Channukah

Senegal's Israeli Embassy emailed all the Jewish volunteers to invite us to a Hannukah party in Dakar, but that was too far for me to travel. Hannukah is one of my favorite holidays and I did not want to miss it, so I did my own celebrating in Kolda.

I made my menorah from nine empty tomato paste or condensed milk cans that I filled with sand. I could not fit these on my window sill, so I lit my candles in front of my hut, right in the center of my family's compound. Kids gathered every night to watch.

After the lighting, a few kids would join me in the ritual Channukah dance, and then we played Dreidel. I don't have a dreidel here, so we took turns flipping three coins. If none came up heads, you did nothing, for one head you took all, two and you took half, three and you gave one. We played for peanuts, and the kids loved the gambling. The holiday could not have been nicer.