potatoes and family!!!)

Tabaski, Thanksgiving: Back to Back

Wednesday 25 November 2009

by Joseph Hellweg, for the other afrik

On-line source: http://en.afrik.com/article16535.html

The moon and sun align this year to bring two holidays together: the Muslim feast of Tabaski (also called Eid al-Adha and Aïd el-Kebir) and the United States holiday of Thanksgiving. They occur on November 26 and 28, respectively. Although Tabaski is explicitly religious, and Thanksgiving ostensibly secular, both re-enforce ties to one’s family and larger communities. Both focus on animals.

Those buying sheep right now may have to pay a hundred U.S. dollars [50.000 francs CFA] or more for one in the final days before the feast on Saturday. If one lacks the means, a goat will do. Wealthy benefactors even sacrifice cattle.

In the U.S., a frozen turkey from the grocery store is the main Thanksgiving course and less expensive than a ram. But Americans still make a fuss about buying it. They follow sales and compare prices and the quality of different brands. They may order it weeks or months in advance for fear of waiting too long and going without. Type just two words into any online search engine—Thanksgiving turkey—and you can gauge the extent of the obsession. You will find endless advice about how to choose, thaw, clean, bake, spice, serve, and eat a turkey. You can even order it online with overnight shipping. Frozen turkeys can’t walk, but they appear to be able to fly.

And they are easier to take home than sheep. You may have to make extra space in your freezer, but a turkey will fit. You don’t have to feed it. It doesn’t make a mess. It’s already cleaned. And unless you plan to deep-fry it outside—a specialty of the U.S. south—the trick is to keep the meat moist while it cooks in the oven. Despite all this attention lavished on an edible carcass, a family has little personal relationship with its turkey. It is meat from start to finish.

In Africa, things are different. A family lives with its meal before eating it. Last year in Kankan, Guinea, I saw rams tethered outside of every compound I visited in the days before Tabaski. Children and adults may name the sheep and play with it. They feed it and may grow fond of it, especially when purchased well in advance. Then the pet for a day becomes the plat du jour.

Processing the sheep is as much a family affair as taking care of it. When I was with Malian friends in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire, in the 1990s, men killed the sheep, children cleaned the entrails, and women cooked the meat. In a way, the sheep is like family and, as such, the whole family prepares it.

But the goal of each feast is still the same: to share meat with relatives and friends, some of whom travel far to eat it. Last year in Kankan, I met Guineans who had returned home from Conakry, Europe, and the U.S. for the meal. Imagine my surprise when a man in sunglasses walked up to me and told me in fluent English that he had just arrived from Washington, D.C.

Thanksgiving in the U.S. is no different. It is the busiest travel day of the year. Airports are jammed, and flights run late, making national news every year.

The feasts are variations of each other. On Tabaski, families distribute meat to their neighbors. This happens at Thanksgiving, too. Families invite neighbors to dinner or send turkey, sweet potatoes, and gravy to those they know who will be spending Thanksgiving alone or in nursing homes. And soup kitchens offer free turkey and mashed potatoes to the poor and homeless.

In other ways, Tabaski is incomparable. It has no equivalent in Judaism or Christianity. Like Christmas and Hanukkah, Tabaski evokes a spirit of giving. It commemorates Abraham’s sacrifice of a ram instead of his son, Ishmael. But like Easter and Yom Kippur, it is the holiest of holy days.

It is also like New Year’s Day and Rosh Hashanah, even though it is not the Muslim New Year. In Bambara, the blessings one uses as greetings on Tabaski make the case: “Ala ka san kura d’i ma,” ‘May God grant you a new year’, or “Ala k’i san hèrè chaya,” ‘May God give you peace in the year to come’. West Africans offer similar blessings in French, sometimes cutting to the chase with the expression, “Tous les tés,” which sounds to an English-speaker like, “two lay TAY,” an abbreviation for a range of blessings, all of which end in the French sound “tay”: bonté (plenty), prospérité (prosperity), santé (health).

