They Called Naftalan By His Illustrious Name

Turn left.

I traveled far and long to the tropics of the distant south for winter break, like a migratory raptor a few months late on her journey. Except that Azerbaijan was not extremely far or extremely south or extremely warm, but it was 1000 kilometers to Baku and then a few more on the way back towards Naftalan.

Oil Workers Street in Baku (Neft/Naft is oil, a theme for this trip)

A friendly baker who took our accidental invasion of her yard very well. Baku.

Baku was lovely, I took the train there, ate way too much food because I was trying to try everything in two days, and met some interesting and kind people, but I'm not going to write about it in depth here because all I did was typical tourist stuff. I was not so kind to my Twitter followers though, so if you really want to see a bunch of buildings and fire mountains/temples/memorials from my point of view, you may. I'll be back, since I have new friends to see & a still very long list of foods I want to eat. Plus my identification of some of the ducks on the shore was inconclusive (but I want to volunteer at the Besh Barmag migration count someday, which I'm sure will more than solve that problem).

My fake husband & translator Matthew, and my new friend & guide (via Twitter!) Ana. Yanar Dag (outside of Baku).

Trying to look casual, catching a glimpse of life as a young person in Baku with Ana - pomegranate wine, her friend's band, a long conversation about love & politics & change.

Anyway, to the important stuff. Naftalan, city of dreams! I read about Naftalan earlier this year in this apparently Azerbaijan-sponsored CNN article and immediately had to go. Naftalan is famous for its extra-thick crude oil, which is not good for the stuff oil is usually good for (aka making petroleum projects), but reportedly has healing properties. If you believe the doctors of Naftalan, it can treat over 70 skin, joint, and bone diseases, and has anesthetic and disinfectant properties, among many others. I did not believe them, but nonetheless I went, because where else in the world can you intentionally and legally bathe yourself in crude oil? I traveled with just one other volunteer, because apparently this idea does not appeal to everyone. Luckily for me the one that did come spoke Russian.

Took the train to Goran, and a taxi from there to Naftalan.

The train. Goran. 

A sweet tower outside of the Goran train station. 

 The legend of the oil's discovery has a caravan leaving a camel (I think I was told it was a shepard and a sheep but I'm not sure because... Russian...) behind that had fallen ill into a pool of oil. When the caravan returned some weeks later, the animal was miraculously healed. The first written record of the oil comes from 12th century Azerbaijani-Persian icon Nizami, a poet who wrote about its export in trade caravans. A hundred years later Marco Polo referenced "anointing the camels in maladies of the skin, and for other purposes; for which reason people come from a great distance for it." For the record, tragically, I saw not a single camel in Azerbaijan.

Naftalan alternates between cultivated lushness

and golden flatness.

The CNN article refers to the fancy resort in town, Qarabagh, named after the partially-disputed region (often spelled Karabakh, also known as Artsakh if you're in Armenia in the last few years) whose beautiful snowy mountains you can see to the west of town. Qarabagh is $70 dollars (the Azerbaijani currency is the manat, but I will use US dollars in this article for the sake of my main reader) per night, including oil treatments, room, and three meals a day. I did not stay there. I stayed at Gozel Naftalan (Beautiful Naftalan) Health Resort instead, at a much more reasonable $24 per night, though a teahouse conversation told us it would only be like $17 if we hadn't booked online. Oh well. It is the cheapest one on Booking.com. Like in Baku, the old Soviet buildings had been mostly torn down or extensively renovated, so all the resorts look fairly new though the inside of my room was a bit more of a period piece.

The front of this building never receives sun, I don't know how it's possible but I tried for three days to get a better pic.

View from the cafeteria, mountains to the east. Naftalan.

When we arrived on the first afternoon, after paying twice the normal cab fare (if only I was the one who could argue in Russian!) we were immediately taken to our rooms without them asking who we were, and the staff (the director and his assistant) stood outside our rooms while we put our stuff down, took us to the lunchroom, and then immediately to begin our treatments. Once I decided to go to Naftalan I had stopped doing research because I don't like to know too much about the places I'm going in advance, so I was just expecting an oil bath and nothing else. This was not the case.

Welcome. Naftalan.

