Babies and New Year's Eve

It isn’t every day that you come back from a skype session with your parents and its announced that there will be a brand new baby in your compound the next day.  Last weekened, after my rough week in general, my uncle, Daouda, announced that his wife had another baby and that the next day she would be at our compound for the baby naming ceremony.  I was thrilled!  As many of you know I love babies.  I had heard so much about naming ceremonies that I was excited to witness one.  I asked Bouna if it was all right if I took pictures, he said yes of course.  A bunch of women were cooking in the morning, some sort of corn mash with sugar that they made into balls.  When I got up, my host sisters ushered me into Daouda’s hut, where his wife was there with a teeny little baby.  They were about to shave his head.  I would learn later that this is what happens to every baby, boy or girl before they get their names.  The naming happens a week after they are born.   At around 10am, all the village elders, meaning old men, came into our compound and sat down on mats.  The iman, almami, was there front and center.  Then a younger man came out and seemed to be speaking with the Iman, I think it was more that the iman was speaking to him, telling him the name of the new baby, Djibie.  They passed around the corn balls with kola nuts inside (a very caffeinated nut that I think tastes very strong and bitter) and gave it to everyone that was there.  They sat and prayed, holding their hands in front of them and then praying, in Arabic.  It was quite charming and calming to watch.  After a certain short time, less than half an hour they all left, filing out slowly.  The older women were at my compound the whole day, cooking, and many family members from Tamba and neighboring villages came to see the new baby and to see the family.  Then later in the evening I walked out of my hut and my uncle was slaughtering a sheep, I thought it was in celebration for the baby but then it turned out that he was selling most of the meat, maybe the money goes to the baby, as I’ve said before, I think, I still don’t quite understand the money matters here in Senegal.  

Holding a tiny baby was pretty much a terrific treat.  The next day I went around the village and ended up finding two more small babies, both under two weeks old.  One that had been named, and the other that was supposed to be named the next day.  Everyone seemed to want to name it after me, Halima, which was I was at first okay with.  I told them I would go back and take pictures the next day.  I went back and spent a couple hours or so.  I watched the iman bless her, whisper prayers and I guess get or give her her name.  I asked her mother if her name was in fact Halima and she replied in the affirmative.  It wasn’t until later that I learned from my host sister Setou that in fact her name was Maimouna, not Halima.  Kind of a relief, just because it seems like a lot of pressure to have a kid named after you and on top of that the family isn’t related to my family, I’m not sure what the practices are.  But I got to spend a few hours with a number of babies and that was pretty cool. 

On New Years Eve my host sisters came back from picking cotton and told me that they were going to get together with some other kids from the village and cook spaghetti and eggs. I decided to help them out so I have them 300cfa and decided to go along with whatever they were doing.  After we watered the garden we went over to another compound and started peeling onions and potatoes and cooking beef.  My uncle earlier had slaughtered a cow, it was pretty amazing to watch them kill something that big with a dull knife.  All of my uncle and neighbors were holding the cows legs, tied with ropes and they had the dull blade of a knife that they sharpened by scraping it on the well.  Then they called Kooli (my other uncle) over and he took a pole of wood and laid it across the belly of the cow to hold it down so that the cow couldn’t move.  It’s amazing to watch them kill animals with the slip of a knife, they drain the blood and then begin the the butchering.  But back to the cooking.  I was with a bunch of 14 year old girls who were all chattering away cooking up a storm; beignets, beef with onions and mustard and spaghetti.  The irony of the whole thing was that the dish we were cooking was supposedly called couscous marocain (Moroccan CousCous).  I just think that is pretty crazy.  I helped out with the peeling and cutting of potatoes and onions.  At one point, about three hours later I was getting tired and bored, and they began to notice.  So they took a bowl as they were beginning to get ready to eat and my Tupperware container that they had collected peanuts in and they packed up my part of the dinner that I thought we were going to eat together and walked me back to my compound.  I thought we were going to eat all together but I guess that wasn’t the case.  I sat down with my own bowl of “marrocain couscous” and invited my host siblings and my aunt to join me.  They of course did and then we sat down and had our New Year’s Eve meal.  Pasta with onions, mustard and beef.