Program!

A few months before Tobaski, Sinni informed me that we would have a Tobaski program and wear asobi: her, me, Toulay, Fatou Bobo, Ma Debbo, Jainabou, and Fama. Just us. So if the other women ask me to buy their asobi, I am to tell them sorry, but I do not have the money.

Every week we each contributed ten dalasis, so that when it came time to buy the fabric we would have nearly enough. Two weeks before Tobaski we counted the money. This was a more complicated process than it would seem, because most of the women had missed a week or two or seven and we needed to know how much each person still owed before we went to the market. Sinni had a paper with names and the amount of each person's contribution, but she was not the one who'd written it and I was the only one who could read it. After the money had been counted and recounted and recounted a few more times, we agreed to meet tomorrow morning to go and buy the fabric.

Late afternoon the next day, the whole group of us goes to the market. It is a luumo day, so there are many fabric vendors and numerous possibilities. Fortunately, our choices were limited to those under 120 dalasis. Unfortunately, we were seven people who needed to agree on one fabric. "That one will not grab black skin." "That one will not grab light skin." "Do you like this one?" "Where did Toulay go?"

Eventually, a fabric is agreed upon, tailors are talked to, earring displays are admired, vegetables are purchased, fried dough is eaten and we all go home.

Our Tobaski program was two days long. The first day, we did not wear the asobi, but I'd been informed ahead of time, so no repeat of last year's awkwardness. That evening, we gathered in the cleared off space between Toulay's compound and Fatou Bobo's house. We drank attaya, lait (sweetened condensed milk brewed like attaya so it's warm and frothy) and juice. We chewed gumballs. We waited.

We were waiting for the "dance" to arrive. Amadou owns something I can only refer to as a magic-music-machine because I've never seen anything like it and I really don't know what one would call it. The children call it the "dance," using the English word, and it's true that no dance would be complete without it. I will try to describe it: it is a shoebox-sized mP3 player connected to a suitcase-sized speaker, connected to a device that causes red and green laser lights to move and swirl and burst like firecrackers.

I danced until my arms hurt from tossing too many kids in the air and my feet ached from stomping too much. Okay, I'm exaggerating, nothing ached until the next day; I just wrote that because it sounded more poetic than the truth. The truth: I danced until most people were not dancing. This happened at 2 am.

For the second day of our program, we wore our asobi. A table was brought out and covered with a table cloth. Fish cakes were fried and placed on fancy plates (plastic plates with a floral pattern). Instead of scooping cupfuls of juice from a bucket, it poured from a cooler. The magic-music-machine was turned on. After only an hour or so, however, it turned off. It had run out of battery. Amadou called a friend who said he could bring a battery. He was already riding his motorcycle here.

I thought the friend would be bringing the battery on his motorcycle. Instead, they took the battery from the motorcycle. "Now if the battery finishes he will not be able to ride home."

The dance floor.

I wanted to take a picture of the table-clothed table. The children wanted me to take a picture of them.

Ous and Levi

Jainabou and Ma Debbo (also known as my-formerly-pregnant-tokara, also known as Binta) organizing the cups for the juice (in the cooler. The nice part about not having enough cups for everyone is you never have to worry "which cup is mine??" because none of them are yours personally. You just have to hope no one you're sharing with has an upper respiratory infection or something.

Toulay is cooking fish cakes. What is a fish cake? Imagine a calzone. Now shrink it so it's only half the size of your palm. Next, take out all the cheese. Take out all the filling, in fact. Replace with a filling of mashed-up fish mixed with some spices. Now drop it in a pot of hot oil. Remove it when it's golden.

Yup--it's Musa! Old enough to stand and almost-walk!

Everyone's wearing the asobi!

I wanted to get a photo of the children dancing, but I wasn't fast enough.