Fete du Mouton Pictures

The morning of the Fete all the men go to a field and pray together, afterwards, the feasting begins! Here they are mid prayer.

After the prayer, the spiritual leader in the community kills the sacrificial lamb. It is only after this lamb has been killed, that men can go home and kill the lamb for their families.

A young Fulbe girl, watching the traditional dancing outside the traditional chief's house. Even though she is only 8/9 years old, its normal for her to dress in her best clothes and do her make-up, because, soon men will start looking at her as a possible bride.

Part of the custom is that the traditional chief rides to the prayer field on horses. Our only horse in Dir is a little too weak to have people ride him. However, the day of the Fete, he gallops along the traditional chief's car on the way to prayer.

A Muslim Holiday, A Peace Corps Lesson

         I've been meaning to tell this story for a while now but haven't found the way to work it into a blog entry. However, the "Fete du Mouton" (I have no idea what Muslims call that in English, as truly I was pretty ignorant about the Muslim faith before arriving to Dir) just passed this last Thursday. Its a holiday that takes place 70 days after Ramadan, and is a commemoration of the story in the Koran where God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Ishmael. Its the same story as in the Bible...when Abraham brings down his knife to egorge his only son's throat he realizez God has spared Ishamel's life and replace his son with a mouton/lamb. Thus! Voila, the Fete du Mouton, where people go around wishing each other a happy holiday and eating a lot of lamb.
        One thing absolutely I love about Cameroonian culture, is that a Fete is a Fete, and yes, even though the Fete du Mouton is a Muslim holiday, even the Christians join in on the celebration. There are also A LOT of Fetes here, and I think its mostly because when you live in a village whenever there is an opportunity to break up the rhythm of daily life with a celebration, people are ALL for it. There's the usual holidays that we also celebrate in the States (Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, etc...) but then there are also a lot of random holidays that I had never heard of until coming here (Woman's Day, Youth Day, Teacher's Day, Work Day, etc...) The Fete season is pretty heavy starting with Christmas up until May (which comically enough is reflected in the number of pregnant woman who start showing up with 5-6 month pregnancies in the summer months!) The Fete season is so heavy that there was a point where my jaw would drop and my eyes roll when someone told me ANOTHER Fete was coming up!
       So, it's no small change when I say that Ramadan has been favorite holiday here thus far (it might have had to do with the fact that Ramadan was in August and we hadn't feted since May) but it also had to do with the fact that it was a well earned holiday.
      The month of Ramadan is one of the 5 pillars of the Muslim faith. Its a month where all Muslims who are in health (old people, lactating women, and pregnant women are not supposed to participate but most of the time they still do) are supposed to purify themselves. They abstain from most everything during day time hours, including: food, water, tobacco, and sex. To obtain this the people wake up at 4:30 am (before the 5 am call to prayer) and then do not touch food or water again until 6:30 pm!! (After the fourth call to prayer). In the Extreme North and North Region of Cameroon, where the heat is extreme, people have actually been known to die from the fasting when Ramadan falls during dry season.
      Its amazing to me how they manage to be so diciplined, and maybe even more so that nobody seems to complain about it. And when you ask them about it, all they say is, "its only hard your first year, then you grow used to it". Which is hard to believe, but I think a reason that it is easier for them is because SO MUCH of the community participates. (Dir is about 1/2 Muslim). Even for the Christians who don't fast, you do eat a lot less during Ramadan. Food is harder to find during the day time and even when you do find snacks on the road, its hard to eat when you see all these hungry eyes watching you (There are some volunteers who participate in the fasting, my respects!).
     The fasting is such an example of solidarity here and one of my favorite moments of the whole month was around week 2 of Ramadan. I was coming back from Meiganga, a bigger town about 3 hours east of Dir, where there are restaurants, electricity, and COLD beer! Yahoooo! I had spent a night there visiting with other volunteers and then took the last bus back to Dir, which leaves Meiganga around 4:30 pm to arrive in Dir once its dark. This time the bus was full of almost completely Muslim men. The bus ride was pretty quiet, up until 6:30 pm, when one man looked at his watch and declared the fast was over. Even though we were all squeezed into our seats (there are no seat belts in this country, but with how tightly they mush you into cars, there's really no need for them) the scene changed from a bus ride to a banquet in almost 5 seconds. Every man reached into his hand bag and pulled out some sort of snack: bread, boiled eggs, dates, rice patties, meat on sticks, etc..and passed it around their row so every had a little something. It was beautiful.
