Ramadan: I know this much is true.

Ramadan started last Tuesday. Truly, I didn’t know what to expect – I’d heard so many conflicting reports about what I was about to face that I had just stopped imagining any kind of scenario. I didn’t even know if I was going to fast or not, though after hearing our training director say “Fasting without prayer is just starving yourself” and living as a young girl in the late 90s, watching repeated after-school specials about the dangers of anorexia, I was starting to lean toward not participating. I understand that fasting for Ramadan is not anorexia, but then again, for a little Catholic girl, that's probably how it would feel to my body and mind.

I decided I would observe the first day... observe as in watch and not participate. And to be honest, I was a little sick that day. Children, pregnant women, menstruating women, and people who are sick are exempt from fasting, though many of them end up participating anyway, as Islam says they have to make up the days they don’t fast later – and who wants to do that all alone when everyone else has moved on and started eating lunch again? Answer: no one. So people break the rules. But I do not break the rules. I like boundaries. So on Tuesday morning, when I heard my family digging into a pre-sunrise breakfast, I stayed in my bed, coughing.

I tried to stay out of the way most of the day. I anticipated everyone would be wrangling to bite each other’s heads off – after all, that’s how I would feel if I was deprived of food. But the day was actually pretty normal. Sitting around. Chatting. Working around the house. As lunch time neared, I wondered if they were going to give me any food. Again, I really didn’t know what was going to happen – but I didn’t want to presume they were going to feed me. Plus, I knew that if I so much as mentioned food, they would bend over backwards making a meal, and I didn’t want any fasting person to have to deal with cooking a delicious meal and then giving it away. But as the day went on, I realized that I was not going to be fed, so I stuffed my face with some Pringles and laughing cow cheese alone in my room, a delicious recipe passed on to me by BETSY and lifestyle (forever alone) passed on to me by Nurse Sarah.

But the hurdles were not over yet. I’d been told that the hours between 5 and 7:30pm are especially rough, namely during the first few days of Ramadan, and people would probably prefer not to talk to me. So I tiptoed around, ready, again, to have my head bitten off, to no avail. Everyone was in a great mood.

When the sun goes down, usually around 7:45pm, everyone breaks the fast – in my mind, I imagined this happening with great fanfare and religious fervor, so I silenced my cell phone and sat quietly and attentively in the corner so as not to distract anyone from prayer. But, once again, I was wrong. Pre-rupture, everyone crowded around the TV to watch a comedy program. When it ended, the call to prayer went up and the food came out – AND DID IT COME OUT! Dates! Bread with chocolate spread! Spicy beef soup! Hot cocoa! It was at this point that I realized Ramadan had completely dismantled every expectation I had. Sure, it's a religious occasion, a time of reflection and introspection and prayer -- but it's also just part of life here. It was also at this point that I decided I LOVE RAMADAN. It only got better a few moments later when my host dad tried to murder a lizard with a paint roller and completely shattered all of the porch lights. Ramadan. It’s no different from other nights! The Senegalese are still intent on beating the shit out of every lizard they see, no matter the consequences!

So I haven’t fasted – some days, I’ve fasted in my own, cheap way by not eating lunch, but I always have my breakfast far after the sun comes up and drink water throughout the day. Lucky for me, my family seems to respect my views on fasting just as much as I respect theirs – when I semi-fasted on Friday, my host mom kind of freaked out and yelled, “Why? Why would you fast? You’re not Muslim! That’s crazy! Eat food!” I told her I was doing it in solidarity. She nearly fell over laughing and then offered to cook me some rice. Strangely, random strangers have been the ones to be aggressively hostile. So another myth debunked, at least in my experience: I’d been told that people are generally cool with whatever non-Muslims decide to do… but I’ve been harassed by people waiting in line at the market, guards at banks, and people who yell at me as I pass by on my bike. I’ve heard it might be a city thing, because my friends in villages seem to not cause any ripples.

In other guilt news, sometimes I feel a little weird breaking the fast with everyone after eating Pringles all day, but they know I’m eating Pringles all day and still enthusiastically encourage my participation, so I guess there’s no misunderstanding about what’s going on?

But I also love Ramadan because it’s just been a really great week with my family. Ramadan has changed up the daily rhythm of the house, and we’ve all ended up sitting and talking a lot more than usual. We’ve had some good chats about life and death (I’m not making that up!), I’ve been teaching my little sister some new games and the alphabet, and we had a nice little night watching Michael Jackson impersonators on TV coupled with an impromptu dance routine by me and my sister (SIDENOTE: WHY ARE MICHAEL JACKSON IMPERSONATORS A RECURRING THEME IN EVERY AFRICAN COUNTRY I VISIT? RIP MJ.)

So yeah. Ramadan! It’s been hard fending for myself in the food department and being deprived of filtered water at work, but my hardships are nothing compared to what everyone around me is doing. Also, side note #2: I hadn’t seen the ram that attacked me and had the vague hope that he might be in the soup we’d been eating every day. I was wrong, but I did get my host mom to tentatively agree that Tabaski will be my revenge aka WE WILL EAT HIM. There was no miscommunication. My host mom made pantomimed the ram attacking me and then pantomimed us eating him and said "Tabaski!" BOOM.