Monday, November 30, 2009

Note on Eid Al Adha's day (1430H)


Today is Thursday, November 26, 2009. I am visiting my parents here in Cisewu, a small town located in southern Bandung. It's about 90 km from Bandung and around 105 km from Garut. You may reach this place either through Garut or Pangalengan. Garut is actually our regency, yet most people here prefer to come to Bandung to fulfill all their needs. I do also come to Bandung to study at one of the finest universities there.

Since tomorrow is one of the greatest days for us – Muslims, therefore I am coming back home to celebrate it with my family. Yes, tomorrow is the day of the festival of sacrifice or more popular as “Hari raya Qurban” among Indonesians. This year is quite special for me since one of my family members, my little sister, is going to make sacrifice by slaughtering a goat. She asked my parents to make a sacrifice, as the proof of her earnestness she even donated her saving money from school to buy a 1.1-million sheep. I'm proud of having a smart fifth-grader sister like her.

Well, I don't make a sacrifice this year since last year I did it. In 2008, the price of goat I bought was nine hundred thousand rupiahs, 200 thousands rupiahs much cheaper than it is now which my sister buys. This raising price does make sense to us as the price of all goods including livestock also is increasing as the cause of inflation and scarcity of goat in my town.
Making sacrifice in hard time like these days is sort of a must for those who have. I don't say that parents or family of mine are affluent, but we’ll try to make it yearly, insya Allah. I think it's not a hard thing to buy a sheep for qurban if we have strong passion to make it. There's nothing to do with having money or not. To me, the first most important thing is the intention, just make it beforehand guys. Please do verbalize it long long before you make a sacrifice. Then the second point is then probably about so-called foldable stuff. We can save it if we are really eager to do it. Trust me; it isn't that hard to allocate money for Qurban. You just need to save 3 thousand rupiahs per day and in a year you'll gain more than 1 million and that suffices you to buy a goat.

Sadly to say, people who make Qurban this year seems decreasing in my city, there are fewer people who make it than last year. It happens in almost all part in this regency. It is probably because the difficulties we’ve got as earth quake struck us lately. It makes me sad if that is really the cause for not making qurban. But surprisingly, there’s miracle happened, there’s a company donated some money to make qurban. Yes, we do thank that company for donating a cow to be slaughtered.

The essence of qurban isn’t about how many qurban you make or how big the animal is, though some of us might argue that the bigger animal the better it is. In viewpoint of mine, it comes back to the intention. When we have right intention to have it, then just make it. Don’t wait till you find the best or big animal to be slayed. On this Eid Al Adha day, there were totally 3 cows and around 8 sheep slaughtered at my big mosque. We trusted the committee of the mosque to manage them all. I do confess that there are some inadequacies in managing the animals. First, members of the committee still have inabilities to distribute the flash to the right people who really need it. The second is that they can’t maximize to acquire as many animals as it can. I mean, the committee just waited people to make their sacrifice. They didn’t make any announcement through easy-accessed-media such as brochure, leaflet, bulletin or radio. Maybe I go far comparing the committee to the committees in Bandung such as Rumah Zakat or Daarut Tauhiid ^_^.

After being distributed, the flash or meat is usually processed by people at their house with all family members. I do like making it to be sate – small pieces of meat roasted on skewer. It tastes even more delicious if we eat it with soy sauce and boiled rice (nasi liwet), hm…yummy and luscious. This mouthwatering-dish on Eid Al Adha day seems to be a must-eat meal to make the celebration merrier. You might have your very own dishes, share with me then ^_^.

What matters me on the day of Eid Al Adha is that the view I saw on telly. It didn’t really a problem nearby my hometown though. I saw marching-people who really wanted to get the flash of meat until sacrificing their lives in rushing to get qurban’s meat. It happened in big cities such as Jakarta, Surabaya and others. Thanks God since we never experienced that here in the town of mine. It is because the number of so-called underprivileged people not that big than it is in big cities. To deal with this peculiar issue, we need to learn from the past experiences and try to refine the methods of distributing the flash. I’m very much sure that if the committee of qurban and government work hard to fine solution, the case will be solved then. Using coupon is might a better choice for distributing the meat.
Well, there are always plus and minus in everything around us. I do know that Eid Al Adha does have them too. It’s all our duty to make the celebration better. May we can contribute to improve our Eid in the future. Thank you

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1 comment:

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