Ain't No Party like a Funeral Party (by Charles)

Last night, the night of January 6th I got very little sleep because music was blaring a couple kilometers away from me from 7pm till when I left on my bike for Dapong at 8am the next morning. The silver lining for this was that Gibson, my new puppy could not be heard crying even thought he did very well last night in his kenel, aka my shower, aka a walled of corner in between my house and latrine. This party was a funeral party that is two days of music, dancing,
food, and Damm (Chakaba).

I went to my first funeral party during post visit week as only and observer of bunch a people around a traditional house with a neon green light and tinny music blaring out preventing any attempt I sought for explanation about the party from my homologue. Once I got to post as an official volunteer, we hit up two funerals back to back and I got a real taste for how the Moba party.

The party from what I experienced goes a little like this:

Everyone, everyone, I mean the entry village goes to the house of the family of the guy who died. Everyone sits in circles drinking Chakaba, a warm millet beer drank out of calabashes. After a couple of calabashes people might move to another circle for more Chakaba or for a round of SoDaBe, a local gin that is distilled from palm wine and can and is used to degrease bycycle chains. A women will come out and offer some type of food: rice balls, pate (corn, mush, jello) with some type of sauce with a lot of oil and some type of meat. This is the exciting part for me because I have shook so many and of course we are sans a fork. On top of that there is the add mystery of eating in the dark and not really knowing what you are eating. Questions I often
find myself asking myself are: Is this skin or intestine? What meat is this? Is that a bone or a rock and if so can I swallow it? After thoroughly gorged on drink and food I might dance or talk a little and then it is off to bed.

This is the case normally with funerals but New Years was the biggest party of the year. I had my first calabash at 7:30am and my last at 8:30pm in between I ate so much food that I could literal see my stomach bloated with food. My last meal I was eating around the meat on my plate when my friend looks to me and says "Charles, eat the meat."