Seli Ba

written November 18, 2010
I don't feel very good. My stomach is full of goat meat and I think I might throw up soon. I unfortunately made the decision to eat a good deal of the air-dried goat leg I was given as a gift. I've been given quite a few hunks of meat as gifts over the past two days. Today was the last day of the 2 day Holiday called Seli Ba. That's the Bambara name for it, all I know about it besides that is that in French it is called Tabaski and it is the Islamic Holiday where they kill a lot of sheep. In my village they don't just eat sheep meat, they also butcher cows and goats, so it's basically like a meat schmorgusborg. My stomach can't handle it. Meat is usually so hard to come by in my village that I've basically become a vegetarian. The only meat I eat is the tuna my mom has sent me in care-packages, and maybe a few pieces of chicken no more than once a month (this doesn't include the schwarmas or hamburgers I get every time I go to Sikasso). Anyway Seli Ba has been pretty chill. I expected it to be pretty crazy in Village because it's a holiday, but everything pretty much stayed the same except that people dressed up a bit and we ate a lot of meat. There was also a lot of balofone music. The first night they played until 4am!! I couldn't believe that they could stay up dancing that late (They work so hard during the day, you'd figure they'd be too tired to stay up that late). Over the past two days my homologue and I pretty much just went to all of his friends house's to say hi, or rather to "donner les bonjours" (give hellos). This wasn't that much different from what we do on a day to day basis. The first day was a little different because several people gave me candy and a few people gave me money (not a lot, basically like 20 cents worth or less) for the holiday. My homologue said it was to wish me a good year. The second day, today, all of my gifts were of meat. It was kind of gross to be handed a dried hunk of meat that was just hanging on a string from a tree. I've learned that it's incredibly hard to look grateful when you're disgusted by something. Another interesting thing about Seli Ba, and I guess really all Holidays here, is that everyone likes to get dressed up. What's interesting about that is that all the boys' idea of dressed up is a track suit with a stiff baseball cap, and all the girls have the same complets (full outfits) as their friends. The boys all also get their hair cut so that their heads are completely shaved except for a circle patch of hair on the top which many of the boy's had designs shaved into. It's all very 1980s. The girls look very cute with their little head wraps, but the boys just look ridiculous (to me; this is all my opinion, clearly not theirs).
Besides all of the excitement of Seli Ba, not much has happened. My wrist is basically back to normal, with spurts of pain every once and a while. I've also taken up the hobby of jewelry making which wasn't difficult seeing as my mom sent me like 4 packages full of jewelry making materials. I've made several bracelets, some of them fairly complicated, and even tried making bracelets with a few of the girls in my village. That was interesting because it's almost as if kids here have no creativity, they all want to copy everything you do, so since I made a pink and blue bracelet, all five girls made pink and blue bracelets even though I had more than 10 colors of beads to choose from. Oh well.
In other news, I think I may be getting sick because for the past 3 or so days I have been perpetually tired, like I could sleep all day if left alone. I really hope that I'm not sick because Thanksgiving is a week from today! I'm super excited for Thanksgiving because every year Sikasso hosts a Peace Corps' Thanksgiving dinner/weekend type thing and a bunch of PCVs from all over Mali come down to celebrate. I'm excited for good food and for seeing people I haven't seen for quite some time!