end of Ramadan!
10/9/07
With just one week left of Ramadan, I decided to break fast for good on Saturday. That makes twenty days of fasting. I wanted to go until the end but it was just too stressful and draining. What began as a way to assimilate and create solidarity turned into an obstacle against my integration here. It’s true that at first people really appreciated my efforts in fasting.
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Not everybody understood why I was doing it since I’m not Muslim but I’m positive everyone appreciated it. It was a great conversation starter and I had lots of interesting discussions with my friends and family about fasting, Ramadan and Islam that I might have missed out on had I not been fasting.
But after awhile the toll that fasting took on my energy and enthusiasm starting affecting my relationships and interactions. It wasn’t the physical part of fasting that got to me but the mental part. It’s hard to separate the two but I’ll try to explain. I got used to not eating and drinking and being tired all the time. But as I got used to it, I also got grumpier. Some times I was in such a bad mood that I couldn’t even hold a simple conversation. I felt like I had started to build a wall around me and was slowly isolating myself from everyone else. They understood that I was acting different because of fasting, but there was still a barrier between us. At home, rather than talk to my parents after dinner, I kept passing out in front of the TV. I was too tired to play games with Aziz and Aby. I had a shorter temper with everyone and didn’t have the energy to enjoy myself. It got more and more difficult to concentrate in class. I kept falling asleep and I fell behind in Wolof and hardly said a word during French class. In the end, what was supposed to have been a tool for integrating and understanding the culture here became an impediment.
Although in the end I decided to stop fasting for my mental health, my body is probably pretty grateful too. I didn’t realize how much weight I lost until I put my belt on and it tightened all the way around to my butt. I’ve been folding the waists of my pants up to make them tighter because now my hips are too bony to keep them up.
Even though I lost so much weight, my fast was a piece of cake compared to what some people here endure. Fasting while taking classes in air conditioned rooms with a two hour midday nap and a hearty dinner every night is nothing. The construction workers shoveling concrete that I pass on my way home, the women carrying giant sacks of rice on their heads to and from the market, even Mariyama, the maid at my house, who cooks and cleans all day, have much harder fasts than I did. Compared to them, my fast was Ramadan Lite.
I wish I could have gone on for the last week, it doesn’t sound like a very long time. But one week of grumpiness and isolation out of four and half months of my time here is quite a lot.
THE MARKET
Ramadan is almost over, which means Korité is almost here. Korité is the festival at the end of Ramdan, where everyone prays, eats a lot, and hangs out with their families. It’s also prime time to sport your fanciest boubou, traditional Senegalese clothing. Those who can afford it get new clothing made for Korité, which means the fabric markets are packed during the last couple weeks of Ramadan.
On Sunday, Joan, her brother and sisters, and my cousin and I all went to a fabric market in Dakar. It was ridiculous. Our taxis dropped us off at an intersection full of fabric stalls and swamped with people. Little did I know how much worse it would get. When we got out of the taxis, we could still see the ground and move forward without stepping on people. We started making our way through the crowd and I grabbed onto Pape, my cousin, for dear life. At first it wasn’t too bad. We stayed on a main avenue and there was enough breathing room to, well, breath. But then we decided to cut in between two stalls and wound up in a little alley. Suddenly we were in a traffic jam of bodies. People kept grabbing me, pushing and shoving, yelling and laughing. It was so packed I couldn’t have fallen over if I had wanted to. Every now and then we reached a bottle neck and it was too crowded to shove our way forward so we stood there, jostling around and trying not to lose sight of one another.
Eventually we escaped from the alley and went down a bigger street, which was a little more bearable. Aside from the masses of people, the sights, smells and sounds were equally overwhelming. You could probably make a sheet big enough to cover Senegal with the amount of fabric that was at that market. Every color, texture, and pattern imaginable was there. I thought I was prepared because I already had an idea of what I was looking for (light blue). Apparently light blue is popular here because there were stacks of light blue fabric in every stall and piles of fabric heaped on the side of the road. I had no idea which pattern I wanted, but they were all beautiful so I figured which ever one I picked would be a good choice.
At the bigger stalls, music blasted out of amps and mixed with the sound of vendors hawking their goods over microphones. Women with huge trays of jewelry and men with racks of shoes walked up and down the streets. Food vendors were everywhere too (not everyone fasts during Ramadan, especially in Dakar). Women making doughnuts squatted or sat on stools around big bowls full of batter. People sucked on bags of bright red Bisap juice. Sandwich stalls and peanut vendors were everywhere.
After awhile I got used to weaving my way through the crowd and let go of Pape, my security blanket. I made sure to keep him in sight though and if he got too far ahead I grabbed onto him again. After about half an hour of making our way through the crowd, I decided it was time to start browsing. There were stacks of light blue fabric in every direction so I picked a stall at random. Pape and Joan’s sisters helped me decide what pattern to get. Six meters is the normal amount for one boubou. I paid about ten bucks for my six meters and we were on our way.
Posted by: Michael Blau on Nov 06, 07 | 10:52 am
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