 The first thing we had to do was take a cardiogram, but this was not the cardiogram that I have seen in American hospitals. Instead of plastic bits there were little metal cups attached to little balloons that suctioned to your body. Apparently all was well, because I never saw the results or heard about them again. The next step in the medical examination process was them asking if I had any breathing problems, and then we were done and ready to go! They still had not asked for our passports or payments. I was still in my lace-shirt-fancy-skirt-and-stockings travelling outfit, which I then was forced to remove and then put back on parts of in about 7 different small rooms. I was more ready the next day, since the schedule is more or less the same every day, though we got a late start on day 1, after lunch.

I wasn't ready for the cardiogram so I didn't get any pics. Here's some other device. Naftalan.

The schedule began every day with breakfast at 8 am, followed by "physiotherapy" treatments in any order, the oil bath, some rest, lunch at 12:30, free time, and then dinner at the obscenely early hour of 5:30 pm.

Lunch. Soup, salad, greens, & then a meat dish (some form of rice or potatoes with 1 meatball or 1 chunk of lamb). Naftalan.

The first treatment was a naftalan oil massage with a small metal appliance that a woman moved in small circles around my back. The oil was apparently a refined version of the brown gunk we were to bathe in, and was applied my back with a paintbrush. The thin yellow oil looked like baby oil or cooking oil, but it definitely smelled more toxic. I don't know what this treatment was supposed to do exactly, but she was delighted to have me there. Almost all of the women were; I think I was an exciting change from the normal crowd of 50+ Russians and Azerbaijanis. They kept calling me a beautiful chocolate Barbie, which was weird but well-intentioned.

The massage appliance was attached to this box. IDK. Naftalan. 

Waiting for my treatment, tea & moon pies. Naftalan.

After the appliance oil massage I received some sort of electric current treatment on my back, since they had asked what hurt (I guess they assume you're not there for fun), and my back and shoulder had actually been in quite severe pain for several days. For this one they put a warm wet towel on my back and then attached two little nodes to a machine that sent the current, and then put a blanket on me and let the electricity do its job. Halfway through the technician changed it to a sort of pulse instead of a constant current. Unfortunately for me there doesn't seem to have been a set level, so the technician just chooses a random one and assumes you'll tell her if it hurts. This becomes a problem if you only know how to say "thank you" in Azeri and various food words in Russian. On days two and three they mixed it up and I got the electric current treatment on my knees instead, but one of those also hurts from a residual rugby injury, so that was fine.

A flattering angle~ Naftalan.

This cruel machine, made more charming by the addition of pinecones. Naftalan.

Next was a paraffin-naftalan back treatment(almost every treatment seems to involve naftalan oil in some way), in which a thick layer of wax was applied to my back, and then I was covered in a layer of bubble wrap and another thick blanket, and left to lay for 10 minutes. Every treatment takes 10 minutes. Afterward the technician comes by, scrapes the wax off, and then returns it to the melting pot. Don't think about it too much. Once again, I have no idea what the purpose of this was, but after the initial scorching hot wax feeling it felt kind of nice. To visualize, imagine three cots in an office, separated by shiny orange and yellow curtains with scalloped rims. You bring your own sheet (from your room) and put it on the cot in every room (almost every treatment has its own room), and then wait for the technician to finish the old man next to you. You can hear him laughing or gasping at the pain, or the videos he watches on his phone while he waits for the 10 minutes to be up.

The wax off my back. Naftalan.

Waiting Room. Naftalan.

After this I went to another room where the technician brushed more oil, this time on my legs, which were in a sort of wooden tube with heat lamps, covered by a blanket. On day 1 I didn't have the wifi password yet, so I just stared at the curtains. No idea what this treatment was supposed to do.

Pre-blanket, a mystery. Naftalan.

The next treatment was with a strange red-lit device with a much milder electrical current that the technician moved around my legs and feet in small circles. On days two and three it was my head, with a comb-shaped attachment instead of day one's blob. This felt sort of nice and sort of strange. The technician called her English-speaking fiance on day two to explain. It is apparently good for your blood.

A very sweet technician. I forgot her name already though :(. Naftalan. 

Rhinestones & Allah desk display. Naftalan.

Where the magic happens~ Naftalan.

The penultimate treatment was a classic massage, which probably did more for my shoulder pain than any of the other more complicated treatments. What a luxury for a Peace Corps volunteer though, a 10-minute massage, three days in a row!

Treatment book! Carry it with you always. Naftalan.

The list. Accepting translations or explanations... Naftalan.

