the Thirty Day Famine

Lake Tangriela, Banfora, Burkina Faso
Lake Tangriela
Water Lilies, Lake Tangriela
End of Ramadan morning prayer service at site

The fam, hanging out for Selifitini (end of Ramadan)Adjara and Bathama (sp?), who I have a lot of pictures of but then they're just too cute!



So my project is almost funded! To all those who gave, I'd like to say thank you for your generous donation to my swim project here in Mali! I am very excited about getting the project started, and the Malians with whom I will be working are also very excited to get over their fear of water and learn life-skills that will not only help themselves, but will provide invaluable aid to their fellow countrymen. This project is something that is easy for us here at Peace Corps to provide, but something that the Malians could not have done for themselves. Further, the people we train will be able to provide assistance and training to their co-workers in the future, meaning that the good done by your donation will spread far beyond the assistance that my co-workers and I are able to provide during our brief time here. We talk a lot in Peace Corps about Sustainable Development - that is, doing development work that builds local capacity and confidence rather than simply "throwing money at the problem," which is often ineffective both because it does not last once the outside funds dry up and because it teaches locals dependence on outside aid and lowers their confidence, rendering the community unable to help itself. This project will help build such local capacity and confidence, and allow the Malian rescue workers - members of the Protection Civile and Gendarmes - to change lives in their daily work that might have been lost without this training. In short, thank you very much - from both myself and my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and from the Malian community.



Tuesday Sept 23
So this month is Ramadan, which just happened to start on the 1st and goes 30 days to the 30th. It's on the lunar calendar so it's starting on the first was purely coincidence - someone told me it moves about 10 days earlier every year, and we didn't even know whether it would start on the first or 2nd until the night before. If you're fasting, you can't eat after it starts to get light, so some people who didn't hear that Ramadan had started ate breakfast as normal and then started, some (like Danger) decided that since they'd already failed to fast that day they might as well not start until the following day, and I'm sure some people just didn't eat at all so their fast was extended a whole night into the day. For any of you who may never have been Muslim before, Ramadan is the monthof fasting to attone for any sins you might have committed the preceding year. Of course you don't have to literally not eat at all for 30 days strait, it's only in effect during the daylight hours. Every day, whoever's cooking the meal (having done as much of the preparation the night before as possible) gets up at some ridiculous hour to cook so that the family can eat together at the first prayer call, about 4:30am, which is before the sky has even thought about getting lighter for the oncoming day. From then until sunset prayer call, about 6:30pm, you're not allowed to eat - or drink - anything at all. Some extra-devout people even walk around spitting all day, not wanting to cheat by swallowing their own saliva.

So for 14 hours a day, for 30 days strait, no eating or drinking. This quite beats the 30 Hour Famine we used to do in Church Youth Group, which was on single 30 hour stretch that included a night of sleep (which can hardly count) and during which we could drink anything we wanted, within reason (no hamburger smoothies, no matter how hungry we got). I should also add that whereas the 30 Hour Famine ended with a giant feast, the Ramadan day ends with a bowl of porridge and some Kinkiliba, or (lemongrass?) tea with ginger. Oh and breakfast is tho or rice with sauce.

Last year Ramadan fell right around our swear-in ceremony and moving out to village (I've now been in village for a year!), so I didn't fast, but this year I decided to give it a try. At first I told the Malians that I would fast, but would drink water (after all even though it's rainy season it's still plenty hot during the day - at the moment it's exactly 99 degrees) since as a non-native I'm not used to the heat like they are, but they dismissed that idea as stupid and pointless - if I'm going to fast, it has to be all or nothing.

I agreed to do it for real, but decided I'd cook breakfast for myself. This was to my disadvantage the first day - I cooked porridge, albeit "improved" porridge (which means it contains ground peanuts and ground beans for protein), figuring the Malians would have their normal breakfast of plain porridge. Really I could have done something more substantial- I saw them eating a real meal when I got up to start cooking, but at 4am my mind wasn't up to changing the plan. Despite the meager breakfast though, the day turned out alright - it was overcast and relatively cool for most of the day, so by sunset I was quite hungry but alright. My second day passed similarly, only with a better breakfast, and was far easier than the first.

On the third day, the sun came out. Oh, man. Laura came to visit that day, and by the end of the day we were both in an irritable mood - as it turns out, the thirst on a hot day is far worse, completely eclipsing the hunger. In the interest of not having a miserable visit, we decided to put off the fasting for the next few days.

My fourth day I was traveling to Koutiala, and drank extra extra water in preparation for being on a hot bache all day, but paradoxically that just made all the extra water come out all that much sooner. By sunset my mouth had been sticking together for hours, and after chugging a whole liter of water I wasn't even hungry.

In the end four days was enough. Though many Malians were quite impressed that I'd been fasting, many others repeatedly told me it was pointless and silly since I'm not Muslim. Mostly though, it was just getting in the way of things I wanted to do - I need to work out to get a shot of endorphines in order to keep my sanity here, and that's just not feasible while fasting. As it turns out, all the people that hang out in my concession all day aren't fasting either, so I've got company. Speaking of which, Mamu (one of Danger's relatives somehow) and Dao came back at the start of Ramadan - after all we needed a cook - and Adjara returned last week, so we've got some people in the concession again, though still no news of Awa.