Tabaski resets the ritual clock, whether in Bambara or French.

Both Tabaski and Thanksgiving recreate the world. Each marks a turn in the year—the start of the dry season and the beginning of Christmas shopping, respectively—and the hope that those who celebrate will endure these trials.

The day after Thanksgiving—always a Friday—is one of the year’s busiest shopping days in the U.S. How well sales do on that day is seen as an augur for the country’s economic welfare, a sign of how well Christmas sales and, as a result, the national economy will do in the coming year. Thanksgiving is the ritual sacrifice that precedes the divination of the kingdom’s future. I mean, post-Thanksgiving sales are key indicators in the nation’s economic forecast. When sales looks bleak, priests blame the failing ritual power of the sacred king. In other words, leading economic experts criticize the president’s fiscal policy . . .

Ironically, it is this commercial side of secular Thanksgiving that most closely resembles the religious side of Tabaski. Thanksgiving marks the opening of a month-long ritual of buying and spending that culminates in Christmas, the most elaborate American sacrifice in which gifts are given shortly before the New Year to assure that it will be safe and prosperous, Christian beliefs aside.

Similarly, Tabaski brings to a close a period of two lunar months in Islam that include Ramadan and the most intense season of pilgrimages to Mecca.

Just as Tabaski takes Muslims back to the first ritual expression of obedience to Allah, Thanksgiving takes Americans back to the first prayerful consecration of a sustained Anglo-Saxon presence in North America. Taking part in the harvest meal that contributed in some way to the eventual establishment of the United States is like taking part in the meal that spared Ishmael’s life. Both feasts renew their respective worlds through ritual participation: the Muslim community through Tabaski, and the United States via Thanksgiving.

Here we see the richness of these holidays as well as their limits. In the United States, the Christian, Anglo-Saxon origin story of Thanksgiving now bolsters a suspicion among some Americans of both Muslims and immigrants of color, just as claims of religious absolutism grounded in God’s revelation to Abraham justify hostility among some Muslims against secularism.

Religious or not, holidays are rituals. They operate beyond strict divisions between sacred and profane; they bridge the two. This year, occurring in such close proximity, they might raise a common prayer for a better welcome to Islam and immigrants in the U.S. and for increased dialogue between secularists and Islamists across the world.

But in the end, holidays are mostly about the small ways in which people connect through sharing. This Thursday, a Muslim friend of mine from Mali, Diadié Bathily, plans to attend my family’s Thanksgiving dinner in St. Louis, Missouri. My Catholic mother will help him celebrate Tabaski far from home (two days early) by making him mutton in addition to turkey. Knowing Diadié, he will eat both. Shouldn’t we all?

Joseph Hellweg is Asst. Prof. of Religion at Florida State Univeristy. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Virginia and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale. He has done research with initiated hunters (dozos) and on HIV and AIDS in Côte d’Ivoire from 1993-1997 and in 2002. In 2008-2009, he was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Kankan, Guinea, where he taught social science research methods. He will complete his fellowship at the University of Bamako. He speaks French and Mandenkan and eats fonio with okra sauce whenever possible.

The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of Afrik.com.

Waiting for Debbie, Jerry and Sue

The last couple weeks we have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of our Christmas guests. Debbie, Jerry and Sue arrive in less than a month and we are very excited to greet them at the airport and show them around Mali.

Other than that nothing too crazy has been going on. A french organization is building a small dam near our village that will help with water storage issues and allow more irrigation of the surrounding fields. The construction of the dam will begin after harvest (sometime in January). Men from our village will do most of the manual labor involved with the project. The following clip and couple of pictures are from the welcoming celebration that our village put on, when the french organization came to our village to officially announce the financing of the project.

Of course our village welcomed the french organization in true Dogon style - dancing and singing.

Ashley holding Kaja, one of our favorite little girls, as the celebration takes place behind her
The women of our village all dressed up and ready to do a little dancing

This is a picture I took of Ashley as we sat looking over the fields near our house and watched as the sun setting behind us left the whole area looking beautiful.