Half-Assting

Half-assting is how I am referring to my version of Ramadan fasting. I'm doing my best, here, but of the 16 days of Ramadan that have gone by I have successfully fasted for six of them. The other ten days have been spent drinking water during the daylight hours and eating a piece of fruit or something when my stomach starts to hurt.

The problem is, when I go all out balls-to-the-wall and abstain from food and water whilst the sun is up, I also tend to abstain from friendliness, lucidity, consciousness, and general normalcy. It was easier to act like a human when I was at summer camp and fasting because I was surrounded by about 80 people doing the very same thing. Unfortunately, being in site is a different story. Sure, literally every adult in the town I live in is observing Ramadan. The difference here is I have no reason to be out and about all day commiserating with my fellow fasters.

What follows are reasons why I wimped out and now drink water and occasionally eat a little during the day:
1. It's hot.
2. Like, really fucking hot. According to my landlord it hit 46 Celsius the other day.
3. Ask my mother why it's important that I'm fed and watered regularly.
4. A couple days ago I was helping my host mother get food ready for break-fast and she asked me to take an empty butagaz tank to...vaguely somewhere in the corner of the kitchen where she pointed. Confused and loopy, I tried to put it on the shelf above the sink but was too weak to lift it over my head (granted, I probably couldn't lift an empty buta over my head in my prime). She looked at me like I was completely crazy...then I realized she wasn't motioning at the corner of the kitchen but at the front yard area, just outside the kitchen. That certainly makes more sense.
5. I can't be bothered to do anything. Granted, I'm not exactly swimming in work opportunities right now. But school is right around the corner and I could be preparing stuff, working out a new schedule, what have you. Right now, however, my starved brain can only focus on how last year, excluding a small number of really great kids, most people sort of shat all over my Dar Chabab schedule and did whatever they pleased. I think about this and then I take a nap.
6. In the eleven days I have been back in town after camp I've watched twenty movies and I think three episodes of Mad Men. That's twenty feature-length films. Including a two-part documentary of Bob Dylan which was mostly just footage of people booing him in England then cuts to Dylan, PRESENT DAY, talking about how weird he is (his words).
7. Just look at this blog post. It's rambling, I've come up with six other things so far, and I only used caps lock once. Further, two of the things just talk about it being hot out, and one of them refers you to my mother. THIS one is a cop-out meta-bullet point. The light of the Evenstar is fading. What?
8. My house is disgusting. There are scattered Arabic flashcards on my kitchen floor that a gust of wind blew off the table four days ago. Four. Days. Ago.
9. I've needed to buy milk for three days. The shop is thirty seconds from my house and, despite Ramadan, is open semi-regularly. Think about that.
10. I keep finding myself listening to Everclear. That's not really an indicator of Ramadan sucking the life out of me, but it's still kind of weird.

Ten is probably a good number. I will stop there and spare you the other weird shit I've been up to.

So the thing is, plenty of Volunteers slow for Ramadan (that's the opposite of fasting). Why am I making such a big screaming deal of this? Because in the weeks leading up to Ramadan I skipped around town twirling a rhythmic gymnastics ribbon announcing that I would be fasting for the whole month! No sweat! I am the best Peace Corps Volunteer ever!

Now I don't have the heart to tell everyone I'm not, so instead I'm lying about it. This is exactly the kind of behavior I despise.

In the interest of not leaving on a bitter note:



One last thing, today is my Pop's 80th birthday! My whole family is surprising him in Louisiana today. Keep on truckin,' Pop!

maybe it's not that funny...

but I sure as hell can't stop laughing at this!

Today's unpleasant stomach cramping is brought to you by the Holy Month of Ramadan

My goodness, it's been nearly a month! I feel terrible for luring my reader(s?) into a false sense of security by blogging semi-frequently, then BAM. I pulled that rug right out from under that reader(s?) feet, didn't I? And not in a cool way, like how magicians pull tablecloths really fast and none of the silverware or strategically placed wine glasses even quiver. Oh, no. I pulled that rug away the way a heartless school nurse rips a bandaid off a whiny kid. Residual pain? Yes, please.

By the way, it's okay that that last paragraph makes no sense because I'm fasting. I have an excuse to be crazy AND crabby for a whole month!

