Bu-ja-lou-da

Only a few lucky people in Morocco know what a Bu-ja-lou-da is and of course I happen to be one of them. Before Eid Kabir everyone in my little town was telling me that during Eid there is a man who dresses up like a sheep and runs through out town hitting people until they give him money. If the door of your house is open he will come inside and hit you.
What I did not understand was that first of all this is only in my region of the country and that is my little town alone there were 100 registered Bu-ja-lou-das. 100 is a lot different than 1. The morning of butchering the sheep my host cousins came over and started bring the skin of the sheep that was just killed on to our roof. When they had a pile of about 10, my little sister looked at my and said that is the Bu-ja-lou-da. I don’t know why ( I should have known better) but I thought the Bu-ja-lou-da was a costume, because I also thought that there was only one, I didn’t think that it he wore the skin from the just killed sheep. I thought sweet I know him, he won’t hit me! Then my little sister said all the boys are going to be Bu-ja-lou-das. That is when my other host sister said, “There are 100 this year.” WHAT?!?!
I am already like a walking attention target.... This was not good. The Bu-ja-lou-das didn’t come out that first night until dark and by that time I had forgotten about them, and I was walking home from visiting a few houses. I was just about home and I saw my first one, I stopped in my tracks and stared... I knew I was going to get hit and I didn’t have any money on me. He walked right up to me and inches away started chanting something scary and said what are you looking at. I said nothing and ran into the house. A Bu-ja-lou-da kind of resembles gorilla costume with a dreadlock wig and either your face painted white with tribal symbols or black with glitter. The Bu-ja-lou-da hits people with old bike tires or the hooves of the recently slaughtered sheep.
Of course after I saw my first one I saw several. All of the boys from the Darchebab were Bu-ja-lou-das and they came to visit more than once. Every Bu-ja-lou-da in town thought it was very funny to scary me and hangout outside of my house. I only got hit 7 times, but they were all not hard and out of fun. Some say that the Bu-ja-lou-da needs to hit you for good luck, if that’s true then this should be a good year. :)