I forgot Tabaski!

So I completely forgot that I had not yet talked about tabaski. I don't even know where to begin. So the night before Tabaski officially began, I ended up hanging out with my host brother and his friends, who are all about my age and mostly speak french and of course, bambara. And we listened to music, drank tea, and usually I go to bed early, buttttt, I managed to stay up with them until like 4 in the morning. Malians don't sleep, I dont know how they do it, i get exhausted, but it was really fun. At like 3 am, they brought out macaroni and chicken and bread. So tabaski is like a three day thanksgiving feast. And everyone eats a lot of macaroni because its a fairly expensive grain so its a treat for them. Anyway, so the next morning, I got all dressed up in my matching skirt and top, had on some new jewelry, and of course my host sisters had braided my hair and done henna on my hands and feet. And we walked around, greeted people, I helped the women cook. They slaughter a ton of sheep, and everyone eats sheep at three meals for three days. Yes, that is correct, meat in the morning, noon, and night. By the end of the three days, I literally did not want to look at another piece of meat. My host family gave me a bunch of meat that I prepared in an american style, basically I grilled it! But they loved it! And then we danced, the women all got together and danced, with traditional drums going. And then, after a week, we had an end of tabaski party, with dancing, anddddd all the women got outfits made out of the same fabric, as a town fabric, so I, of course, once again, was styling in my outfit. Which, they thought was fantastic because I had the tailor make a westernized tank top.

So what I thought was going to be an overload of malian time turned out to be really fun. I think the fact that I can communicate a lot better now definitely helps. And I know that everyone in my town really appreciated my participation in their holiday.

On another topic...we had a picnic today for former peace corps volunteers living in mali. They were volunteers in countries around the world and their families all came. It was a ton of fun. But I have to say, for some reason, it was so so so bizarre to talk to young children in english. I didn't expect it to be, but it really threw me off. I guess i've spoken to other adults in english, but its been 6 months since i've talked to a kid in english. I found myself talking super slowly to like 8 year olds and then turning to people to talk about the kids in front of them, expecting them not to understand. hahaha. It was certainly a very odd moment.

Ok, that is all for now. I shall write more soon!