Cicumcision ceremony (written Feb 20)

Today we attended an all-day party in celebration of the circumcision of two sons of one of our good friends, which occurred about a month ago. NOTE - Both boys and girls are circumcised here. Female circumcision is a very touchy issue though, so we haven't had a chance to breach the topic here yet. For girls, I circumcision believe always occurs around age 6-7, while for boys it can either occur shortly after birth or at age 6-7. Our friend's two youngest sons are 6 and 7, so they opted to do the ceremony together. As I said, the actual circumcisions occurred about a month ago, after which the two boys spent a couple of weeks living in a house by themselves in a neighboring village while they recovered. Here is an approximate timeline of the past two days, which includes the final preparations and the event itself:

Friday morning - Purchase/gather ingredients and pots/bowls for various meals that will be cooked the following day, visit the tailor in Soma to pick up asobis (matching outfits).

Friday afternoon - Guests begin to arrive, greet and cook lunch for them, braid hair.

Friday evening - Entertain guests.

Saturday morning - Begin preparing various meals, go to Soma to purchase remaining ingredients, gather additional chairs/benches, more guests begin to arrive, entertain them and give them breakfast.

Saturday afternoon - More cooking, dancing, parade across the village with a group of young boys, get them set up to wait out the afternoon sitting in an empty room in our compound (see more on that below), more dancing, serve lunch.

Saturday evening - More cooking, more dancing, bathe, change into asobis, retrieve boys from their waiting room, more dancing, serve ebey (hot and sour cassava and fish soup/stew, the cooking of which I described in an earlier post), more dancing, serve dinner and baobob juice (baobob mixed with water, bananas, milk powder, coconut, powdered mango drink mix),
more dancing, guests slowly begin to leave.

Two relevant numbers to note - The number of outfits Fatou, the oldest sister of the two boys wore over the course of the day: 5. The number of meals we ate today: 8...Breakfast #1: Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before leaving home, Breakfast #2: Tiyofaso ning pote - Rice and groundnut porridge with a peanut butter baobob sauce, Lunch #1: Cucha - Rice with sorrel sauce,Lunch #2: Ebey, Lunch #3: Benechin nig nee - Fried rice with fish and sauce, Lunch #4: Futoo nig nee - Pounded millet with fish and sauce, Dinner #1: Ebey again, Dinner #2: Baobob juice and "Sauce" - fried chicken and potatoes served with a carmelized onion sauce, served over lettuce.

Here are a few pictures (and two video clips! - hopefully they work - someone please let me know whether they do) that I took:


New braids I got especially for today, which unfortunately have come halfway out already (apparently for slippery toubab hair, adding the fake hair make braids stay in significantly better. Noted.


The dancing begins


More dancing (Fatou in outfit #2)


Boys procession


The beginning of a long afternoon of dancing in our compound. The door to our house is in the top of the picture in the middle.


Sometimes babies are along for the ride :-)


The boys set up and ready to wait out the afternoon. Since they were spending the afternoon in our compound, apparently it was a big honor for our family. We had the option to spend the afternoon with them, but opted out.


Giant vat of benechin


Giant vat of ebey


Us in our lovely peacock asobis