A Roundabout Ramadan Story

Let me start of by saying that I really respect the people who are able to really observe Ramadan. They go from sunup to sundown without eating or drinking anything. I decided from day one that living in the desert and not drinking water was not going to work for me, but I wanted to try to fast in the sense of not eating, just for the sake of understanding what my host family and the people of Xol Xol were going through. I know myself, and if I didn’t at least make an attempt to relate, I’d find myself bouncing around the village at 5 pm, annoying all the villagers with my pep whilst they were napping, crankliy unable to peel themselves off their mats until break fast.

The first week I made it until about 4 pm each day before breaking down and eating a cookie in secret in my room. After that I left for the malaria tournee and by the time I came back I had made the choice that being cranky and useless wasn’t helping anyone. My new system became telling my family that I was fasting, waking up at five to eat millet porridge with “yogurt”, and the eating a spoonful of “peanut butter” at noon and half a protein bar or some beef jerky and some dried fruit at three. This makes a suprisingly huge impact on my mood, while simultaneously not allowing me to be so perky and energetic that people get suspicious.

Unfortunately, one day, a wrench was thrown into my well-oiled snacking machine. I was in my room, getting ready to indulge my sneaky treat, when a woman walked in with a couple of her children and sat down. At first I couldn’t quite place her; turns out she is the mother of the first baby I held less than an hour after it was born. His name is Idy, so I called him Eddie and his mom said she would give him my last name, making his name Eddie MacAfee, short for Edwin. Naming people after other people is huge, so when I told this woman that I had ‘named’ her son after my grandfather she was really excited. The next day I named a baby Jill, and then Dave came a couple days later. So now my plan is to run around giving babies American turundoos (namesakes). It’s going to be great. If you’d like to have a baby named after you let me know.

Back to the point of the story: I was all set for snacktime when baby momma came in and sat down, forcing me to stash my hunk of beef jerkey (Thank you Leesa!) under my pillow temporarily. Mamasita then hangs out for 40 minutes! Her kid peed on my leg. She nonchalantly wiped it up with her skirt and then proceeded to breastfeed him while sitting on my bed. He vomited. After that we played the fun game of pointing to every picture on my wall and asking “Is that you? Is that you?”, frequently getting it wrong, and asking other crazy questions like whether or not Kelley is my mom (Kelley is a great source of confusion to the Senegalese. Once someone told me that it was impossible that she and Leesa are American… they are both clearly Chinese.). None of these things were particularly unusual on their own, but in the context of Ramadan, everyone is just a little bit extra cranky, so by the time she left I was not in the best of moods and fell on my jerky with an above-average amount of gumption.

A few days later, we saw the glorious beautiful moon and the month of fasting ended! Hallelujah, Alhamdoullilay, Korite was a lovely day of everyone dressing up, killing goats, and walking around wishing everyone a happy new year. I had recently asked my family to re-braid my hair, I wore earrings and I even put on a little makeup.This prompted the people of Xol Xol to announce that I had become a woman (finally!) and was obviously in need of a Senegalese husband (No.). My other favorite question of the day was “This is what you look like?!” closely followed by, “This is what you should wear when you go back to America. Your mom will be so happy.”

Dewenati everyone! Baleen ma aq, fekke deween, yallah na yallah boole ball, Ramadan mubarak!

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” E. B. White