The month of Ramadan has arrived. Last year, I was a bit
cranky during this period of the year. When I was fasting, people would tell me
I could not fast until I converted to Islam and if I wasn’t fasting they told
me that I must. Finding a bowl of rice while the sun was out was a challenge.
People move slower, work less, and lose their tempers more.
As Ramadan approached this year, I tried to get in my zen
place. Within a day, I was already getting frustrated. I cannot count how many
times I had the conversation, “Are you fasting?”, “No, I’m a Christian”. It was
driving me crazy, but why? I have the conversation “Are you married?” almost as
much and it does not drive me nearly as crazy.
Peace Corps is all about integration. The biggest compliment
you can give another volunteer is that they are bien integré. You spend your life here proving
that you are the same as the people you live and work with. Wontanara, we are
together. I’m no different from you, see us both waiting in line at the pump? I
go exclusively by my Guinean name and I speak local language as much as
possible. My French has completely lost the formality of my high school textbooks
and contains the whole rainbow of Guinean sound effects. And this is why having
to declare my Christianity on a bi-minutely basis is so frustrating. After
spending months upon months trying to show the similarities between all of us,
I am forced to constantly point out a major cultural difference or else go
without water in the hot sun.
I’m not sure what that means for this month. I am not sure
if it will make me fast more or less, but it is nice to be able to name the
place that the frustration is coming from and try to move past it and spend
this month learning about a key aspect of Guinean culture.
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