HAPPY LAID

Some of the gang all gussied up to say Happy end of Ramadan holiday!

Ramadan

Hey all,

How is everything with everyone? Things here are well and the months are flying by. Seems like just yesterday I was writing out September’s group e-mail. I know its a time of pretty big change for my immediate family and some members of my extended family and I wish you all well with those! All of you need to keep me posted on comings and goings because, I'm well, out of the loop. Thanks as always for everyone that’s sent me mail or goodies. I appreciate all of them! I’ve come to the conclusion that while the ability to BE alone (privacy) is important in the grand scheme of things the continual practice of this ability is something altogether different and not for me. Alas, I will never make a good hermit. I know that there are those of you out there that this will probably disappoint but I'm sure that you will all learn to live with it. I fear I must also let all of you know that none of you will be receiving Christmas presents from me this year. However, if you've been good boys and girls I might be able to find it in my heart to create some hand made Christmas cards... So start sucking up now!

Anyway, speaking of holidays, October happened to be the Muslim month of Ramadan. This is not technically completely true as Ramadan is the ninth month on the Arabic calendar, which is based on the phases of the moon, not revolutions around the sun, so it moves about 12 days each year. This year it started on the 5th of October and ran until the 4th of November... New moon to new moon. 30 days in total (it could have been 29, as determined by Muslims all over the world standing on specific mountain peeks and looking for the moon to show up.)

Ramadan, for those of you that don't know, is the time of fasting. There is no eating or drinking of anything, including water, between the sunrise prayer and the sunset prayer. Smoking and sex are also forbidden during daylight hours. It is supposed to be a time of reflection and increased prayer and a time when you spend time with your family and friends talking about the Q'ran and strengthening bonds between the members of the family and one's individual relationship with God. Participation in the fast is mandatory and only sick or injured people, people traveling long distances (one would assume that this exception was mainly designed before the automobile and airplane when much travel was done by foot or animal.), pregnant or nursing women, or the mentally or physically infirm (based on age usually in the later case). Its one of the 5 main tenants (they call them 'pillars' here) of the Islamic faith. (and for those of you that are curious, the other 4 are; 1. Public statement that there is only one god and Mohamed is his prophet, which is very ritualized and anyone can rattle it off after learning to speak... 2. Hajj, or the journey to Mecca during a specific month of the year once in one's life, waived if you don't have the means to do the journey... 3. Charity, or the giving of alms to the needy, the percentage is pretty high, but I forget the Arabic word at the moment... 4.Daily prayer. They pray 5 times daily. Once at sunrise, once at noon, once in mid afternoon, once at sunset and once 2 hours after sunset, give or take. This is also very ritualized. They ask me if I pray and if I tell them yes, I do, they want to "see" my prayer. The actions associated are much more important to them then they are in most Christian based faiths I've encountered. During Ramadan a 6th prayer is added to the cycle and on Fridays, the holy day, its 7)

Whew, now that the background is out of the way... Of course, daily life must still go on during Ramadan, at least in the Berber villages where total inactivity is incompatible with living. The fields still have to be prepared for winter, new buildings still have to be built, and shops and stores have to remain open because there is no refrigeration or freezers to stockpile enough fresh food goods for a whole month. I would imagine, but have no proof, that things are slightly different in the city. I know that the Moroccan staff amongst the Peace Corps group get to go home early every day in order to prepare themselves for the sunset prayer as do the foreign service nationals at the embassy. This would indicate to me that in the afternoons in the cities things are pretty much at a standstill. Also, it is generally fortunate that Ramadan happened to fall during the fall months this year, since the daylight hours are shorter and the temperature is moderate. Having now witnessed it, I can't imagine how hard it must be to do the fast in the summer months, when the days are long and the sun is unforgiving and the need for water must be absolutely incredible.

I'm not sure what the Q'ranic origins of the fast were. What is the lesson? To try and figure this out I took to asking people why they were fasting and plan on reading the Q'ran again with more attention to the details of this particular aspect of Muslim life. I'll let you know about the book, but people's responses varied interestingly. The majority people copped out or didn't understand the question the way I intended it. They would respond that they participate in the fast because they are Muslim, and that’s what Muslims do. To me this seems like a perversion of the faith a little bit, because its not faith at that point, its follow the leader. A slight but important variation on this answer is that God commanded them to do it. Yes, true, but WHY did he issue that command. What was he getting at. A more thoughtful or complete answer came from my tutor, who told me that it was to show the people how it is like to be a poor or helpless person living on the streets and in need of charity. I would tend to believe this is or, was, at some point the case except that in the Moroccan tradition of Ramadan the people eat MORE than they usually do, just at different times. The only other opinion that I've heard was a half remembered historical anecdote from a visiting volunteer about how Mohamed had to run from persecution through the desert for a month and couldn't stop to eat during the daylight hours for fear of being captured. I won't vouch for the truth of this without some further research but if anyone knows anything about it I would be interested in hearing it.

