This blog is about two months old and has been lingering on my laptop...

Its Tabaski in Senegal, the local name for Eid ul-Adha. In celebration of the pilgrims to Mecca descending from Mount Arafat and becoming 'El Hajj'. Its the Muslim equivalent of Christmas in a way as there is lots of food, and lots of gift giving. The gifts are of food and money, to your family, and to those who are less well off than you. In a way its the ultimate celebration of the Muslim way of doing things - sharing what you have with the poor. I like it, its kind of socialist.

Anyhow, a trio of rams appeared in our garage last night, and are now chops. The city has been taken over by massive specimens over the last two weeks, as people haggle and deliberate over the price of a decent beast. The bigger the better apparently, and some of these boys are seriously big.

In the old testament, Genesis, a chap called Abraham (Ibrahima) lived in a place called Ur (in Iraq, apparently). He used to chat on a regular basis with god. One day god decided to test his faith and ordered him to sacrifice his son. Abraham agreed and, raising the knife above his head to slaughter his son, god intervened and said 'Alright, alright, I was only messing with you, that ram over there will do'. So thats why a ram gets slaughtered on Eid ul-Adha.

Our upstairs neighbours are pretty well off, so bought three rams. This morning I watched as they slaughtered them, one by one, in the back yard. THey erected a screen from an upturned table so the rams couldn't see their friends bite the dust. I think they knew what was going on though, judging by the amount of shit coming out of them.

The death itself is quick - the ram is held down facing mecca, and a large sharp knife drawn quickly across the throat. A few seconds of kicking and the animal is still. The gory bit is making sure all of the vessels are cut in the neck to bleed the ram, which requires a bit of frenzied hacking, while the blood spurts out with a violent squirting noise. I watched from a respectful distance, photographs seemed inappropriate somehow.

Once all three had met their grisly end, the fun started - skinning and hacking up the bits into cookable chunks... this is were a bloody great machete came in handy.

Sometime later in the afternoon, our neighbours invited us up to share in the first pickings of the sheep. Mrs Jiffler and I had earlier prepared a gift of the famous cookies, and our slightly botched attempt at jam tarts (I was too heavy handed with the jam), these seemed to go down pretty well with the patriarch, who was no doubt sick of the sight of ovine products already.

Our self service dinner involved dipping into a massive pile of ram-ribs, barbecued hot and fast in a mixture of vinegar, salt and pepper and some mustard, a bowl of fat livers, and assorted potatoes and sweet onion sauce. Watermelons to finish, and cups of strong Senegalese mint tea. Massive over-indulgence was encouraged, and I must have eaten half a ribcage.

The meat was dark and crusty on the outside, smoky barbecued but with a deep flavour, rather like a very robust, slightly less sweet, piece of lamb. Close to the bone the flesh remained pink and soft, its rawness reminding me of this morning's butchery. The liver was strong flavoured and surprisingly tender - I could've eaten a plateful with a side of pepper sauce, but restrained myself from being too greedy with the best bits.