August is Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. The faithful fast completely from sunrise to sundown – that means no food, no water. They are also supposed to abstain from any other practices that may distract them from worship – nothing pleasurable, basically. Children are excused from fasting, as are pregnant and breastfeeding women (though many times they do, despite our pleas to think of their babies’ health), as well as the very old or sick. What about Peace Corps Volunteers? Our host villages’ opinions seem to vary, from what I’ve heard. Some of us were told “you must fast!” and others, “why would you fast? You aren’t Muslim.” Ultimately, of course, it was an individual choice – it’s easy to stock up on “Ramadan food” and retire stealthily to your hut to snack. I did a bit of everything. For a couple days, I breakfasted with my host family at 5 a.m. on bread and coffee, then didn’t eat again until 7:30 p.m. For most of the time, I ate my own breakfast later in the morning, then waited again until sundown. Some days, I did snack around lunchtime. For a couple days at the end of the month, I fasted out of necessity – I ran out of money to buy food! But I always drank water. I wasn’t prepared for that extreme (and unwise) of a discomfort; also, we’d had a discussion about kidney stones during PST that left me with a healthy regard for proper hydration.
How did my village cope during Ramadan? Everyone still worked in the fields in the morning, but by 11 or noon they were all back, lounging in the shade, napping or doing small chores. The kids, (unfortunately) fully fueled, ran screaming circles around their exhausted and grumpy older relatives. Come evening, everyone waited for the call from the mosque, the sign that one more day’s deprivation was behind them. We all broke fast with mono, or monoo, or whatever (Jaxanke isn’t a written language, so I get to invent spellings) It’s a type of weird porridge – their customary breakfast – made with flour, water, and sugar. Easy on the stomach. Later on, a proper dinner was also consumed. My counterpart liked to tell me how he would get up each morning at 2 a.m. to eat more. He was also very fond of shouting at a daughter to bring him water, gulping the entire liter-size cup in one go (reminded me of my brother drinking milk as a child) then setting the cup down with loud emphasis and proudly telling me with his fingers how many liters he’d downed so far that evening.
As for me, I learned that not eating for 14 hours is hard, but doable. Sure, by 7:30 I was listening as hard as everyone else for the mosque’s permission, but I discovered that (temporary) hunger itself is – I don’t really know how to put it – not so dire. While after 8 hours back in the States I would have probably declared that I was “starvinggggg” and gone to the fridge, here that milestone passed without me really acknowledging it, and I went about another 6 hours or so without suffering too much. Of course, the fact that eating was simply not an option probably had something to do with my mental (and physical?) fortitude. Nevertheless: on August 30th at around 7 p.m., the slightest slice of a moon was sighted over the village, a drum was sounded, and everyone was suddenly very happy. Ramadan was over! It took me a while to actually locate the moon myself, and my family made sure that I saw it with my own eyes before they let me alone – after all, if the moon hadn’t been sighted that night, there would have been another day of fasting. Thank God it was a clear night. “Tomorrow, eat only! Eat and drink only!” my host mothers gleefully told me.
Korite is the day following Ramadan. Every woman undid their cornrows and then had them rebraided, some with luxurious fake extensions. Littler girls had so much black yarn weaved into their short braids that after everything was done it looked like life-size dolls come alive were running around the compound. The women bent over their cooking fires all day, and the food was delicious – bread and sweet potatoes and macaroni and onions and meat. The cow they had killed, distributed, and cooked several days prior, so the meat was tough, but meat is so rare in my village (despite the feeling that I’m living in a petting zoo) that it was indeed a joyful holiday. I privately dreamed of my dad’s barbequed tri-tip. In the afternoon packs of kids roamed around the village, dressed to the nines in brand new clothes and, in the girls’ case, makeup, glitter, and sassy attitudes. The women looked stately and beautiful in their new complets and braids, while I just looked like I was at a questionable costume party. Yes, I did wear a traditional outfit and let them cornrow my hair. I’d had one previous traumatic experience with this, at the hands of a sadistic teenager, and it took many, many assurances of painlessness for me to submit again. But it was fine. I guess my own host sister doesn’t feel the need to test the limits of my pain tolerance. While this was going on, girls kept coming up to stroke my hair, so different from their own. Later in the night, there was music and dancing. I went to bed at 9:30, a good hour past my usual bedtime. Impressed? I was.
In other news…
A girl died a couple days ago. This isn’t big news in itself; at least two or three children have died in my village since May, but this was the first death that exposed me to the rural Senegalese attitudes about it. She lived in the house directly across from my hut, so ever since I installed she’d been, along with the other 17 kids, a daily fixture in my compound. She was one of my favorites – three or four years old, the smaller of a pair of twins, very quiet and shy. I was just starting to make social inroads with her; she liked high-fives.
At 5:30 one morning, I woke to the sounds of crying. It sounded like one woman, and one older child. The crying sounded anguished, and it scared me. I’ve never witnessed a grown Senegalese woman expressing grief before. I lay in the dark, eyes wide open, wondering if someone had really died. I’d heard that the women set up an eerie wailing in the occasion of a death, but this sounded like natural, bitter grieving. No wailing. The sounds died down soon after, and I went back to sleep, thinking that for a death there probably would have been more commotion.
Later, ducking out of my hut, everything looked normal except for a couple extra people sitting silently outside the house. I walked the 20 yards to my host family’s door. “The girl died this morning,” my counterpart told me. The verb one uses is “xa ban,” which is also used in the context of “There’s no more water” or “The water is finished.” “Jio banta.” Who? I asked. “The twin, the small twin.” Why? “She was sick,” with a shrug. Did they take her to the health post? “Yes, but the doctor was not there.” I’m going for a walk. “But nobody is going to the fields today!” I’m still going for a walk.
A surreal experience. Not twelve hours before her death, I’d seen the girl sitting on the concrete bed outside with her siblings and neighbors, swinging her legs and eating with great relish a bit of meat. She looked like herself – quiet, but very much alive. What sickness killed her? Malaria? Some random fever? I’ll never know. When I got back from my walk, a man was carrying the tiny body out of the compound, wrapped in a mat, the father and a couple other men in tow. A little while later they returned, mat empty, and women started filing by to greet and console the mother. By midday everything seemed back to normal. The women joked and laughed and did their chores. The father fanned himself and greeted passers-by. The lone twin came over to play with the other kids, smiling and chewing on some meat. Is she too young to understand what had happened to her sister? Business as usual. The only sign that a child had died that morning was the sadness of her mother, imperfectly concealed. Dry-eyed most of the day, in the afternoon she briefly lost her composure and was quickly escorted, sobbing, into the house. I asked my counterpart why nobody was crying. “They did cry, at 5 a.m.” 5 a.m. only! “Well, 5 to maybe 6 a.m.” In America, when a child dies, everyone cries for a long time. “But it is because God wills it! If the mother cries, everyone says, shush! Calm down! It is God’s will” It’s because God wills it, or because the only doctor skipped town?
This is just one more incident in a long string of incidents and conversations that frustrates me beyond belief about A) the medical care available, and mostly B) the Senegalese attitude towards seeking care. It’s too big of a subject, and I have way too much to say, to include it in this post. I tend to get exasperated and angry just thinking about it. So, I’ll deal with it later.
Also, for those of you who are wondering when I’m going to do some “actual” work: coming up soon, I promise.
