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The Washington West African Center (WAWAC) sponsored its 6th Annual Grandma Sukuri Ndogu event Saturday in Lynnwood, distributing bags and boxes of groceries to senior women from West Africa. About 20 women showed up and mingled in the first hour, and staff expected about 107 attendees throughout the afternoon to take the groceries, designated for breaking the fast during the month-long observance of Ramadan
Volunteer Coordinator Zainab Jibril said items in the food bags included fresh cabbage and root vegetables, coconut milk, Halal lamb, chicken drumsticks and canned tuna.
“We even have salmon,” she said, holding up a packaged filet.
Lynnwood resident Nogoi Cessay, who was one of the attendees, said she was grateful to the WAWAC director and staff for running this event.
“It’s not like [members of our family] don’t have food to eat at home, but it’s just it feels good to come get it from here,” she said, with the help of translation from WAWC Finance Manager Amie Secka. “Everybody coming together to pick up food.”
WAWAC Executive Director Pa Ousman Joof said “sukuri ndogu” means “sugar fast breaking” in Wolof, which is widely spoken in West Africa as a lingua franca.
“We use sugar a lot in Ramadan to make tea, and the fast-breaking meals are important,” Joof said. “That’s why the name “ndogu” is fast breaking, otherwise called ‘iftar’ in Arabic.”
Joof said ndogu includes the tradition of taking care of seniors, with family members and friends going to to the elders’ homes to give them money to buy sugar, he said.
Ramadan is a Muslim holy month, and Muslims fast for 30 days from sunrise to sunset. Joof added that Muslims not only abstain from food and water but also music, sexual activity, smoking, alcohol and other pleasures or harmful habits.
“You just get yourself closer to God,” he said. “If you were distracted by life and its problems and challenges, this is the moment for you to catch up. It’s also a way for us to feel the pain and issues that destitute and poor people go through. That’s one of the primary reasons we get to learn what the poor people are going through, if they don’t have food. If somebody does not have food for a whole day, how does that feel like? And we are encouraged to give and share.”
Joof said that elderly people are highly respected throughout West Africa because of their wisdom and lived experiences as well as their support for the younger generations.
“There is a saying in our language that what an elderly person can see while sitting on the floor, a child on top of a tree cannot see,” he said. “The grandmas and the religious leaders have to guide us in raising our kids, in settling disputes, in doing marriage counseling, leading by example. They went through stuff that they wouldn’t want the younger generation to go through.”
Through events like this, Joof said WAWAC bridges the gap between elders and younger generations. Children from WAWAC’s after-school program attend the Annual Back to School & Grandma’s Appreciation Day to help and serve the grandmas, learning from them and interacting face-to-face.
He added that every Ramadan, WAWAC serves around 400 plates of food, often at the Abubakr Islamic Center in Everett as a drive-thru event. This year, because of limited resources, Joof said they are hosting everything in Lynnwood as a sit-down dining event.
Meanwhile, Cessay sat down with her family to wait for her turn. She said that respecting elders is “the way we were brought up.”
“Elders are at the top of the hierarchy in the community. So if anyone is older than you, even if it’s a minute, you have to give them that [respect],” she said.
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