The Week Ahead and a side of Cults

Hey you guys,

I am about to take part the biggest adventure of my trip! I am leaving tonight to spend three days in the field doing research. This will be with my 'Sante Publique' (Public Health) class! I will be doing research on children with malaria and what they know about malaria. I was in charge of making the questionnaire for the class, so hopefully all will go smoothly! I will be in Niakhar, in the Fatik region, from tonight until Saturday. 

Saturday I have lunch at home and then go out with Denyse Morin for dinner! I'm pretty pumped about having someone visit *note that no one else has visited me*. So hopefully I will be able to see her as well on Sunday.

Then earlier Monday morning I jump on local transportation and go south for a couple hours to Sandiara. There I will be mapping and doing some work on project that works on agriculture and reforestation. I think I will end up doing more in the reforestation but it should be quite exciting and a very new experience for me! I will be living alone but there are a bunch of expats that I will be working with and they will be checking up on me from time to time, so don't worry :-) Their website is beershebaproject.org and is pretty cool.

So a funny story from this week. It was Mohammed (the ten year olds) birthday on Friday. Everyone all week had been reminding me that I needed to get him a present and so each time they asked I would ask them if they were getting something for him and the response always was 'maybe'. So I thought this was the new joke and decided my response should be maybe too. Well I get back home from school on Friday and each member of the family tells me to give him his present, I kept saying that I wanted to wait until everyone else gave him their stuff. Finally, after seeing them set up for a birthday party I decided I better just give him the stuff I realized I got tricked into being the ONLY person to give him a birthday present - was pretty ticked at the family for that move.

Anyways, so setting up for the birthday party was putting amps on the roof (huge amps, Undefined, you guys would be jealous of these guys!), all kinds of mats, at least three goats, and all kinds of other goodies. So I was thinking, well maybe no birthday present because they are going to have the craziest, most expensive birthday party ever. There were ten friends of Mohammed and Bebe Cherkh that helped set up. I also helped, I cleaned the mats, moved things around, and all kinds of other small tasks (was good bonding time with Fanta). Then, when everything was set up, she told everyone to come back at 10pm for the party - kinda late but that is how most things work here. We went downstairs and I was told dinner was going to be 'a little late' - we usually eat at 8pm.

So at 10 all the boys reappeared and we played with the new nerf football that I got Mohammed (went into the neighbor's fortress twice, that is a story in itself). I had decided to get dressed up and wear a cute dress that was a bit strappy but I thought it would be appropriate for a snazzy birthday party. Then all of a sudden there were a lot more adults then kids and women sitting on the side and men in the middle and towards the other side of the roof. The music (which I should have described before) had been blaring someone singing the Koran since about 2pm. A group of men began to take seats around the microphones and brought up their Korans and began singing the Koran themselves. All the men wore prayer robes but a few were 'bayefall' which means they were colorful clothing (yes, more colorful than me!) that are strips of a variety of material (if you want to know more about them, let me know, they have a very interesting perspective on religion). As soon as that happened everyone got very quiet and got out their Korans and began following along. The boys started playing games next to me and they got in a lot of trouble, a couple slaps, a couple 'Allah is not pleased with your actions'. So this continued until 1h30 when the singing ended. This whole time everyone was snapping their fingers when they heard something they found touching and were moving themselves back and forth, hypnotized to the music. A man started doing something that I am going to call a 'sermon' because I have no idea what it was. He talked mainly in Arabic but every once and a while I heard some Wolof thrown in. This continued until 2h30 (just to note, I usually go to bed here at 9pm so I am hungry and tired). The food comes out, people fight for seats around the bowl and the food is gone within ten minutes!

I thought of this whole thing as a semi-cultish practice but quickly realized that it is most likely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood that my family is a part of. Though I still cannot figure out how often it takes place (the Imam was not involved at all in the proceedings, he never left his room), the reason it took place, and why they had this event on Mohammed's birthday (I've been told it has no relation). Anyways, I left the whole thing pretty bitter because they tricked me into being the only one to get him a present but they did have a great ice cream cake!

A lot of other stories I would love to tell but I have class soon and want to be able to send this off before I leave for a week and a half!

Love to all of you,

Katie