GAMBIA LETTER:With eldest sons buying expensive rams and sheep everywhere being led to abattoirs, the festival of Eid al-Adha is like no other
I SUSPECT that the ever increasing phalanx of rams lined up outside the town’s sprawling abattoir knew their number was up and that soon they would be no more for this world. For weeks, the assembled mass of sheep and goats had been growing at a daily rate in advance of the recent Muslim festival of Tabaski.
I pass by the slaughter house on my daily commute aboard a " gelli gelli" – a ramshackle, rickety, unsafe minibus. Long since discarded by its original European owners, it's now whiling out its days doing daily 15km runs up and down the Banjul Highway to Brikama for 15 Dalasis (40 cent) a trip.
The Gambia, a small splinter in the elbow of west Africa surrounded on three sides by its much larger neighbour Senegal, is the continent’s smallest mainland country. It is an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, with more than 90 per cent of the population adhering to the faith.
Every morning, I am awoken from my sweat-lathered sleep at 5am by the bellowing sound of the call to prayer from the local mosque imploring the devotees to begin their supplication.
The festival of Eid al-Adha, or Tabaski as it is called in west African countries, is hugely significant in the Muslim calendar. Roughly translated it means the “festival of the sacrifice”. It is celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a sheep to sacrifice instead. Every year, Muslims remember this by recreating this animal sacrifice.
The date of Tabaski is approximately 70 days after the end of the month of Ramadan. The precise day of the festival is not confirmed until a few days in advance. It depends on the vagaries of the moon and when it appears.
This means making plans, such as knowing in advance if you will have to travel to work that day, is almost impossible. It would be like being in Christmas week without knowing if the actual date will be the 24th, 25th or 26th.
Tradition has it that the eldest son of the family is obliged to buy or slaughter a ram as a symbol of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son.
This means that in the weeks leading up to Tabaski there has been a proliferation of sheep and goats appearing not just outside the abattoir, but in the most unlikely of places.
Animals could be seen tempting death wandering
across major intersections, grazing on the singed grass in the middle of roads oblivious to the hurtling juggernauts either side of them, or congregating furtively at street corners, perhaps hatching vain plots to evade their gory fate.
My phone has been constantly chirping with text messages from the mobile phone companies offering rams as competition prizes while newspapers have been full of photos showing the beaming competition winners tethered to their less enthusiastic prizes.
However, this obligation on the first-born male places an enormous strain on their financial resources. Even the cheapest ram costs about 3,000 Dalasis (€80), a veritable fortune in a country where the annual income per head is €330 and almost 60 per cent of the population live on less than a dollar a day.
“I don’t know what I will do this year,” Lamin, who lives near my compound, tells me. “My family are expecting me to return to my village with a ram but I don’t see how I will be able to afford it. If I come back empty-handed or with only a chicken or hen, I will be considered a failure and a disappointment by my family.”
This inability to fulfil their familial duty has meant that many Gambians are forced into debt which they find cripplingly difficult to repay. Gambian society places a heavy emphasis on paying for costly ceremonies sometimes to the detriment of what could be considered more important commodities such as health and education.
Many eldest sons from rural or “upcountry” regions are sent to the country’s main urban region, called the Kombos, to try and find work, often in the country’s burgeoning tourist industry. They are expected to support large families on whatever wages they earn.
The Gambia relies heavily on tourism, which contributes 12 per cent of its GDP. Holidaymakers, mainly British, Dutch and Scandinavians, attracted by the guarantee of winter sun and sandy beaches, visit the country in their tens of thousands. This has provided some employment, with an estimated 10,000 people working in the hotel, taxi and service industry.
Swaggering, air-conditioned tourist coaches can be seen carrying their bewildered looking visitors who peer out inquisitively at the locals’ daily routines of trading, haggling, eating and surviving.
And then there is the rather odd spectacle of a “reverse sex tourism”. Walk down the main tourist promenades and you will likely see western women in their 50s and 60s hand in hand with young, virile Gambian men. Doubtless all in the name of true love.
Anyway, Tabaski has been and gone now and when I passed by the abattoir the other day I saw only a few triumphant-looking sheep who had avoided the grisly end meted out to their ovine friends. Well, for the next 12 months at least . . . give or take a day or two.
Daniel English is in the Gambia on a 12-month placement as an accompanying volunteer with Voluntary Service Overseas. He is working with the Gambian Press Union, an organisation that promotes press freedom and media development in the Gambia, and with Concern Universal. In Ireland, he has worked as a media and communications officer with the Health Service Executive and the Houses of the Oireachtas