     But there was also one moment towards the end of the holiday that hit me really hard, and I think encompassed perfectly the range and scope of what being a volunteer means and how we, as white people are percieved in our communities.
      The week before the actual Fete du Ramadan (and you don't know exactly what day the Fete is going to be because it all depends on when you see the full moon) is a week of preparation. The men make sure the food and clothes are bought for their families, and the women make themselves beautiful. One of the beauty rituals here is similar to Indian henna. The women buy a powder, that is made from ground herbs, and with it draw geometrical designs on their hands and feet. At the end of the process it almost looks as if you are wearing gloves or socks, its beautiful but INCREDIBLY time consuming, as to get the desired end effect you have to apply the henna at least twice. Each time leaving it on your feet for AT LEAST 4 hours. And then you have to apply a special powder, which charcoal from the hot fire, and apply that for AT LEAST another two hours. All this time, you sit and can't move so that you don't mess up the geometrical pattern.
      Monday, a couple of days before the Fete du Ramadan, a Fulbe woman stopped me on my way to the hospital to ask me for some medicine. I was semi in shock to be pulled into her concession and then her bedroom as most Fulbe (the ethnic group here that practices Muslim) are very reserved, and don't leave their concession much (except for market, hospital visits, and to go to the stream to wash clothes). The Fulbe women are usually those who have a very limited education, speak almost no French, marry at about 14 years of age, and start having babies almost immediately afterwards. I interact with Fulbe women often during work at the hospital, but rarely outside of that. So the next day, when I brought her the medicine and she invited me to come over on Friday so that she could do my henna for the Fete I immediately accepted the invitation.
     On Friday, when I showed up, I was invited into the reserved world of Fulbe women for 6 hours. While they worked on my hands and feet, we chatted, I showed them my photo album, we listened to traditional music, we NAPPED together with their babies on the same bed. And even though, the constant input of the local dialect was exhausting me, I felt so right in that moment. I truly felt as if THIS is what it is all about, what being a Peace Corps Volunteer should be. Becoming friends with people who live such a different life than you, spending an afternoon with them, learning who they are. Trust me, the afternoon could have gone LATE into the evening, but by 6 pm, the 6 hours of NOT moving had gotten to me and I told them we had to wrap up this beauty party because I needed to go home and cook dinner. And they finished washing my feet quickly and I was on my way out the door, thrilled by the ability to move again and by the new friends I had made, when one of them stopped me and told them I owed them 1,000 cfa for their work.
     My heart literally dropped in that instant and I had to fight hard to keep my eyes from dispelling the tears that had welled up inside of them. Not because I didn't have the means to pay that, but because their demand had just completely changed the context of the whole afternoon. What I thought was a genuine cultural exchange, wasn't, and these women were looking at me as a way to make money. A part of me couldn't blame them, as most Fulbe women have to ask their husband for money evey time they need even the smallest thing, but I was upset. I was upset that they didn't explain to me upfront, but most importantly as to how money can dirty such (what I thought) was a pure afternoon.

    And yet, as much as that story took a turn for the worst, it is an everyday reality for Peace Corps Volunteers. People see a white person and they believe we have money to spare. Its a stereotype that we have to fight, and it can be incredibly disheartening to constantly explain to people that we are not here to give them money, but that we are here to help. Its a challenge, one that runs deep into the history of development and how agencies have gone about giving aide in the past (and present), and it poses a lot of questions that I'm continually trying to find the answers to. If you were to see how rarely I give out money, or the reasons that I do, you might think me cold and cheap, but I have to keep on telling myself that that is not what I am here for. I have to keep on believing that i have so much more to give than money to people in my life here.

A picture of the henna a woman has done on her feet for the Fete.