A Very Happy Ayyám-i-Há

This year Ayyám-i-Há included an entire weekend, so we had to host a party on Saturday! (But what, you may ask, is Ayyám-i-Há?  I will answer that at the end of this post!)  For Saturday’s party, I made meatballs from a piece of meat from the leg of a cow, which I put through our meat-grinder.  I added some grated broccoli and cauliflower stems, eggs, breadcrumbs, herbs and spices to the ground meat.  I also added some olive oil to the mix, since Rwandan beef is so very lean.  I made sauce from roma tomatoes from the market, and herbs from a neighbor’s garden.  Josephine prepared a big pot of boiled green bananas (igitoki) from our back garden in a delicious sauce.  We made egg salad, rice, yoghurt, coleslaw, and a salad of fresh avocado and sliced tomatoes.  I made a pumpkin dessert using a fresh pumpkin from the market.  Since I only have one pan that is like a pie pan, I decided to make the “pie” in a large cake pan.  For a “crust” I made a mixture of oatmeal, butter, chopped walnuts, sugar and spices.  I pressed this into the bottom of the pan, then poured the double recipe of pumpkin pie filling over it and baked it for about an hour.  The end result was delicious.  There was very little food left at the end of the meal.

We had invited about twenty people who live near us, but of those, only seven came.  A group of neighborhood children had come for our Saturday children’s class, so we invited them to stay.  While Josephine and I served the food, Anne did a wonderful job of entertaining our guests.  For activities, there was “keeping balloons in the air”, story-telling (we took turns wearing the Story Beads and telling an amusing story, preferably in Kinyarwanda.), and singing.  Later, we went outside for more balloon play, dancing and “Frisbee” using a round, woven place-mat.  Everyone had a great time, and Anne declared it the best Ayyám-i-Há party we had ever had or attended.

How many balloons can we all keep in the air? (And get into a photo!) 

Josephine putting on the "Story Beads".

Dancing with Balloons.

Ayyám-i-Há, which translates as “Days of Joy”, or “Days outside of time” is a Baha’i celebration which precedes the nineteen day fast.  It is a time of celebration, gift giving, acts of charity, and social gatherings.  Another name for this period, which is four or five days long, depending on the year, is the “Intercalary Days”.  You see, the Baha’i calendar has nineteen months of nineteen days each, which gives us 361 days.  So, in most years, we need four extra days to complete a year, while in leap years we need five.  These celebratory days come just before the nineteen day month of fasting.  During that month, which began today, (March 2, 2015 in the popular Gregorian calendar, or, in the Baha’i calendar, the First of `Alá’, which means Loftiness) we abstain from food and beverage from sunrise until sunset. 

“Fasting is of two kinds - spiritual and material. The spiritual fasting comes first, and is the soul’s refusal or denial of all kinds of evil actions and habits - this is the important fasting. The bodily fasting or abstinence from food, is a sign or witness to the inward fasting, and is of no value by itself. But when both kinds of fasting go together, then the effect upon the soul is as ‘light upon light.”
— 
- Abdu’l-Bahá

The last day of the month of fasting is the day before the Spring Equinox, which for us is the first day of the year.  Since each day in the Baha’i calendar begins when the sun sets on the preceding day, the last day of the fast is followed immediately by the celebration of Naw-Rúz (translated as “New Day”: our new-year’s day).