Fasting for Ramadan in West Africa

 

There’s a bit more to Islam than fasting for the holy month of Ramadan but it seemed like a good start to have a go at one of its core beliefs, rather than just experiencing the religion by looking in from the outside. Along with giving to charity it’s one of the Five Pillars of Islam you can do without having to convert, which to be honest, isn’t going to happen. I’ve just never felt that there’s something else out there and despite how academically intriguing I find religion I’m about as spiritual as a sofa. It’s generally reckoned that about 85% of the world is religious, so if you can’t understand religion, you can’t really say that you understand people. Trying to understand people is an essential part of what makes traveling different from tourism, at least as far as I am concerned, which usually means I’m on my own but I’m sticking to it. Conveniently arriving just before Ramadan for a few months stay with one of my Muslim friends, Younoussa, and his family in the Ivory Coast, provided an opportunity too good to miss.

As I’m sure you’re aware, Ramadan requires getting up to have breakfast before dawn and then not eating or drinking until sunset. Not drinking all day might be a realistic concern back in the temperate climes of England but in the sweltering heat and humidity of West Africa it would be a major health hazard, particularly as I suffer from a severe case of white bloke in the tropics. Without any liquid intake I’d be hospitalised by lunchtime with severe dehydration. Thankfully the religious rule book has a get out clause for ill health so I was still just about operating according to Islamic principles. Quite how the locals or my friends in the 50C Saudi Arabian summer survive remains an absolute mystery.

Having to get up at 4am proved to be the easiest aspect of the whole affair. After all, I’m getting near that age bracket where infirmity demands such an early bedtime that the dawn’s early light feels like a good lie in. Young people may mock but biology has long ago decreed that your time will come. My initial plan to cope with a foodless fourteen hours fell at the first hurdle however. Stuffing your face at half four in the morning seems like a great idea until you actually try it. Even at regular waking hours most of us need a bit of a gap between first consciousness and breakfast but while it’s still dark your stomach is screaming, “for fucks sake! What are you doing? I’m still asleep”! Every bite of food feels like the last stages of a huge banquet.

With my nervous system still on screensaver mode at that time of the morning, coordination wasn’t my strong point either. Having to eat with my hands, combined with a long period of cutlery based eating before arriving, it was more by luck than judgement that any food actually arrived in my mouth. Thankfully after a few days my brain remembered roughly how to do it and I was even leaving less on the floor than the teenage boys of the family, albeit operating with far less flair and only managing to smear slightly less food all over my face than Noura, the five year old.

It soon became apparent that the unsung heroes of Ramadan are perhaps unsurprisingly the women. All I had to do as a man was get myself out of bed unassisted and beyond basic motor functions my brain wasn’t under any obligation to do much more than ensure that at least some food reached my stomach. One or more women however had to be up even earlier to guarantee we all had something to eat and given that it had to keep us going all day, a bit of bread and jam wasn’t substantial enough to do the job. Hence I’m in no doubt that Younoussa’s wife Layla is a lot closer to the front of the queue for paradise than me or the males of the family, as are most of the wives and daughters of the Muslim world.

Lefty liberal wuss that I am, it was not a situation I was completely comfortable with. I’ve spent my adult life cooking and cleaning for myself, so regardless of any western notions of equality it doesn’t seem normal sitting around while women do stuff. Whatever the religion, this relatively strict delineation of household chores is the cultural norm for much of Africa and as a foreign guest we can’t simply come in and impose our strange ways. The main barrier to any attempts is often the women themselves. I tried insisting on washing my clothes but the humiliation of being laughed at by all the ladies in the courtyard and Layla insisting on helping me because I obviously wasn’t doing it right according to their methods was enough to ensure I didn’t try to repeat the effort. Although the women could just about grasp that I might have some basic culinary skills it was next to impossible to help with cooking except as a lesson in how to cook a particular ingredient or sauce I wasn’t familiar with. I very soon got the impression that pushing the issue would have put into question the roles that both men and women broadly accept and could have led to conflict.

Age and position in the family also determine the role anyone is expected to play. Apart from Younoussa’s uncle, who was often detained elsewhere by work and other wives, I was the oldest in the house and also a guest, which put me in the expected to do absolutely fuck all category. I’d have been well within my rights to have sat around all day ordering women and children to perform every mundane task I wanted. Announcing I was embarking on the 100m trek to the local shop to buy something inconsequential was usually met with a, “get one of the kids to go”.