For the record, I have reasons for not blogging. I've been quite busy collecting memories to blog about. I traveled through some pretty great beach towns with some really good friends, then spent nine days working a summer camp. Here's some stuff that happened, presented to you in sloppy, half-ass bullet-point form:

*Moroccans can really suck sometimes, and yes, that is my personal opinion and not that of the Peace Corps or the United States government. My friends and I booked a nice bus to get from Point A to Point B, as opposed to the shitty souk buses that can involve all of the following: crazies, chickens, chicken shit, druggies, perverts, and B.O. The perks of this bus, in theory, include departing and arriving on schedule, air conditioning, and reserved seats.

Unfortunately, we live in Morocco. The bus left a bit late and the air conditioning left much to be desired, but these minor inconveniences paled in comparison to the Epic Battle of No Dibsies 2010. When we all boarded the bus, we found that random people were sitting in our seats. No big deal, we asked them to move because we had made reservations to sit together. One of the ladies said something about wanting to sit nearer the front and basically refused to move. This was annoying, but what really set me off was the pudgy bald man in my seat that refused to even RESPOND to me. He just totally tuned me out like I wasn't there. Fucking jackass. I ended up sitting next to a random lady who refused to speak to me in Arabic and insisted on using French, even though I pretty clearly couldn't understand or respond in kind.

I hadn't meant to allocate so much space to that bit because, overall, it was a pretty small blip in an otherwise rockin' few weeks. Awkward. Moving on.

*There is a great beach in Agadir and I got the worst sunburn of my entire life (think about that, parents). My body reacted so violently that I actually had a fever and chills the night after I'd been sitting in the sun, then the next day I was limping because my legs hurt so bad. I'm kind of an idiot.

*Agadir has an English karaoke pub. Whaaaaaaat?! I think I drank 2.5 liters of beer, and my friends and I karaoked "One Way or Another" to a cosmopolitan audience who I don't think had ever heard the song before.

*David is a hilarious person. Two quotes I wrote down from him:
"The rules on Moroccan men wearing pink ladies sandals are pretty laissez-faire..."
"One kid I'm bringing to camp seems too young. He's really small...and he's retarded as shit."

*This turned out to be the month of saying ridiculous things that can only be followed by "that's what she said." I've compiled a list of things that were actually said, most of them unfortunately by me. I decided to just leave them out of context.

"I've been blowing mad d." -me
"You might want to beat it again." -me
"Gahhhh my body can't handle sausage." -me
"I don't know what to do with my hand!" -me
"I'm gonna see what time it's coming inside." -donniell
"I've got a biiiiig package waiting for me." -donniell
"The sun basically comes right in your face." -juan camilo
"Is it cold enough to get hard in site?" -donniell

*

*something about camp I can't express with a clip from Wet Hot American Summer: Ramadan hit right in the middle. It was really weird to be on a packed camp schedule from 8 am to 1 am everyday, then suddenly flip it inside out. Once Ramadan started we didn't start camp activities until 12 pm, ate breakfast at 7:30 pm and did activities well into the night. We started out with about half of the Americans fasting, but the shitty camp food mixed with the shitty hygienic conditions made everyone get sick pretty quickly and by day 3 of Ramadan hardly anyone was fasting anymore. I'm still trying to get back on track.

*Things you can do to take your mind off food:
-draw a series of angry animals to express your angst. How 'bout a Goddamn Gorilla? Or maybe a Caustic Chameleon is more your style.
-take naps, then wake up to find out that some punk-ass kid has accused you of not "really fasting" because you fell asleep in the middle of the day.
-go to the beach (this one isn't really funny)

*There was a kid at camp that everyone called Chocolate Rain for reasons you might be able to guess. I have no idea what his real name is. He won "Star of the Day" once and his certificate read "Chocolate Rain."

*Nice things about Ramadan:
-the guy driving my taxi from Rabat to my town drove me straight to my house after I mentioned I was fasting.
-the fruit seller gave me a crazy discount then told me I should stay in Morocco after my Peace Corps contract runs out because I was fasting.
-in general, people are really nice to you if you are fasting.

Annnnnnnnnd scene.