Ramadan Returns

Guess what? Ramadan starts this month.

I don't have to like it, I don't have to enjoy it, but I do need to prepare for it, and that involves me typing this pathetic blog post in a desperate attempt to gain your pity, which ideally will manifest as Ramadan survival care packages being sent my way. I have no shame.

For a variety of reasons, I have decided not to partake in the melodrama lose-lose transaction that is otherwise known as Ramadan. I (somewhat) fasted last year (for about 2 weeks) and can say firsthand that my experience during Ramadan last year was sub-optimal at absolute best, and that's even a stretch.

Last year, partly because I wanted to score bonus points with my family and partly because of the unique opportunity I have here to learn about Islam (nearly upwards of 95% of people here are Muslim), I decided to attempt to participate in Ramadan and all of the madness that goes along with it. In order to legitimately fast according to the rules in the Quran while also avoiding what I feared to be significant health damage to my already malnourished and angry body, I simply learned to be duplicitous in my fasting. Although the rules about fasting during Ramadan are few and simple- no consumption of food, water, or even spit (yes, spit) from sunrise to sunset- I decided to be a maverick and interpret the rules in my own pampered, pagan way, since after all, that's what I am.

I decided right from the get-go that waking up before sunrise to eat breakfast with my family was just not something I was even remotely interested in. I mean, I'm not even Muslim, for crying out loud. And it's pretty much common knowledge to anyone that knows me that I get very angry when my sleep gets arbitrarily interrupted. I classify religious dogmatic practices as "arbitrary," and as such, I choose to continue my normal morning routine: wake up, make coffee, make breakfast, prepare to exit my hut and face the world.

This, of course, is cheating; but that was the best effort I was prepared to make. I cannot fathom any reason that could ever possibly motivate me to follow all of the fasting rules for Ramadan with any degree of seriousness, but found it was best to pretend otherwise.

During Ramadan, I cheated in the mornings and legitimately fasted for the rest of the day: I would wake up at a decent hour (after sunrise, of course), eat oatmeal and drink coffee within the confines of my hut, and then exit my hut and fast for real with everyone else in my village until sunset. Well, I guess I never really took the "can't even swallow your own spit" rule to heart, mostly because in addition to being the most ridiculous rule within the entire idiocy that govern a Muslim persons life (with a few exceptions) during Ramadan, it also just seemed tedious.

I fasted in this manner for about a week. It wasn't so bad, really. It sucked pretty badly not being able to drink water, given the fact that this is AFRICA and, in general, GOD AWFUL HOT ALL THE TIME, but I wanted to push myself, so I held out.

For the most part, the fasting I did was bearable. Much to my surprise, it didn't lead to my immediate death, which was a nice victory. I felt like crap from head to toe much more frequently as the days wore on, however. My self-imposed deprivation also put me permanently on edge. Moody, angry, depressed, nauseated- you name it. I was a pleasure to be around, I'm sure. Yet all of that melodrama was not even the worst part of this lose-lose cultural exchange; it was just the most depressing part.

The element of this fiasco that proved to be the most demoralizing happened at the end of the first week. Upon exiting my hut one morning, the first person I saw skipped all morning greetings (that never happens) and immediately asked me, "what's wrong with your face?" Nobody wants to hear that first thing in the morning. Or ever, actually. I never look in the mirror when I'm in the village, so the fact that there was something gross on my face was news to me. When I finally located my mirror, the sight I saw was -at that time- gross enough to be the worst of all the other "ugly face explosion" atrocities that I had encountered in this country. My entire face was covered in a disgusting heat rash. Apparently my body decided to get back at me for depriving it of the all-too-important source of life that we call water. Looking at my disgusting face and knowing that I did it to myself was definitely a low point. Right then and there, I decided that I would lift my ban on drinking water during the day, but I would only drink water in secret. I don't think I was fooling anyone, but for the rest of the time that I claimed to be legitimately fasting, I would periodically "go to the bathroom" throughout the day- "going to the bathroom" being code for "pathetically chugging water in the privacy of my douche." I am happy to report that my face healed, in time, with no permanent damage, unless of course you count the damage done to my ever-shrinking dignity.

All in all, my diabolical fasting experiment proved successful for about two weeks (if "success" can be measured by survival). Forced starvation and dehydration made me a crankier, scarier person than I already was. It's not uncommon. Turns out, it happens to lots of people. By the end of the month, the people in my village were just grumpy, mean, annoying, and impatient, significantly more so than usual.

Ramadan is the harvester of sorrow. There. I said it. It's true. My opinion has not decreased in intensity over the past year whatsoever.

