Well, it's been an interesting week here.
Monday morning began a bit strangely. It was, um...bizarre to say the least. Some sort of religious festival was going on throughout this week, so off and on Sunday night, we kept hearing the neighbors outside whacking bamboo, cutting wood, sharpening knives. Poor Hosanna had the joy of waking to the sound of a cow bellowing and struggling. Happily I slept through THAT part! Don't know if you'd call the cow a "sacrifice" or if it just had the unlucky opportunity to become the main course during the religious festival. But alas, it was killed.
I woke in the morning and realized that the neighbors had started a roaring fire just outside our window and the smoke was pouring into our house. Peeking out the window, I got the odd experience of watching them burn the hair off the dead cow. They had put the animal on this huge fire and turned it over and over to make sure that it was thoroughly burnt.
After that, they spent the next few hours scraping and hacking on the poor cow. Of course, beef was "what's for breakfast." That, and plenty of beer. By 9:00 A.M., I'd say several of the neighbors were inebriated and stayed that way much of the week.
For what it's worth, none of the cow was wasted. EVERY part was used for something. Hoof soup does NOT have a lovely smell, by the way.
Oh, after the cow sacrifice thingie, I was a bit on edge, I guess, as to the goings on of our neighbors. The next morning, the man of the house was outside again early with a big tub of something and a machete.
He began whacking on the tree right next to where the cow had been killed the previous morning. HACK! HACK! HACK! He just kept smacking at the limbs.
I thought to myself, "What? Do they have to sacrifice the tree now, too???"
After much to do, the neighbor seemed satisfied that enough whacking had occurred. He then proceeded to ...hang up the family's wet laundry on the clothesline that was attached to the tree. Apparently there were a few too many limbs, and they were blocking the sunlight and slowing the clothes drying.
Ahhhh...culture is an INTERESTING thing to try to figure out. I wonder what they'd think about our Halloween? :)
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4 comments:
Oh my! Sounds like an educational week! Poor Hosanna is right! Blessings to you and your family!
I often think I'd do just fine in a foreign country. After all, I'm open-minded enough, right? Then I hear or read something like this and I'm just so shocked. Shocked that people in foreign countries do actually do things so culturally foreign to me; and shocked that I'm shocked--what happened to my open mind?
Hmmm...maybe the vegetarians are right. No death in the animal kingdom before the fall, right? We are so removed from our food souces here and so removed from the blood and guts of the OT Israelite religion. The cost of sin. And it wasn't enough. It took a bigger sacrifice. I think about how messy the temple work must have been with blood running from the sacrifices daily. Hearing you talk about the smell of hoof soup and singing hair somehow brings me back to the realness of death, of Jesus' sacrifice. Thank you for bringing reality into my prepackaged chicken nugget world. Love, Cathy
Very interesting I'm sure....not. What did the rest of your crew think?? Keeping you and your family in my prayers.
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