And finally: the baths. After all of the treatments to soften your muscles and warm your feet and move your blood comes the reason for the day, the oil bath. You buy a sponge and extra shampoo before going in, and bring the weird yellow towel from your room. You are ready. You go to a small changing room and take off all your clothes and hope that was what you were supposed to do, and then an older woman (or a man if you're a guy) walks in and takes you to your bath. Mine was initially half empty, with a cinder-block in the middle that I was told to sit on, while the bath filled up with warmish, viscous, & dark golden-bronze oil. In retrospect, I think she just had me sit on the block on day one because it was later in the afternoon than they normally work and she didn't want the hassle of scraping the oil of my entire body. On the other two days I got to sit all the way in the tub, though the cinder-block was still there sort of awkwardly between my feet. On one day the oil was on the cooler end of lukewarm, and was not as enjoyable as it could have been. On every day the woman helping me sat there and watched me for the full 10 minutes. I wasn't sure if it was more or less awkward that we could barely talk because of my atrocious Russian. Then she helped me up (a bathtub full of oil is slippery, who knew?) and used a metal spatula to scrape off the first layer - it's thick, and stays on in an opaque layer otherwise. Afterward we worked together to get off the rest using tissue paper, and then we went to the shower, where she sponged the first layer of oil off my back before leaving the rest of the job to me. It usually took three rounds of head-to-toe aggressive soaping, and I still left with a faint odor of oil, but I kind of liked that part.

Proof. Naftalan.

My tub, my cinderblock, my <3. Naftalan.

My sponge, rip. Naftalan.

On day two we were also invited to participate in 8 am urine and blood testing in the basement of the sanatorium. I politely but firmly declined to have my blood tested while on vacation, and they never told us the results of the urine test, but hopefully it was fine.

Naftalan products for sale in town. I got the 3 manat cream instead of the recommended 20 one, sorry I'm a Peace Corps volunteer. Naftalan.

The source. Naftalan.

The oil bath (and the rest of the treatment) is supposed to solve all of your problems, especially skin conditions and joint problems. There is a Crutches Museum in town, full of the crutches left behind by people who were miraculously healed in Naftalan, but it was unfortunately being renovated during our visit. Naftalan is 50 kilometers away from Azerbaijan's second largest city, Ganja, and there wasn't much else to do in the afternoons post-treatment. We drank tea at numerous teahouses, and I was thankful to be traveling with a guy since they're very male-dominated environments. There was a bakery, a mosque we didn't go inside, two shawarma shops, a cemetery, some deserted buildings, some very new buildings, and a grocery store, my favorite. Mostly there was just walking - around town, in the park, through another park, in the fields and emptiness on the edges of town. You could see the mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh on one side, and some other ones a bit further away on the opposite side, both covered in snow. On one walk we visited the source of the famous oil - a few big storage tanks, accompanied by a guy and a dog and a big fence. The stream running by had a layer of black oil floating on the top, and nearby oil derricks were pumping out more for our baths.

Döner in Naftalan. Basically like Georgian shauarma, unfortunately.

Some nice grass, doesn't take long to walk out of town. Naftalan.

Creeks running half black. Naftalan.

:D Naftalan.

Exploration time was limited by the winter sunset and the set dinner time of 5:30 pm. On one night there was a concert (a guy with an electric keyboard and a mic doing covers) and dinner was delayed till six while some of the kids staying with their families danced around. The food was actually quite good - simple, healthy, but still Azeri enough that that I didn't feel like I was missing out by eating at the same place for most of the trip.

Cafeteria. Naftalan.

Supplemented beverages: pomegranate wine & Turkish magnesium water (good), Azerbaijani cognac & Siberian grass soda (not as good). Naftalan.

Dinner - a meatball, potatoes, greens, salad, ayran, bread, sweet bread for dessert. Naftalan.

While I obviously loved every part of this trip deeply, one of my favorite things was the variety of people we met. All of the other visitors (about 30, with a max. resort capacity of around 300) were Azerbaijani or Russian, but Russian in the sense of citizenship rather than ethnic identity. This was a new experience for me - I've read about the ethnic diversity of Russia, especially as it pertains to Soviet nationality policy and so on, but I'd never really experienced it, and suddenly we were sitting at a table with a couple from Makhachkala whose native language was Tabasaran (I'd never even heard of it before) while they told us about some American guy who lives in a village somewhere else in Daghestan with his six kids and speaks fluent Tabasaran, or we were walking around town and met a group of older women from our resort who were Tatars from Udmurtia, talking about how difficult the Udmurt language was (they didn't speak it, and once again I had never heard of it).

