Honorable Mention / 2023 / Press / Feature Story

Tabaski- Feast of the Mutton

  • Photographer
    Christian Bobst, Switzerland

A girl looks for a way between the bodies of sacrificed sheep in the yard of the Ndiaye family in Ngor, a neighborhood of Dakar. During Tabaski, as the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha is called in Senegal, hundreds of thousands of sheep were sacrificed to a single day on June 28, 2023. Each family head of the Muslim community in Senegal is required to sacrifice a sheep and share it. The larger the family, the more sheep are needed to feed the entire family. The sacrifice is anything but symbolic, as sheep are expensive in Senegal and are loved like family members by many Senegalese.