Halloween

Picture a person who has never been outside of their village located in the middle of nowhere in Africa (99% of the people who live here).

Now picture this conversation with them:

"What are you doing tonight? It's Halloween!"

"WHAT IS HALLOWEEN?"

I bet you have never met anyone who has NO CLUE WHATSOEVER about Halloween. 

And I mean it: no idea, nothing at all.

So it's kinda hard to explain to them what Halloween is. I mean everybody has at least heard about it 

and that makes things easier but here they were staring at me with a blank look in their eyes. 

So I just started babbling something about witches, blood, scary things, ghosts, murderers.. Yeah that did not make a very good impression. So I tried again explaining that in the Western world it's just a day where we dress up and celebrate scary things decorating pumpkins outside our homes. Yeah well that was even worse. So I told them we do it just for fun and to have parties because the 1st of November is a public holiday (not like here!).. and they started to understand (I mean just mention parties and fun and things start to make sense). 

Then Geoffrey (remember Geoffrey? my favorite guy) said something really funny:

"Oh yeah we have something similar to that: we scatter ashes around our huts to keep the spirits away."

Yeah I guess, it could work. I mean they are all about beliefs like rainmakers, bonfires, souls of the ancient villagers blablabla.. so I guess It wouldn't be too hard for them to grasp the concept of Halloween.

Bottom line is:

They don't have Halloween but they sort of have it too. That's a big degree of civilization.

Now the best part is about to come: I am going to teach them how to carve pumpkins. Hope my camera will capture the looks on their faces.. and hopefully I'll be able to post the pics too!!

Happy Halloween!!