Garangau Day

Garangau (pronounced garrangow– rolled r’s) occurs mid way thru Ramadan – it roughly translates to “festival of children”. It’s kind of like the Arabic version of Halloween. Traditionally, children go ‘trick or treating’ – except they knock on doors and sing traditional Arabic songs for treats – usually nuts and sweets (raw nuts and caramelised fruit)…YAY! These days, the children still go from door to door to entertain (dressed in gorgeous national costume) and receive proper ‘western’ sweets.

The school celebrates Garangoa Day every year. It is customary to give and receive a garangau gift – the school is offered many lovely little (and some huge) garangau gifts! These are traditional and each has a ‘story’ attached. The school gave each child a rather elaborate ceramic door with Hessian bag of nuts and sweets. The ‘door’ is a common symbol in these parts – it represents the ‘door to paradise’ (heaven) when if you comply with the 7 pillars of Islam – the door is open to you.

Ashur dressed in his lovely traditional costume for Garangau Day!

Spot the Aussies - Ashur and his lovely teacher, Sue-Ellen!

All of the children dressed in amazing clothing – some dripping with real gold from their head to their feet. One of the traditional games played by the children is similar to ‘duck, duck, goose’ – where one child walks behind the circle of children saying something about Mohommed the Prophet is coming, so close your eyes and don’t peek and then he drops his skull cap behind one child (the chosen one!) and they chase each other – first one into the open gap ‘wins’…the words are “Karangau KarKau, Aethoona Allahu Yuetheekum, aethoona min malillah, Sallam lakum Abdulla” (Give us something, Allah will richly bless you). All of the children looked absolutely gorgeous in a variety of colours and fabrics – I was insanely jealous and wanted to wear one! I am hoping for a garangau dress for next year!

Proud parents walked their children into the classroom – most had stupidly large bags / trays / woven baskets of garangau gifts for the children and teachers. (I was forewarned to bring a very big bag to school this day – to ferry the prezzies home in!).

Prezzies I bought home

Each group was walked up to the Primary school’s hall – where the festivities were led by the grade 6’ers. One little boy sung the Quaran and had me mesmerised! It was really very haunting …regardless of what he was singing about – avenging the sinners etc - it was simply amazing.

Singing the Quaran

It was a very crowded hall full of classes and families - some children participated in a game of tag tag tagiah and sung some traditional songs (we were all supposed to entertain the families with this – but luckily for me, it was too crowded and I got to sit and observe with my class! Although, I practised a little (the words of the song) – I just couldn’t cut it!

Once back in the classrooms – we each had a small party (parents provided the party food – now, that’s a blog in itself!!). One of my mothers’ is a very interesting person! I have decided that no matter where you are in the world – there’s a ‘Westie’ in every group!!! This one person was ruffling through the boxes of presents – taking armfuls for herself and I was told later, by another person who understood her Arabic – she was saying such things which would translate to “oh, cool! Check this out! Alright!” It gave us something to laugh about later!
Gifts were dispensed and children left for the day (it was only 10.00am). There was a lot of cleaning up to do afterward – so was very happy to do that without ‘help’!…the hyped up, sugar enhanced style of help…

Our favourite prezzie - scary doll with face cover! The best thing about all of this is that these gifts are 'crafted' in Doha and specifically for Garangau!