Office Eid Party Craziness

Last week was out staff Eid party.  Part of my job is to encourage staff to understand and celebrate the diversity of our communities and also our staff.  One way of doing this is through staff events.  Last year we held an event telling people about Ramadan and a staff Eid lunch.  For our first few events we struggled to get people to come along, but over the course of the year people started taking an interest, also food is a great way to break down barriers. 

This year I found some sisters who were interested in helping to organise and we made posters for the prayer room.  We posted on the online staff message board and sent people invitations.  Then we all cooked and hoped for the best.

On the day, one of the sisters helped me to decorate the staff lounge – she does party décor in her spare time and was really good.  I also brought in my banners and Eid poster frames.

Alhamdulillah the sisters involved were all amazing cooks and keen to share their food with others.  We had sooo much food: jollof rice (veg and non-veg), chickpea curry, lamb seekh kebabs, samosa chaat, a number of different types and sizes of samosa’s and spring rolls, Bombay aloo, pasta, dhokla, salad, tuna pinwheels and pasties and lots and lots of sweets.  The brothers were good too, their contribution was to go to the shop and buy hot wings and chips.

We did start off laying it our nicely, but it just kept coming:

One sister made three trays of samosa chaat (on the right below). This is samosa’s layered with chickpeas, yoghurt, spices and green chutney.  Most people hadn’t seen anything like this before so were trying it for the first time and loved it.

The Gujerati sister was representing with dhokla, no Gujerati function is complete with dhokla. The sister was so sweet, she had heard about our Eid party last year but was at a different office, this year she had moved to our office and was looking out to see if we would do it again. She brought along five or six beautifully made little dishes along with the dhokla including samosa’s, sweet colourful rice and dates.

The sister who was a whizz at décor was Nigerian, so made Jollof rice, a veg and non-veg version.  Alhamdulillah she filled these cool double hot pot and also a cool box – big heart, big portions alhamdulillah.

There was so much food we separated all the dessert onto a separate table: cake, chocolates, dates, fruit, sweet rice, homemade biscuits and cake bars

One sister made three trays of samosa chaat (on the right below). This is samosa’s layered with chickpeas, yoghurt, spices and green chutney.  Most people hadn’t seen anything like this before so were trying it for the first time and loved it.

It was a really nice event and I think it will become an annual fixture in my office insh’Allah.  I hope next year we get even better at getting more people involved.  A nice outcome was that I got to know lots of Muslim sisters in the office and many are keen to create an informal group for Muslims to support each other in future insh’Allah.