Racing Towards Ramadan

By the time you read this, Ramadan will probably have started (Sept. 24th) but as I write it is still 10 days away. Villagers are beginning to speak of the month of Ramadan when 99.9% of my village will not be eating or drinking anything from sunrise to sunset. In addition, women will contine to work in the fields, clean the house and prepare the evening meal to be eaten at sunset, midnight and 3AM.

The questions have already started as to whether I will be fasting because the volunteer before me did. The best answer I have heard to this is question came from a missionary through another volunteer, “that is between me and God.” It has become painfully obvious that I will not be able to do trainings, teach classes or in fact work with people that are hungry (if they are anything like me when I am hungry). I am in the process of putting together a plan to occupy myself during this month. Orginally, I through I could work with the students but found that children from ages 10-15 fast on a rotating schedule that they determine themselves. Also while learning the rules of Ramadan I discovered that pregnant and nursing women who choose not to fast must do “make-up time”. In addition, I was become so curious as to why I was receiving so many wedding invitations. Appartently, it’s bad luck to start the year (Ramadan) without a wife. Therefore, girls as yourn g as 15 are getting married in my village.

Decided to take a few people up on the invitations. The traditional wedding that I will describe below is quite different from weddings in the US. For starters, the groom was not there at all the weddings I attended. People rolled in througout the day and were fed as they arrived, heartily I might add. I ate 3 times and was offered over 6 different rice and sauce combos in lesss than 3 hours at one wedding. In the late afternoon, the women formed 2 circles and began to dance the traditional dance of the region. Some women danced, other sang while a few used big aluminum rice bowls (turned upside down) as drums. As the women danced the surrounding women tucked money in the dancer’s headwraps which I belive is gifted to the new couple. It is inevitable that the one white person at the wedding (the only one without rhythm will get pulled into the middle). There was also another small hut whre the young people 8-25 years old danced and sat listening to music. A scene very similar to a middle school dance.

After a few house the bride was carried to her new husbands’s grandparent’s hut. Her arrival was announced by a gun shot and she was then wrapped in white sheets and carried to her new inlaws hut. Friends of the bride followed with rice and various other gifts. Upon arrival, another gunshot into the fields. The final gunshot sounded to “consumate” the marriage as her new family accepted the gifts.