Our Tatar friends. They were not impressed with the resort food & were on a doomed mission to find better. Naftalan.

An friendly Azeri guy who I think said his name was Phillipe at a 1940s teahouse. Naftalan.

Naftalan was a beautiful place to visit, calm in the winter but with signs that it becomes quite lively in the summer. If I didn't expect to have to do remedial language training before graduate school I'd deeply consider coming back after Peace Corps and staying for the recommended month. It's peaceful, cheap, interesting, everyone was kind, & I learned a lot. What more do you want from a trip? I still have to visit the renovated crutches museum...

I already regret not buying one of these, but I was out of cash. Naftalan.

Tin roof decorations abound. This one was my favorite. Naftalan.

Plane Tree. Naftalan.

Abandoned building lurking, my specialty. Naftalan.

Back in Georgia. Red Bridge. 

Eids aka ბაირამები aka أعياد

The neighborhood men working on 2017's cow, a collective project (Keda, Georgia)

Eid al Adha (or Eid al Kabir in the Maghreb or Kurban Bayram in Turkey and Georgia), or the Feast of the Sacrifice, is on of the two holidays celebrated by Muslims across the world. Eid al Adha is considered the holier of the two, and honors Abraham's willingness to kill his son Ishmael on god's command (the Muslim version of the story differs slightly from the Christian and Jewish versions in which Isaac is the son to be sacrificed). The holiday begins on the 10th day of the 12th month of the Islamic calendar, Dhu al Hijjah, during which many Muslims are also on hajj (pilgrimage) in Mecca. This year, that corresponds to the 21st of August. Celebrations differ across the world, but one thing they all have in common is the sacrifice of animals, representing the animal that Abraham found under his knife as he prepared to sacrifice his son on Mt. Arafat.

Eid al Fitr in Ibri, Oman 2015

Eid al Fitr, the other widely celebrated holiday, marks the end of Ramadan, the 9th month of the Islamic calendar, during which devout Muslims fast from dawn to sunset every day. Muslims give money to the poor (and often any children in the household) before saying the special Eid al Fitr prayer.

Visualize Keda summer- hot, rural, humid, hills, perfect (2018)

I have now had the privilege of experiencing both Eids with three very different host families, in Morocco, Oman, and Georgia. I'm from a basically agnostic Thai Buddhist/Catholic (?) family, so grew up on typical American Christmas, with lots of presents, an annual Christmas ornament, a picture book with an abbreviated and not very religious Jesus story, and the occasional Christmas mass with my grandparents, so all of this was fairly new to me in 2014, minus the occasional news story full of bloody sheep heads from Cairo or whatever. I only learned the story of Abraham because I took AP Art History in 12th grade (turns out the history of Western art is mostly churches and things that go in or on churches. Ask me about the paper model of the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat aka St. Basils).

My street, Rabat 2014

"Please don't panic." - Rabat, Morocco 2014

Jad at the sheep market (Rabat 2014)

In Rabat I lived with a middle-class young grandmother, her daughter, and her daughter's young son. It was a small household in a tall, cool, and dark medina house. I had acquired my first real smartphone two months prior. I wasn't close to the host family, because my Arabic was terrible, their Arabic (darija) was incomprehensible because it was mostly French, and honestly I wasn't very good about trying to build a good relationship with them. I spent all of my time outside of the house wandering or traveling and I never really learned much about them, their beliefs or thoughts or even their favorite foods or basic stuff like that. I could only assume that since the host grandmother was divorced and wore pants instead of the djellaba typical in our neighborhood that they weren't very conservative. She always had a head covering but it was usually a hat. Anyway, one day we bought a sheep, kept it on our roof for a few days while my host brother ran around yelling "knife! knife!" in baby darija and waving a plastic butter knife, and then on Eid the neighborhood butcher came by, killed it, and then cut it into manageable pieces. Luckily the roof was already painted red. They left the skin on the roof for a very long time, and I never figured out why.