So that's get's us to the present. Ramadan will most likely start August 21st, depending on what the moon decides to do. I am not looking forward to Ramadan in any way, shape, or form. Shocker, I know. I do not plan on attempting to fast, nor do I plan on lying to anyone about it. People will give me shit, but I just don't care.

I am already mentally preparing myself for Ramadan: I know I won't be able to get much work done, I know that I am going to be annoyed with Senegalese people and Senegal in general, and I also know that I am probably going to go hungry, since lunch is going to be a difficult meal to come by for the entirety of Ramadan. Like it or not, this means that in all likelihood, I will often be forced to fast, anyway.**

Unless, of course, my loving friends and family in America (that's you all) take pity on me and send me Ramadan survival care packages. I know it's pathetic to so shamelessly petition like this, but I'm not above begging.

There is a handy dandy wish list on the right column of this screen with plenty of ideas for potential care packages. It's not terribly expensive to mail large envelopes, and there are also two different sizes of international flat-rate boxes at the post office. Anything helps. Thank you, in advance. Thanks for caring about my mental and physical well being, and thank you for reading this post of shameless begging and (hopefully) not judging me too much for it. Finally, thank you for putting up with me. Every little thing- letter, package, phone call, ect- means so much to me and brightens my life in a very significant way. So, thanks for everything you all have done for me in the past, and thanks in advance for anything in the future.

Hope everyone is happy and healthy and enjoying the last few weeks of summer!

(Sidenote: Luckily for me, I can afford to loose a few pounds. I'm not in the red zone, so it's not like I'm going to starve to death, as much as I might be making it out to seem that way.)

Taking It To A Whole New Level: Adventures in Fording Rivers

Here's how you get to my village: 2 hour car ride, bike 20K on a paved road, then bike 5K on a really quality bush path. The entire bike ride is gloriously flat, the road never floods, and there are approximately 2 patches of sand/mud on the entire journey that could be considered less than pristine.

Here's how my friend Daniel get's to his village:

Yes, that's me in the picture. Yes, I'm fording a river. No joke. That's how you get to his village: fording a river and biking 30K up a mountain. Geez.

When Daniel and I were getting ready to leave Kedougou for his village, he said, "make sure you wear clothes you don't care about, because you'll be filthy by the time you get to my village." I said, "Ok" out loud, but what I really wanted to say was, No fing shit, Daniel. I didn't forget that this is Senegal, you know. Normally, filthy just means "covered in sweat and dirt/mud." For Daniel, however, "filthy" means "chin deep in ambiguous river water."

Anyway, after biking a few kilometers, we reach the river. I looked for a bridge of some sort, but was suprised when I didn't see any. "What do we do?" I ask. Daniel, the most positive person I've ever met, just smiles at me and says, "we cross it." Oh, right, right, we cross it. Sounds like a good idea. I stare blankly as Daniel sets down his bike, holds his backpack over his head, and begins to walk to the other side. I'm alarmed when I see that the water is all the way up to his chest. He's several inches taller than me, and it seemed very likely that the water would be over my head.

Figuring that there was only one way to find out, I put my ipod/phone/camera in the top of my backpack, put my backpack on my head, and carefully made my way to the other side. I was so very happy to find out that the water didn't go over my head, which insured that my iPod- and the rest of my lesser important things- made it safely to the other side. Thank God.

Daniel was already back on the other side at that point, and I watched dumbfounded as he lifted his bike over his head and began to make the trek back. Shit. We have heavy mountain bikes, by the way. I realized that there was no other way to cross and that I had to be strong enough to do this myself. So, I get to the other side, attempt to lift my bike over my head, but can't do it myself. This is going to suck, I correctly predict. Luckily, there was a kid on the bank that helped me get the bike over my head.

I then began to ford the river, wholly aware of the absurdity of the entire situation. My arms shook a lot but managed to hold out, much to my surprise. I had been certain that I didn't have the strength or endurance to carry my bike like that all the way to the other side. Certain. I usually have a fairly realistic gague as far as realizing what I am and am not capable of, so it was a pleasant surprise to be wrong. I simply had to make it, and I did.

I joined the Peace Corps largely because I wanted to become more capable and self-reliant in life, in general. It's really important to me to be able to know that I can take care of myself. I was in no way prepared for the obstacles it would take here for me to learn these lessons, but I've been here for almost a year and a half, and I've survived. Thrived, even. It took fording a river for me to realize how far I've come, but it was a happy realization.

Anyway, the fording of the river is really all I wanted to write about. The pictures from the rest of the trip- which include an amazing waterfall and views from the top of a mountain- are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/AmberGPatterson/Dindafello