Traditionally, one week after a baby is born, it's family will have a kooliyo (naming ceremony) for it. Rajah, my oldest sister, had a baby boy and my family went all out. She came to Brikama from her compound in Sera Kunda a few days earlier for my family to meet the baby. Mandinkas never compliment a baby. They think it's bad luck. So when Rahjah gave the new baby to Niema to hold she looked down at it, smirked a little bit and then looked Rahjah straight in the face and said "this baby...this baby is ugly." I've tried doing it, I know it's just part of the culture but I absolutely cannot bring myself to look a mother in the face and tell her that she's got an ugly baby...even if it is. So I held it, said the prayer for it, and then told her it was fat. The kooliyo was the next day. The events of Wednesday September 14th 2011 couldn't have been stranger if I had made it up.
I woke up at about 8 and sat out on my porch to read some of my book before the madness began. Earlier, I saw Siboo walk over to the corner of the year where they would be cooking ebbe, the disgusting slimy fish stew that Gambians obsess over, but she was hidden by laundry hanging on the line to dry. I heard her rustling around over there for a while and then she started screaming my name at the top of her lungs. I ran over to her and saw something run fast across the yard out of the corner of my eye, chasing Siboo. My first thought was "oh god, the spiders have gotten even bigger" but then Siboo turned to me and yelled "crab, Sali, get the crab! GET THE CRAB." It was a giant blue crab that had crawled out of the box of dead crabs for the stew, that was definitely not dead. I got it back into the box for her after chasing her around with it for a while. Her friend arrived conveniently after my crab brawl to tear them apart wit her bare hands.
As she was going at it Siboo and I sat down to gut fish, then peel potatoes, then chop up hot peppers, onions, and lettuce. As the morning hours passed and the blisters on my hands grew, hundreds of Gambians came and went to partake in the kooliyo. I was so focused on the task at hand that I didn't notice my host brothers carrying a ram onto the piece of corrugated metal on the ground less than 3 feet behind me and only realized they had slaughtered it when I saw Muhammed washing the blood off his hands. I think I've officially integrated. A few minutes later a woman came over and announced that the baby was named Muhammed Lamin. I missed the naming! I can;t say that I was surprised. My host family usually assume I know more about what's going on around me than I actually do. So I missed the Imam shaving his head and whispering his name in his ear and all of the people;s prayers for him. One tradition that I plan on bringing back to America is this one: The new mother's female cousins pin money onto their shirts during the kooliyo to signify that they are her "slaves" for the day (their words, not mine!) They cook all of the food, set up, clean, etc and actually pay for a lot of it too.
The rest of the day passed by in a blur. Luckily I had some Peace Corps volunteers visiting me throughout the day to keep me sane. I decided to keep track of a few things after the first group improv song about me. I think the following sums up my day pretty well
-Asked for money from someone who looks 100 years old+ :11
-Songs made up about me: 3
-Dances for me by the crazy old lady from across the street: 5
-Meals eaten: 6
-Marriage proposals (for just me): 4
-Babies offered for me to take back to America: 3
-Five minute long greetings: more than you can ever imagine
-Rajah's outfit changes: 7
I went to take pictures of Rajah, as she requested, and she looked super stressed. She said people were trying to steal her new dresses and asked if she could bring them all into my house for her "costume changes" for the rest of the day. I said yes, of course, and then realized that I was going to have to stay up until the party ended (usually well after midnight.) Every hour or so Rajah and six of her closest friends would come tromping out of the crowd of people and into my house to change her clothes. Around 9pm my patience was wearing thing. I was becoming fed up with being paraded around as the only toubab at the party and tired of girls running in and out of my house all day and tired of being asked for money and being made fun of for my "bad" mandinka and cooking skills. At that very moment a huge gust of wind came through and I heard shouts of "saama nata, saama nata!" the rain was coming! All of the women in their heels, sparkly outfits, fake hair, colorful eyebrows, began scrambling for home at full speed...faster than you can say "your eyebrows are running."
The compound cleared out as it started to pour. I helped Rahjah carry all of her clothes back over to her house. I showered and was in my bed happily sweating by eleven pm. I woke up the next morning and noticed my floor was completely covered in glitter and have spent the past few days trying to de-glitterfy my house and put that kooliyo behind me forever...or at least until the one next month.
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