Our cute roof sheep, Rabat 2014

The first time I remember seeing a non-fish animal die for me to eat (Rabat 2014)

Then we ate it! They set up a little barbecue INSIDE THE HOUSE and made delicious sheep foods. I ate a liver sandwich for the first time, and then a lot of other organs, and also pretty much every other sheep part. Other people on my study abroad program had lots of guests or had cows killed in their living rooms instead of sheep on the room, but my first Eid was pretty low key. We ate, and then went back to our typical daily activities. My host family gave some of meat to the neighbors, as you're supposed to do, though not enough for us to not eat sheep for like the next month. One part of the holiday is wealthy people who can afford to sacrifice an animal are supposed to share with poorer people who aren't able to eat meat as often and buy their own sacrifice. I went for a walk that afternoon and the streets were quiet and empty, except for young men tending fires full of burning sheep heads and hooves, one of the more ~heavy metal~ afternoon strolls I've gone on. There weren't any men in the household, so no one went to the mosque for prayers or anything. For an American used to holidays as a BIG DEAL it seemed very low key - sheep killed and done - but they were also a low key family, so it shouldn't have been a huge surprise.

Crunchy (Rabat 2014)

Bread, sheep, olives, eggplant, yum (Rabat 2014)

My next Eid was Eid al Fitr in Ibri, Oman (a provincial city on the edge of the Empty Quarter). The day before was 117° F. My "host family" here wasn't really a host family, but rather the family of my language partner, whose house I occasionally stayed at. This family was very, very different from my Moroccan one (high key?). My language partner's husband worked for an oil company, they had the entire extended family in one house, they had a maid. This relationship was better than the one I had with my Morocco host family, but was still pretty superficial. I adored my language partner, but we had nothing in common, and since we didn't actually live together, nothing to force us into commonality. We talked a lot, and I learned about her views on race and things like that, but I never responded the way I wanted to, because I never got that comfortable. Holidays with her were fun though. Ramadan in Oman was harsh days of fasting (not my fasting, but no water, every day over 100° has got to be brutal) alternating with nights of wandering the town in a pack of girls and eating the weirdest, richest Instagram video dessert recipes at like 4 am. Also a lot of Vimto.

Ibri at dusk, 2015

Honestly, if you see this, buy it & drink it, it's great (Source: http://www.vimto.co.za)

Host cousin Hagar & I, approx. 8am and the ground is already hot enough to burn my feet (Ibri 2015)

Eid al Fitr began with waking up at like 5:30 am or some unreasonably early time to discover all of the Omani girls already dressed and made up and ready to go. I got into my borrowed Salalah-style wedding dress (we were not given a choice in dresses), and we all went to the family's patriarchal home with about 100 other people, were given money by the adults (in my experience, random Americans will always be included in the "children" category), went to a riverbed market (Eiood) to spend the money on toys and sweets (only children, male chaperones, and the Americans), and then went back to the patriarch's house where other family members set up little stands selling food like barbecue, ramen, french fries and ice cream (and also fireworks). The Omani women mostly stayed inside in the women's room, but I took the freedom to wander. This Eid was basically a party, with beautiful dresses, a lot of money exchanging hands, and greasy, sugary, delicious food, followed by a purgatory of photo-taking and napping, and then 14 girls in one car being driven to eat Pizza Hut in the park for dinner.

Eating mtsvadi at Eid al Fitr in Ibri, Oman 2015. This is party Eid. 

And finally, Georgia! Morocco and Oman taught me a lot about language learning and cultural integration and mistakes and regrets I didn't want to repeat and also I've matured and I'm here for two years instead of a matter of months, which has all helped a lot with my time here, and I think I'm that much happier for it (I am very happy). My relationship with my host family is much better than previous ones, both because of their personalities and a conscious effort on my part. I also have a 12 year old host sister who really wants me to be like a real sister to her, since she doesn't have one, and won't. In the year I've been here I've visited her father's grave with the family, had crying host cousins run to me when they're scared late at night, gone to a collective five days of funeral, including three for someone who I'd gotten to know and care for, yelled at my host sister for mindlessly reposting racist stuff on Facebook, and been offered pocket money by my host grandfather every time I leave the house even though I pay them to live here. This relationship has changed my perspective on their holidays and traditions too. Instead of an external observer, I participate - I entertain the kids while their parents cook and help set the table and clean up and explain to angry host uncles why I haven't visited, where before I just wandered and watched. It's been interesting to compare Adjaran Islam to my previous experiences, mostly because they're practically nothing alike, but again, my experience here is not like my study abroad ones were. I don't know how much of it is former Soviet Union, or Georgia, or Adjara, or Keda, or village life versus city life, or class, or my host family in particular, or just a change in my perspective but it's so very different here. They're probably the richest family living in this village, but the lifestyle is very different from old Rabati people, and radically different from the upper class Omani life. Everyone farms. Most drink, they cook pork in my house though not everyone eats it, my house computer's screenshot is a picture of my host sister on an excursion to a church. At the same time, the older women wear headscarves (but so do a lot of the Christian ones), my host grandmother prays 5 times a day, and the people that did fast fasted for real, while still working on the farm and the kindergarten in the summer heat (not the air-conditioned nap days of my Omani experience). My educated guess is that my host family is very religious for Keda, but considerably less religious than communities further up in the mountains (Khulo) or in Kvemo Kartli or Pankisi. My Moroccan and Omani experiences both seemed strictly family based, but in the village it seems like everyone participates together, though family members stick around the longest. 

