Sheep

There are thousands of sheep on my street, and I'm not exaggerating. They're absolutely everywhere. They've appeared over the past month or so. Now there are at least 50 tied up in view of my front porch. But they line the streets all the way into the city. It's insane. There are of course sheep droppings everywhere. And it's hard to believe that by the end of the week the vast majority of these sheep will be dead, and eaten. Tabaski is on Friday. It's the most important Muslim holiday of the year. The feast focuses around sacrificed sheep. So everyone with a wife must by a sheep by Friday. One of my friends has about twenty sheep that he's trying to sell. They are tied up on my street, and he stays next to them day and night. He and our other friends are always hanging out next to the sheep, and he must sleep outside next to them so that people don't steal them in the middle of the night. The prices of the sheep skyrocket in the days before Tabaski, but the majority of people are still scrambling to get money to pay for one. They can cost anything from about $50 for a very small one to $1,000 for a big one.

We now have two sheep at my house. The one that has been there since I arrived, and now we're guarding a sheep of one of the relatives of my host family. This afternoon, my host father called one of the neighbor boys over and the kid helped my two oldest host brothers wash the two sheep. They had buckets of water, a hose, and the same soap that's used for everything (laundry, dishes, cleaning, etc). The sheep did not exactly like what was going on and they did put up quite a fight. But the neighbor kid scrubbed them with a huge brush and now they look squeaky clean and ready for Tabaski.

I have gone shopping for Christmas presents this week. The markets are always crazy here, but right now they're close to out-of-control. They're swarmed with people making last-minute purchases for Tabaski. In Marche Sandaga and all the streets filled with shops and stands near it, there are men standing on tables with megaphones yelling prices, music blasting from shops, and people trying to push things into your hands. Prices have plummeted because many of the vendors just need any amount of money they can get so that they can buy a sheep before Friday. It's crazy.