Morocco and Eid

It’s currently Canadian Thanksgiving Monday and I am sitting in school without any turkey, stuffing, gravy, or anything else that we normally do for this holiday. But here in Morocco, it’s just another Monday. Instead, a bunch of us internationals are going to celebrate with Moroccan traditional tajine (pics to follow).

What I really want to write about is Eid, which was last weekend. For those who don’t know, Eid al Adha is the muslim holiday which celebrates Prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God. However, God intervened and replaced his son with a sheep. As such, many families sacrifice a sheep to celebrate this holiday.

Now as an international who has never seen anything like this, I was a bit worried about how it would all go down. The days before Eid, many families bought sheep and kept them in their homes. THis created the worst sheep smell in the building- like a concentrated Calgary Stampede which you could never get rid of. Also the sheep would baa all day and all night, making sleep impossible.

The shops where to buy the sheep

On the day of Eid, we woke up to relative quiet; probably because all the sheep had already been slaughtered. Because it’s a major holiday, there wasn’t much to do. A bunch of us internationals decided to go walk through the medina to see what was happening.

The coolest thing that people were doing was roasting sheep heads on open flames. Basically every hundred metres or so, there would be a bunch of kids hanging around an open fire in the middle of the street, on top of which sat a couple sheep heads. This was to cook the brains of the sheep- called the tete de mouton.

Also on the streets were large piles of sheep skins. We never found out exactly what they were for, but I would wager they were to be sent off to the tanneries to make leather products.

All over the city there was a haze because of the roasting of the sheep heads. As well, the city had a strong smell of burning meat and recently killed animal (I wonder why). But it made for a cool picture

Because the city was shut down, we had a highly Moroccan meal… McDonalds…. then spent the rest of the day at the beach.