The season of Ramadan

July 21, 2012

Ramadan began today. The family members who are fasting are Nymandin, Bori, Baboo, Pabi, and myself. We ate a breakfast of millet porriage, called monoo, at 5am, before the first daily call to prayer at approximately 5:15am. The prayer times change according to the lunar movement. I have decided that I will be fasting, the general reason being that I am living in a Muslim community and am part of a new family, I came here to share cultures, among other things, and I am sharing this fasting with them. There are more detailed reasons behind my choice but this is a blog and I don’t care to share every intimate detail of my life.  Please understand that I am doing this safely and supplementing the diet I get here with items from care packages to ensure that I am the getting proper nutrient, thank you care package senders!! Also, I am drinking water during the day, it is too hot here not to drink, I am still adapting to the environment. After breakfast we all went back to bed. Currently, its 9:30am and my 16 year old brother, Pabi, is headed to work the fields with the donkey. My mother Nymandin is washing the dished and has already been to the pump carrying water. My other mother, Bori, is asleep in bed. My father, Baboo, is out weeding the groundnut field. To the outsider it would appear as if this was normal everyday life, one would not know that these people won’t be eating or drinking again until the sun sets tonight.

Side note:

I awoke to the normal sounds of coos pounding, chickens crowing, and children playing, and although I’ve heard it many times before the sound of a bike horn. This morning the bike horn reminded me of something very similar in the US. Let me explain, this bike horn carries with it a bicycle and a man from Brikama Ba, some 25K away. He bikes here every morning to sell fish.  What struck me this morning was that I was very excited to hear his horn because this means there is a possibility that there will be fish in the food bowl tonight. My excitement over this is much like the excitement a child would have over the ice cream truck driving around their cul-de-sac. Its funny that today of all days this struck me, partially because its Ramadan and also that Evan is on vacation in the OBX which is the only time during the year that I do buy ice cream from an ice cream truck. Apparently, what my mother’s say is slowly coming true, I am because a Gambian woman.