According to Wikipedia, Ashura (whose Wolof name is Tamkharit) is on the tenth day of Muharram in the Islamic calendar and marks the climax of the Rememberance of Muharram. The following pictures showed what my experience of this holiday and it's celebration looks like in Senegal...
My family and I were hanging out, waiting for the cous cous to cook, making funny faces at the camera!
Bintu-Gueye making cous-cous. The top picture is the making of the realllllllllly oily tomato/potato/chicken (didn't eat the chicken) sauce that goes on top of the cous-cous. Cous-cous's Wolof name is Thierry (pronounced chierry).
My family members mixing in a tasteless gum to make the cous-cous stick to itself more easily. The consistency is a factor because everyone eats by squishing the food into balls with their hands.
The finished product. (I didn't eat the chicken... my family now knows I'm vegetarian so I don't have to surreptitiously avoid eating the meat-- they just don't give it to me!)
Unfortunately, something in this dish resulted in me having a horrible bout of diarrhea the next day... UGH.
Gettin' fancy for Tamkharit... the little girl is my niece, Dei-boi. She is four and a ball of energy, non-stop.
After consuming unhealthy amounts of cous-cous, we all got lovely and dressed up and joined the whole village in prayer for the New Year (in the dark).
After prayers on Tamkharit, all the village children dress up in the clothes of the opposite gender and go around collecting rice, money, beans, and other little tokens from all the houses. There are also Griots-- musician, story-telers that keep the village histories-- that walk around in groups and play drums REALLY loudly.
This is a group of girls, convincingly dressed up as young men... I bet you couldn't even tell because they have the characteristic white eyebrows and white facial hair of young senegalese boys....