As I mentioned in my last e-mail I began the month by participating in the fast with the people of my village for several reasons. First, I was curious. I wanted to know about the mechanics, and I wanted to see if there was an increase in reverence and faith based activities like there was supposed to be. I wanted to see what they eat, and when, and how often and I wanted to see what it was like to cope. I also wanted to see how other people coped with it. (I had heard that Ramadan is a time of high stress and temper tantrums and there are more physical fights than any other time of the year... once again... doesn’t this defeat the purpose?) I also wanted to see if I was capable of doing it myself, and, it turned out to be an ok tool for helping me integrate further into my community. I was NOT doing it for any religious purpose, though perhaps deep down maybe some kind of spiritual one. I was successful, for the most part, in determining the answer to all these questions and, since you're so gracious as to be curious about my life I'll share some of the stuff I've learned.

First, to mechanics... The Berbers eat 4 meals every day, and Ramadan is no exception. What differs is the timing. They eat a meal called sdor... sunrise... This takes place about an hour and a half before sunrise which... unfortunately... was 3:30 am. If you had any intention of sleeping through this meal (not called breakfast because that now happens at night) you can forget it because the added prayer time is announced by a 15-30 minute long special call to prayer announced from the mosque loud speaker. I can sleep through the normal ones but this is a bit much since its really quite loud. For the first few days I got up at 3:30 and went up and had a meal with my Host family. After a while I decided this amounted to sitting around at 4 am with a bunch of grumpy old men to eat a meal my brain told me I should be having for dinner and stopped going. Instead I would get up and make myself a light breakfast type meal and then go back to bed and sleep in. One thing that I did notice was that all those imperative daily activities would invariably be pushed back a few hours if at all possible and the afternoons were much busier. Before sunrise at 5 am I would tank up with a bit of water and that would be it. The first day of this was pretty hard on everyone, and I was no exception. I was groggy and unhappy by the time sunset rolled around about 6:30 PM the first day.

At the Magrheb, or sunset call to prayer they have "breakfast." This consists of an almost unlimited quantity of soup and hundreds of dates. Sometimes the soup would be accompanied by some very very sweet cookies or perhaps some hard boiled eggs. There was also a milk based drink with blended fruit in it, but this I could only get at my host family because there was not enough power anywhere else to run the blender. The soup was actually very good and I enjoyed this meal. Everything was washed down with some coffee and I ended up feeling like I was floating after so much liquid and all the sudden calories. Meal 3 came after about 2 hours and began with Tea. (The amount of tea consumption dropped significantly during Ramadan.) Then there would be a light meal of bread and eggs, sometimes mixed with pieces of cow stomach or liver. I didn't mind the eggs so much but the cow stomach gets to me after a while. The 4th and final meal takes place 2 hours after that and was generally a Tajine, normal Moroccan fare. I participated in each of these meals for the first few days but after a while cut out meal number 4 as just too much food, and I would eat only sparingly of meal number 3. I would then go to sleep and sleep till the morning prayer.

In the first few days of Ramadan the Berbers slept in between the last night meal and the morning meal as well but as the month wore on and they became accustomed to the strange hours they became almost completely nocturnal and the men my age would stay up all night playing cards and talking. They would make up for lost sleep after the morning meal and sleep until the first afternoon call to prayer when they would get up and do their chores for the day. Sometimes the older men would stay up during the night too in order to do some of the more physically demanding tasks during a time that they could drink water and take snack breaks.

After a few days I, too, adjusted to the different schedule and resigned myself to endure the constant questions that always come with any of my activities. I surprised quite a few people with the fact that I was participating in the fast. It gained me points with some people and really confused others. They wanted to know, and I'll admit that its probably a fair question, how come I was fasting when I'm not Muslim and didn't pray the right way. It even opened the door to attempts at conversion, which I had so far managed to avoid. It also allowed me, however, to ask them questions about their own faith that I hadn't had an opportunity to ask before, and this was met with some skepticism but generally enthusiastically and it was nice to talk about something outside the bounds of normal daily activity. Slowly but surely the abnormal became normal as time will do with all things.

Unfortunately, I failed in my mission to complete the fast. About half way through I got really sick and had to drink water to avoid dehydration that is the biggest problem associated with digestion issues. I was actually miserable enough to talk to the doc from PC when Mark and I were in town to get some flu shots. Typically, the doctor was Moroccan and he took my blood pressure (excellent) and my temperature (normal at that point) and declared me healthy. He half heartedly listened to my symptoms when I disagreed with his diagnosis and prescribed... well... pepto bismal. *sigh* I went back to site still sick and have remained at least partially sick to this date, though I feel much much better than I had. I never did resume fasting, but maintained the appearance of doing so in my village because its polite not to drink or eat in front of people that are fasting and I still wanted to achieve the village integration effect. Of course lying, which I was technically doing by only pretending to fast, is the surest way of ruining the good effect fasting has on your religious life. I made myself feel ok about this by telling myself that I wasn't doing the fast for religious effect anyway and if Islam is the true religion than I'm in deep trouble anyway... so *shrug*

At the end of the fasting period there is a holiday called little laid. I suppose it was interesting as far as holidays go but as far as I could tell it was little different from any other day except that people got dressed up in fancy clothes and you could once again eat and drink during the day. Its similarities with popular American holidays were few, but the one major one that I did notice is that it was definitely a family affair. I had the pleasure of being included in this group with my host family and stuffed myself silly with the copious amounts of real food provided for the event. I passed on the climb up to the mountain top to pray. While I'm sure it was a romantic and majestic setting for such an activity, getting on my hands and feet in the freshly fallen snow at the higher altitudes didn't sound like much fun. I settled for thanking god in my own way for seeing me through the month and for having such great friends and family as the letters keep coming in....

