Khar Bii is a televised ovine conformation show/Senegalese Idol/beauty pageant  on the air in (obv) Senegal. I heard about it this morning on NPR and loved it sincerely; I enjoyed Ms. Quist-Arcton’s report (she is always excellent), but I could have done without Inskeep’s mocking tone during the intro and outro. Yes, Steve, livestock are important to a lot of people, even in the developed west! Off to Youtube where a lot of the Khar Bii episodes have been posted. Here’s what’s billed as the finale:

*

Francophones, help me out. I can pick out a bunch of French – mouton is, for example, prominent and I pick out bits of the explanation of toxoplasmosis, but I’m mostly lost. Is it because my French skills are so horrible, or are the presenters speaking a mix of French and Wolof? Or perhaps Dakar-Wolof? I think I heard ‘nyami’.

TIL (things I learned, in internetspeak):

• How to spell Ofeibia Quist-Arcton’s first name. A lovely name.
• “Wolof words in English are believed to include yam, from Wolof nyami “to eat food”, nyam in Barbadian English ^[3] meaning to eat (also compare Seychellois nyanmnyanm, also meaning to eat ^[4] )” *
• Concours Culinaire sounds much more inviting that Cook-off.
• Fufu! Disclosure – I knew about fufu previously. I am loving the notion of a beauty contest where cook-the-contestants is a prominent element.