Ramadan is the Muslim month of fasting each year. It lasts
30 days, but the exact date changes, like Easter, based on the moon cycles. It
is mandated to fast from 3 AM before sunrise to 6 PM after sunset, including no
water. The purpose is much like Lent, a time of repentance and reflection about
one’s life. Fasting carries the same meaning for Muslims as it does for Christians,
purification and feeling closer to God. Not that I can say that I have ever
felt that the very limited number of times I have fasted…
Anyways, after these long 30 days of fasting is the Muslim
New Year, called Idul Fitri. From
what I have read, this is the biggest celebration of the year for Muslims. They
buy new clothes, visit family, and have feasts! Lots of celebrating, thanks to
the end of fasting and the promise of a new year, free of sin.
Unfortunately, my Ramadan experience (keep in mind, I’m only 2 days in…) has
not been so great.
Top reasons that I
believe Ramadan and I will not be buddies:
(Keep in mind these dissents are all personal feelings
toward sleep and fasting and have nothing to actually do with Islam itself! So
far, I have had a really great time learning about Islam!)
#1: From approximately 1:00 AM to 2:30 AM every morning for
the next 30 days, a group of teenage boys will walk the streets and bang on
drums and play traditional music instruments louder than humanly possible to
wake people up to eat before sunrise. So I’ll be awake in the middle of my
beauty sleep every night for the next 30 days (update: not every night
apparently, the last 2 nights have been silent…). Which is really confusing and
resulted in me missing the first 3 AM breakfast with my family because I was
startled awake at 1 AM, only to say, “Hey, why are they waking people up now,
we still have 2 hours until breakfast,” and promptly go back to sleep, missing
breakfast because there is no 3 AM wake up call. What the heck!? I get that the
1 AM wake up call is for moms and women to cook the breakfast, but still…
#2: I was feeling pressured to try fasting with everyone
from 3 AM to 6 PM (sunrise to sundown, including no water…). Not pressured by
any adults, but my darn 13-year old neighbor, who kept asking me if I was going
to fast or if I wasn’t strong enough. Normally I’d try to let that roll off my
back, but she gets to me, constantly talking about me in Javanese so I can’t
understand, and laughing, so I can only assume that she’s making fun of
something weird I did. Ugh. Also, pressure from stories of other Peace Corps
volunteers. From what I heard, everyone in the last two groups fasts during
Ramadan, so I felt pressured to not be the one volunteer not fasting. Not to
mention pressure from the anthropologist in me trying to fit into the
surrounding community….
So this pressure resulted in me trying to fast for the first
day. That’s what I told people, I’ll try fasting the first day and see. This
announcement was met with a mix of delight (my 13 year old host brother
who may be the sweetest teenage boy I’ve every met), confusion (my host
sister-in-law and host mom), wondering why I’d fast if I don’t need to, and mockery
(by that darn 13 year old neighbor girl “Apakah Miss Sarah kuat?” “Is Miss Sarah strong enough?”)
Day one of fasting.
Wake up half an hour late to the 3 AM breakfast, so I eat some rice and cold
tempe alone. Back to bed.
8 AM-2 PM: Wake up again. Wander downstairs to see what my
family will be up to. Same old, same old, they are cleaning and chilling. I
decide if I’m about to fast for the next too-long amount of time, I’m taking it
easy. Retreat to my room for the next 6 hours, where I proceed to watch a lot
of Big Bang Theory, sleep, and read
the last book of The Hunger Games.
Thank gosh for bringing a computer and kindle, after all that fuss I put up
pre-departure about wanting to be cut off from everything.
2 PM: I can’t take it anymore. I’m starting to feel the
lightheadedness that plagued me for 2 years during college, which will bring on
really scary vision shifts. I was going to break fast early anyways to go to
church, what’s another 3 hours early? I eat some crackers, peanut butter, and
an orange, and then go meet my Javanese language tutor.
3 PM: I’m starting to feel dizzy again. That little bit of
peanut butter protein will not sustain me! But how to tactfully tell my Muslim
tutor I can’t study any more, I need to go eat? Luckily he points out that I’m
looking pretty pale, and while he goes to pray the afternoon prayer, I eat a
little. And feel like a total jerk. I manage to hold back tears at my failure
to fast one day when I go into the kitchen and get some of the food that my
host sister-in-law is cooking, the food that she won’t be eating for another 2
hours…I go upstairs and eat in private, feeling like crap. The teasing of the
13-year-old neighbor is true, Miss Sarah is not strong enough. What’s more, I
feel like I’ve let down my community by not being in solidarity with them. It
doesn’t feel sufficient to say, “I’m Christian, I don’t have to.” Because let’s
face it, Christians do fast…okay, every now and then. Maybe. But I feel like a
dumb American, doing just yet another thing to stand out…this time, eating.