The view from my bedroom window through the persimmons, Keda 2017

For my first Eid al Adha in Keda, I had scheduled a summer camp for that day and half my students didn't show up, but no one told me why, including my (English speaking and usually very helpful) host sister. And then I came home and half the village was in my yard dismembering a cow. I think they just didn't think I would be interested, since it's not actually the biggest holiday here. This year they didn't even do the cow at our house - I guess the Muslim families in my village take turns, so all the men except for one grumpy host cousin disappeared for the afternoon, and returned with a reusable shopping bag full of meat. Unlike in Rabat, we don't appear to have a local butcher, so last year all the dudes just grabbed whatever implements they had and went at it - some were clearly more experience than others, but just imagine two guys holding a massive cow leg and one guy swinging an axe at it trying to break the bone, while little chips of it fly around the yard. 

I looked for a picture of something other than dead cow but failed (Keda 2017)

My host family visited graves this morning with halva, baklava, and roses, and then cooked the meat for dinner, but my host grandfather's birthday party the day before was a much bigger event. It had to end at exactly midnight though, because drinking on Eid is not permitted. By the time dinner rolled around, all the guests were pretty much gone anyway, and more tragically, all the leftovers from the birthday had been eaten. It was such a non-event that I went to Georgian tutoring in the middle of the day. My tutor is Christian, but her neighbor (and my 6th grade student) brought her a plastic bag full of meat anyway. My teenage Christian neighbor (from a Muslim family) went to visit her father's grave today too. Likewise, when the father in my host family's was alive, they had a Christmas tree every year. New Years and Easter were also marked more enthusiastically than Eid al Adha, though I think that might be because Eid al Adha is a religious holiday, whereas New Years and Easter are just for fun - fireworks, pretty eggs, and pasca and no contemplation of death and god. I didn't take any pictures this year, except for one of my baby host cousin watering my plants because there was nothing to take pictures of. 

Nikolozi, King of the Sea (Keda 2018)

Last year's Bayrami feast, because we had to feed all the guys that were hacking apart the cow (Keda 2017)

I missed Eid al Fitr both years, so stay updated for next year I guess.

Waiting - 29 guests for Mawlid (Keda 2017)

Addendum: events that have featured more religious activity here than either Eid: funerals and Mawlid (მევლუდი), Mohammed's birthday and a holiday that very conservative denominations of Islam reject. Both of those events had an imam come to the house for prayers. For my host great-grandmother's funeral, the imam said some words over the body inside with the women (who sit and mourn around the coffin for days), before going outside and leading an actual prayer with the men, who stood hands up in the rain. Her shroud was green, with Arabic writing and a picture of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, the most overtly Islamic symbols I'd seen in our house aside from the Quran that's kept in our top kitchen shelf. During the Mawlid prayer was the only time I've had to wear a head scarf for anything Islam related in Georgia - you have to wear one in Orthodox churches, but apparently not in mosques here if you're just looking around. In conclusion, different countries are different places, and I'm not shocked that a religion as big as Islam is practiced in different ways, but I love having the opportunity to see these different traditions, to try to understand why they're there, and to keep learning. 

My host grandmother's headscarf and prayer rug, my host great-grandmother's shroud (Keda 2018)

Mawlid feast (Keda 2017)

Bonus pic for anyone who finished reading this: host grandfather Shalva, Eid al Adha 2017, Keda