Gamou

Saturday was Gamou, the celebration of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad.  I had overheard in a conversation between Mariama and her grandmother a few days ago that we would be having a party for Gamou.  I had no idea what that truly entailed.  Saturday morning I left early to meet up with the group to go fabric shopping, but when I got back around 1:30, there was a giant tent set up in front of my house.  Most of the day passed normally, I didn’t know what time the party was supposed to start, so there was just a lot of hanging around.  At one point I went outside to see what was going on and I was set to work by the team of 8-10 year old boys that were taking the job of sweeping in front of the house very seriously.  I was happy to help of course, but I wasn’t sure what to do with myself, considering we were literally sweeping dirt off of dirt onto more dirt. So I just played along.  People were in and out of the house all day.  They started to set up some intense speaker system in the trees around the tent.  I was still unclear on when the party would start or what it would be once it did.  We ate dinner around 9 pm, joined by a bunch of men I had never met.  Even they told me to keep eating when I was done.  People just really want you to eat a lot of food here.  You have to be kind of sneaking and insist that you’re full in Wolof, otherwise, you’re stuck.  After dinner some prayer sounding music started playing over the speakers, but not many people had showed up yet.  Everyone was running around preparing things and I just felt so out of place.  I ended up sitting and watching music videos with some of my host brothers.  My friend Camille came over around 9:30 because somehow our families are related, which is pretty cool.  She sat with me and we laughed about the absurdity of the 21^st century.  Watching Britney Spears music videos with Muslim prayer songs in the background surrounded by Senegalese people dressed to the nines in traditional garb.  The best part had to be the guy reading the Koran from his iPad.  There’s an app for that.  A little later the music turned into more sermon type speaking by some religious heads.  We were able to peek outside a bit.  The tent was lined with lights and the ground was covered in mats.  The women, covered head to toe, were confined to about a third of the space, the men taking up the rest of it.  More waiting around, watching music videos, not knowing what to do with ourselves.  At around midnight a meal was served to all of the people (not even kidding, it had to have been close to 100).  It was quite good, some sort of meat and onion sauce followed by delicious juice.  There’s a girl from the US in a different program than us that lives at Camille’s house too, and after eating, the three of us were really unsure what to do with ourselves.  We started to go outside to check it out, but my host brother Mohammad said we couldn’t without our heads covered, so we went back in.  My host mom came by and encouraged us to go out, but said I had to change because I was wearing jeans.  As I do not have any long skirts or dresses, she lent me an outfit.  Wrap around skirt and a tunic type thing.  It was pretty cool, bright orange and blue.  My brothers were taken aback at first, they weren’t quite used to seeing their toubab like that, but I think people liked it.  It was actually quite cold that night, but we toughed it out for a while.  Considering we don’t speak Wolof or Arabic, there wasn’t too much we had to pay attention to once we were in the crowd, but it was pretty cool to be a part of.  At about 2:30 in the morning we were served Café Touba, which is this coffee they drink all the time here.  It has loads of sugar, I’m sure (they love sugar), and a sort of woody taste to it.  It’s a pretty intense flavor, I’m not too sure I like it, but it’s all part of the fun.  At that point we were aware that this little shindig lasts until sunrise.  I called it a night around 3AM and was ever so thankful for my ear plugs.  I took a couple of pictures, but I was sort of unclear as to what would be appropriate to photograph or not.  Also, some random Senegalese man has a picture of me in the formal wear, but I have no idea who he is.  All in all, it was a pretty cool thing to be a part of.