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!