Tabaski Come and Gone

The day is done and the smell of wood fires and singed hair is slowly leaving the house.  I haven't had much appetite all day--when you see the pictures of what transpired outside our front gate maybe you'll understand.  I refrained from putting in the most graphic pictures--in fact, there were certain happenings in the process that I turned away from and refused to capture on film.  Wimpy, I know.

Yesterday I mentioned that I wished you could smell the smells of the sheep market with us.  Today...not so much.

The celebration called for new clothes and our neighbors came back from the 9:00 prayers at the mosque all dressed up.

This little guy lives on the other side of us and we KNEW today was a special day because he actually had on clothes!  He's one of our favorites.

 The slaughter began shortly after the 9:00 prayers at the mosque.  Several neighbors joined together to do the job.  A huge job:  killing, skinning, gutting and then placing the carcasses on 6-foot skewers.  They had the system down pat.

This was the most interesting part to me.  As Rabiou was getting ready to skin the sheep, he made a small slit near the hoof and ran a stick up the leg.  Then he began blowing into that small slit and Voila! the sheep ballooned like a ...I don't know what...but it was a big huge balloon.  He said it made it much easier to skin.

 Two 6-ft long sticks (about 1 inch in diameter) were poked through each carcass and then these were arranged around the hot fire.

As we walked around the neighborhood, we saw the outdoor "barbeques" everywhere. However, I did notice that there was no grease sizzling and no smell of meat cooking.  

The heads and legs were taken home for another day.  

In the afternoon, a fella passed by to purchase the skins.

The meat cooked from noon until 7pm or so.  Then the meat, on the skewers, was taken down, placed inside the house, to be eaten tomorrow.  I don't know why they didn't eat it today.  I will have to ask them that tomorrow.