Hi everyone,
we're still in holiday mode over here. Eid al-Adha is the second most significant celebration on the Muslim calendar and there are three days of celebration (although Andrea gets a whopping 10 day break). It celebrates the old testament story of Abraham, who is asked to sacrifice his only son. When he is about to do the deed, God lets him off and he sacrifices a lamb instead. The locals had prayer on Thursday morning and, as part of the celebrations, they slaughter an animal. A third of the meat goes to friends and family, a third goes to the needy and they keep a third.
We visited the fruit and vegetable markets on Friday morning - the produce was pretty cheap and it ranged from pineapples to cabbages to strawberries and bananas and some stuff we'd never seen in our lives. After that we visited the live animal markets. There were big makeshift pens of sheep and cattle along with the trucks they came in and their feed. Many were from Somalia and places further away than that. They were charging around $400 for a sheep on the hoof (a premium for Eid and for Westerners I think). One Somali sheep-seller offered a money back guarantee. If it didn't taste any good he'd take the sheep back. There were a few merinos (from Australia I think) but they were mostly long-legged or fat-tailed woolly sheep. There were slim looking goats too and Brahmin style cattle.
As part of the animal market there are two slaughter houses, one for sheep and goats and one for cattle. If you didn't choose to drive you purchase away in your boot then you backed your ute up with your cow on board or you dragged your sheep/goat around to the slaughter house and waited your turn. When it was your turn you roped your cow and dragged it in. There was a public viewing area where we saw them drop the cow with ropes then cut it's throat, hang it, skin it, gut it and cut it up, then loaded the bags of meat back into the ute. No hanging the carcass here. There was a bit more of a chain operating for the sheep, they had five or six on a bench and were cutting throats and hooking them onto a chain as others were being dragged onto the bench. Because of Eid the whole place was going off - utes and animals everywhere. Very exciting.
We also went camel racing. That was really hard case. They line up at the start of the 5km course. Their Somali handlers are on one side of a barrier, holding onto lead ropes and the camels are on the other. They banned small boy jockeys a while ago so they use battery operated robots that spin a whip around when you press the button. Anyway, the barrier goes up and the handlers run for their lives to the side of the track and dive out of the way as the camels launch themselves down the track. We saw three or four handlers go under the camels at the start and a couple of camels went down too, but no-one was carted off to hospital. A few camels balk and go sideways and their handlers sprint after them to try and grab hold of them again, since they're not going to win the race. We were about ten metres down from the start and we got very close-up to a couple of camels that hadn't quite got the hang of the start.
Anyway, they take off, then all of the owners vehicles race off around the road at the edge of the track to follow the race and whip the camels along where necessary. Spectators leap on a bus on the inside of the track and the bus tears alongside the running camels so you get to watch the whole thing in close-up. The buses are wired with Arabic race commentary, you can hear the owners screaming at the camels and the little robots occasionally come to life and start beating the camels along. It's fantastic fun. They should do horse racing like that back home! About 15 of Andrea's work colleagues came along too and we had a great day out, apart from the fact that no-one could tell us when it was, and when we did get there the races were about 100m from the grandstand and we never realised when they actually started.
Other than that, we've joined a health club at one of the hotels where we have access to the gym, pool, squash and tennis courts etc. We've been flogging that over Eid, one of us takes Matija swimming while the other hits the gym. She's got a little floaty vest and has been loving bobbing around the pool.
We're off to the Souk tonight to check out the nuts, dried fruit and spices and we'll stay down there for dinner in a Moroccan place that is supposed to be very good and still pretty cheap by NZ standards.
All in all we're settling in pretty well, finding our way around and starting to get a handle on things. We'll keep you posted on exciting news as it happens and I'll add some photos too.
Cheers V, Matija and Ande