So that was Ramadan.... When I do a little research and organize my thoughts more, that is to say in a few years, I might post an article on a western reaction to participating in the Ramadan fast on my on line journal. Don't hold your breath. On to other things.

You'll notice that I said that there was snow in the higher elevations. The weather in general has taken yet another turn for the decidedly cool. Night times require either multiple sweatshirts or a coat and the mountain tops have adopted their winter apparel as well. Mornings find the peaks covered with a glittering white coat that mostly melts from all except the highest peaks in the sun, which hasn't lost an ounce of intensity from the height of summer. The temperature difference from the sun to the shade during the day defies belief. The wind has also picked up, and while the leaves started changing color months ago, now they are doing it in full force and falling nearly as fast as they change. My house is nice and cozy and the floor radiates heat so that even on the coldest nights I can still go barefoot and my bedroom is a comfortable mid 60's.

Work on my projects has also picked up despite the slower pace of life in Ramadan. Pressure from PC central command has also slightly intensified because they want all of us to look like we are doing something at least when we have our big six month meeting in Agadir at the beginning of December. I was already in the hot seat because the tree planting season is in February so to get money to purchase the trees I was assigned a deadline of December 1st. This requires a lot of paperwork I didn't get until yesterday and a lot of coordination between the villagers and tree nurseries and a lot of stuff that needs computers that I will have to do. I may be around on-line a lot more than usual this month. Wish me luck.

For my woman’s center project I had some other volunteers visit from the other side of the mountains. They were women themselves so my hope was that they could do a survey for me among the female population that is inaccessible to me as a man in a conservative community. They hiked over the mountains on the first day it snowed and were not entirely happy with me on the day they arrived as its a tough walk on the best of days, taking 2 days, a lot of it on a really steep up hill grade. I pointed out that I didn't say they had to hike across but this wasn't going to fly. They DID manage to do some surveying (though not as much as I would have liked... Like all PC people trips to other places are always half vacation because we don't get out to see the countries we are here to help as much as we thought we would when we joined up... this sentiment is almost completely universal). Hopefully it will be enough for me to get the women a building and some programs to get them on their way towards an eventual goal of being literate (the survey revealed that not a single woman or girl over 12 can read or write a single word including their own names) and take some first steps towards equality and independence. The project is third on the list though so probably won't happen till sometime next year. Its all good. If there is anything I have enough of its probably time.

Time flies though. Hard to believe I'm on my way to 9 months in country... Hmm.. what else is happening this month....

I mentioned this in passing but we were all inoculated against the flu... They told us originally that this had nothing at all to do with the possibility of the avian pandemic and then in typical government fashion sent us all an e-mail saying Just kidding... we are worried about bird flu after all. I'm not though. There are only song birds in my site with an occasional visiting heron and I think my chances of getting flu from a blue Tit (think blue chickadee... look it up guys I'm not going to do all the work for you!) are pretty slim indeed. I also got the shot during the worst part of my other sickness so I'm sure that didn't help me get any better any faster.

Got to the post office this weekend only to discover that once again I don't have any money from PC. *Sigh* Apparently this time the hold up is in the Moroccan post office with the holidays and all, though the money was processed the 20th of October, 2 full weeks before the holidays. Its all good though because I'm not broke yet and I'll be back in a week. I just couldn't let an e-mail slide by without complaining a little bit.

Spent a bit of time at Mark's site. He's got himself a solar panel, car batteries and a satellite dish so we're looking forward to being able to find a decent American movie every once and a while. I'll probably visit once a month or so both for the movies and because his village is a lot more fun socially. I've decided that I'm going to redouble my efforts in my own village in the social area now that the projects are really getting going and I'm going to need their help. I'm starting small. My goal for next month is to get myself invited to tea or a meal at ONE persons house who is not a member of my immediate host family. Sounds easy, and in the rest of morocco it would be. They are nothing if not full of hospitality. My village is an anomaly in this area though so I'll let you know the results of the quest in my next e-mail. As far as other daily tasks goes I'm becoming quite the adept Berber. I can wash my own clothes in a bucket using a washboard, cook my own food with ingredients purchased at market and even bake in a welded together sheet metal oven. So far I've done some peanut butter cookies, some jam cookies, and some apple pie that my visitors appreciated greatly... (I was sick *frown*) Also banana bread, which because I did it in a pie plate instead of a bread pan, wasn't exactly right it was still tasty.

Hmm... Guess that’s about it for now. Here's to wishing everyone a GREAT month of November. Since I won't talk to you again before then probably HAVE A HAPPY THANKSGIVING and don't forget to be thankful for all the things that most of us take for granted in the states because those things DONT exist everywhere. Keep the letters coming!
Love and Luck in Everything
Cheers!
-Andy