Selifitini!

Ramadan has finally come to a close, and I have to say, I was more than ready for it to be over! I believe in Islam they follow the lunar calendar, so for the month of Ramadan they started towards the end of August, and finished up a week or so ago. Every year, it moves up a little bit, but this year luckily it wasn't in the hot season! For the entire month, between sunrise and sunset, you cannot consume anything...no food, no water, and if your mouth is watering you are even supposed to spit that out (which they do!). Since you can't eat after sunrise, everyone wakes up before then to eat some food and drink lots of water and then they all go back to sleep for an hour or so. In the evenings, they would play a special thing on the radio so that everyone would know it was time to break the fast. They drink a certain tea, eat some porridge, and then go to the night prayer before eating a big dinner. I fasted for two whole days this Ramadan, just to get an idea of what is was like, and let me tell you, it's hard! Not so much the no eating part, because around lunch time I got pretty hungry, but after an hour or so of just not eating, I stopped being hungry. I cheated a little bit though because I still drank water (it was too hot not to!), but I definitely didn't drink as much as normal, and even that was difficult! I was ready for it to all be over though because by the end of the month it really seems like people start to get cranky and you can tell they are definitely ready to be done. Seflfishly, I was also ready because it threw off my usual schedule of going to visit people or eating lunch with friends (obviously since they weren't eating at all). I would also eat or drink water in secret, since I didn't want anyone who was fasting to see me eating. They also stayed up much later than usual, because after eating so much and drinking all that tea with sugar, no one was ready for bed around the usual time. At the end of Ramadan though, they usually have a celebration with lots of food and meat. This year, someone told me that for this holiday since it's the small one(seli means prayer in Bambara, and fitini is small), they just buy meat and good ingredients for sauce and then mostly relax. Having to buy good food and lots of sugar all month I guess leaves most people running low on cash, so they don't always have a big celebration. For Tabaski, which is 70 days after the end of Ramadan, they will actually buy a whole sheep to kill and eat (that holiday is seliba, ba meaning big). Everyone does get new clothes for the party though and it was really cute to see all the little kids walking around town all dressed up, with their hair done and all. In Djenne, they would go into people's concessions to sing songs for small change. I didn't have much in the way of small change, so I pretended it was Halloween and gave out candy. This was going really well until word must've gotten around and tons of children started coming to my door! Thankfully my host mom got them under control, but all in all, it was quite the interesting holiday!

Hail!

Even though we should be nearing the end of rainy season, it seems like it's only now really been raining a lot in Djenne. This is going to make for an interesting year in the fields, as so many people in and around Djenne (and pretty much everywhere in Mali) are entirely dependent on their crops for food and money. They've been holding special prayers at the mosque to pray for rain, and they say that Inshallah (god willing) it will come. I'm hoping that this last bit of rainy season will be enough! One interesting thing did happen a few weeks ago. There was a huge storm that we had seen coming towards us practically all day. Finally in the evening it looked like it was going to reach us, but then the wind got so strong that we wondered if it would just blow over. Instead of passing us by, it hailed! It was strange because even though it cools down some in rainy season it didn't seem cool enough for golf ball sized hail! The kids all went wild, running out into the storm to collect the pieces and eat them. I didn't eat any (as most of them were a little muddy) but later a friend at the clinic told me I should have. She claims that if you are having trouble with your heart and the hail comes, it's a sign that things will change and you should eat the hail because it has medicine in it that can cure you. She also said it's good to eat it just in case since it doesn't come very often and you never know when the next time will be. If there is a next time while I'm still here, maybe I'll wash some off and make a cold drink, just in case!

In other news, the new kids had their swearing in ceremony and party and are now getting ready to head out to site to start working! I'm going to help them do some shopping for their houses when they come up to Mopti since a lot of them speak minority languages that you won't necessarily hear in the Mopti market. Also, the volunteers that have been around have a better idea of what the prices of things are supposed to be, so hopefully we can keep them from getting the toubab price on everything! Then it's back to Djenne for hopefully the start of the school year!