Ramadan is meant to be a period of reflection for Muslims and so, once the coffee had kicked in, Younoussa and I often profited from the serenity of dawn to mull over religious and philosophical matters. He has always been capable of looking at his faith from other perspectives rather than any strict interpretations of Quranic texts so a stimulating discussion was guaranteed and gave my somewhat rusty French a good workout.

Although I may be lacking in the spiritual department I certainly can be moved by a decent azaan, the call to prayer. Even only a moderately skilled muezzin at least provides a welcome reminder that you truly are away from home, not subject to the usual dull routine.  For the first couple of weeks the humble local muezzin performed this task admirably, his voice echoing through the blissful gloom of dawn. That was until someone saw for fit to replace him with what sounded like the agonised bellowing of a pregnant cow from a distant shed. I couldn’t even be sure that the incomprehensible gruntings were even in the required language of Arabic. Consequently, I couldn’t help but piss myself laughing on hearing it for the reminder of the holy month. Thankfully the others didn’t let their faith get in the way of seeing the funny side of it. While not all Muslims would have been quite so accommodating of my heresy, the azaan being a personification of the beauty of God’s creation, they are not all so po faced as to never be able to see humour in the religion. I’ve seen Ramadan comedy sketches playing on the over eagerness to break the fast for instance and an Egyptian Muslim friend sent me a video of where a muezzin had fallen asleep after the call to prayer having left the PA on, his amplified snoring entertaining the whole neighbourhood.

Not only does the month require abstention from eating but other worldly distractions like smoking, sex and impure thoughts. On the latter issue the Almighty did indeed see fit to test me, his most lowly of unbelieving subjects, with the most astounding pair of breasts on one of our neighbours in the courtyard. Not that there was anything to complain about the rest of her of course. I stoically struggled against my baser instincts to avert my eyes and even succeeded on occasion.

Most people managed to go back to bed to complete their sleep ration after the ritual calorie cramming but despite lying there like the bloated corpse of a beached whale I was only occasionally blessed by such relief as my overloaded system attempted to deal with the digestive load. Even with some extra sleep, the combination of the early start and fasting takes a bit of the zing out of many during the day and unlike most I didn’t have to endure employment or study. Otherwise, I was quite surprised by being able to cope with the hunger. It was usually at least 4pm before I really started feeling peckish and gone 5pm before I got anything like ravenous but knowing I only had to hang in there until 6.30pm made it manageable. Needless to say we were all ready and waiting for the official announcement of sundown, with a pile of deep fried, bean flour beignet waiting within hands reach. It’s best not to stuff yourself with heavy food from the outset so we always had a big bowl of bouille, a thick, sweet ground millet drink and zoumkum, a lighter millet drink on hand to ease the stomach back into the idea of eating.

We would sit out in our quiet, sandy street listening to music, chatting to neighbours and passers by, nibbling enough to satisfy the hunger pangs until the more substantial meal a couple of hours or more later. Often we’d be joined by other family members, either visiting from out of town or nearby homes. This social aspect to the month was a real pleasure, only limited by the fatigue of the 4am start each day.

I’m not ashamed to admit that the end came with a certain amount of relief and I know I wasn’t the only one: by about half way through the month the teenage boys of the family had mostly given up with fasting, much to Younoussa’s disappointment but he’s no fervent puritan, inclined to force his beliefs on others. I’d had a few days off when we were traveling but that’s allowed in the official rules, even though you’re meant to make up for it later. Forcing yourself out of your routine is always good for the soul I feel, although as a long term traveller it’s not as if I have much of a routine. For this reason alone I’d say give it a go and there is a definite sense of achievement in overcoming the natural urges of hunger. One of the Islamic motivations for fasting is to understand how it feels to be like those less fortunate than ourselves for whom hunger is a regular occurrence. Stripping away one layer of our privilege each day for a month ought to get you musing over your own existence, particularly in the environment of being taken out of your routine, whilst sharing the experience with those around you. Its easy to get irritable as the day drags on so you have to learn to control your mood somewhat. I’d like to think that this combination of psychological tests gave my brain a good workout that it wouldn’t normally have got.

Would I do it again? Maybe not for the whole month but I’m glad to say I did it and succeeded, well almost, but they really were spectacular breasts.