Mbruk Eidkum! Snu hada?

Well Eid Kbir(the big feast) has come and gone but the massive amounts of meat still remain. Eid started on Tues morning with every family expected to slaughter a sheep to honor the Prophet Mohammed.
I was awoken at 8:15 Tues morning with a phone call from my host brother asking me where I was. Not realizing the significance of the slaughter, I’d accidentally committed myself to attend the execution of 3 different families’ sheep that morning. It was going to be a busy day.
Thinking it was a very important religious holiday I cleaned myself up and wore my best clothes. Then when I arrived at my first house, and looked at everyone else’s attire, I quickly realized I was there to help slaughter a sheep and maybe nice clothes were a bad idea? The Imam (religious leader) came over and did the initial cut and then everyone helped in the butchering. I managed to stay mostly blood free (mainly by taking the roll of photographer) through the execution, organ removal and skinning but while helping to hang the dead sheep he unfortunately emptied his bowels onto my shoe. Karma? Other than that little incident the whole process seemed pretty clean and sanitary.
While the organs were still warm we made a fire and I began to prepare brochettes of liver and heart wrapped in stomach lining. The organ meat was surprisingly tasty and the stomach lining kind of reminded me of bacon fat. Yum! While eating it, I realized I have probably never eaten meat so fresh. After a few brochettes it was on to the next house.
I arrived at my buddy Hassan’s house in order to do more brochettes this time involving kidney as well. I didn’t make it to my host families’ house until afternoon just in time to sit down to a lunch of "mystery organ" stew including piecees of intestine. I don’t think I’ve ever consumed so much meat in one day. In a pre-Eid email my father (thanks dad) had told not to eat any meat not off the bone. Ironically I don’t think I ate any meat that was on the bone. Needless to say, I was a little concerned about how my stomach would react to the foreign invader sheep stomach but so far no problems (knock on wood).
The rest of this week has been a flurry of going over to people’s houses for more meals of sheep meat. Fortunately, nothing to scary (i.e. sheep head) has been placed in front of me yet though I did have a bite of sheep testical. Tasted nothing like chicken.
The other day I went over to my house families house only to find my host father. He asked if I would like to cook him lunch. Thinking he was kidding I said "ok!." He led me into the kitchen and hacked off some ribs from the hanging sheep carcass. He handed me the ribs, salt, bread, and tea, pointed to the fire and then left. All in all I think I did a pretty good job and prepared a tasty lunch. Then, while eating my ego was quickly deflated when I asked him if I was a good cook. His response "swiya." A little! Maybe medium rare next time? Tonight I think I'm gonna have some pasta.