5:30 PM: My family invites me downstairs to break fast. I
feel like crap, a little dizzy, crazy stomach. But I go, get a plate with a
little food, but I can’t bring myself to eat. What’s up? Usually I feel like
this, wanting to puke, if I wait too long to eat, but I ate at 3, which should
have made this feeling go away. It’s not going away. I apologize after sitting
with my family for about 5 minutes. Retreat back upstairs. Don’t eat anything
else, because it makes me sick to think about doing so.
5:30-9 PM: Fitfully sleep and think about how I have to deal
with the world of fasting tomorrow, and the next day, and the next…
9 PM: Vomit all contents of my stomach into my trash can.
Yet another reason I am happy I am not in the Peace Corps in a hot hut with no
electricity. I’m on a cushy mattress with a fan blowing cool air at me.
9 PM – 1:30 AM: Sleep
1:30 AM- 2:30 AM: Fitfully sleep and think about how much
I’m going to dislike the next month as I listen to the loud drumming outside.
3:30 AM: Wake up to a grumbling stomach. Shakily walk
downstairs to try to eat something. But almost puke again in the kitchen when I
see food. Guess I’m not ready to eat yet.
6:00 AM: Make plain pasta and slink back upstairs to eat my
noodles over the course of the next 8 hours as I rest and have a self-pity
party. Throw in a 2-hour stint in which I chat with the neighbors, do some
laundry, and shower, but right back to bed because I’m too weak to stand any
longer.
5:30 PM (present time): Feel much better, still a little
weak, about to go down and eat my first proper meal in 36 hours and can’t wait!
The next 2 days: my sickness relapses, with a stomach ache
and trips to the bathroom…for those of you who know me well, you know that I
love to eat, so a loss of appetite is a big indication that I have got a bug
living in my stomach. Not literally…at least not that I know of…
Have I made it clear enough why Ramadan and I have yet to
make peace?!
To top it off, school will run from 7 AM to 10:30 AM every
day, leaving me hours on end of boredom. Luckily, that’s only for 2 weeks,
because then, yay, we have another full 2 weeks of school off in which everyone
will still be fasting so lounging around. I can’t leave my community (Peace
Corps rules for the first 3 months at site), so I’ll be finding new ways to
fill my time, I guess.
I know, I know. This is all terribly negative and I hope the
Peace Corps will not kick me out for being insensitive, but really the issue
I’m having is with my own feelings about fasting, and annoyance at being sick.
I’m still not sure what made me sick, though my leg cramps for 12+ hours point
to food poisoning. What food?! The one orange or a little rice I ate??
Anyways, the main disappointment I have with not being able
to fast is that it will set me apart from the community. And I’m trying so hard
to fit in. I’ve even told my ibu (“mom”) that she has to tell me when it’s more
respectful for me to wear a head covering to Muslim gatherings. I want to be
respectful. I’m trying to eat like an Indonesian (though I’ve taken up oatmeal
for breakfast, I can’t do plain white rice three times…), sleep like an
Indonesian (aka naps in the afternoon!), clean like an Indonesian (washing
clothes by hand), etc. But this fasting is one thing that I find myself unable
to do for 2 reasons. First, I physically can’t do it, 13 hours of being active
with no food (I was drinking water even during my brief fasting yesterday).
Second, as much as I want to fit in, I have to recognize that above all,
fasting is done for a spiritual purpose, and my purposes for fasting here were
community-based, not spiritual. I have never found spirituality through fasting
(though again, my fasting experience is very, very limited). And as a
practicing Christian, I cannot justify following a month of fasting if the
drive and motivation has not come from my heart and religious motivations. I
feel it is a betrayal to say that I am fasting if I am merely doing it to fit
in.
Unfortunately, that last (and most accurate) reason that I
have chosen not to fast is really hard to convey to anyone because I don’t
speak Indonesian well enough. And when I was able to talk to my tutor in
English about this yesterday, he laughed. So I think either a) he’s immature,
b) he thought it was an excuse not to fast, or c) a collective culture doesn’t
think this way, choosing whether or not to fast because one’s heart is in it.
You fast because everyone around you is fasting, not to mention it is one of
the five pillars of your religion, mandated to be a “good” Muslim.
Sigh.
I now understand the response of one of the volunteers who’s
been here for a year. When I told her that this feels like “posh corps” because
I’m living in a beautiful, clean, electricity-and-running water-equipped house,
she responded not to let that fool me, it is still hard to be here.
The physical
hardships of sweating and heat exhaustion that I expected, maybe even sorta
wanted to try to contend with to push myself, are not nearly as bad as I had
expected. Honestly, the physical hardship is virtually non-existent.
But what I am finding
is the emotional and cultural strain of being here is more than I expected, and
it creeps up at unexpected times to break me.
The frustration of an inability to communicate my most
important feelings with anyone other than English speaking-Indonesians or other
volunteers. And even the relief in getting to speak to them is only a reminder
of my inadequacy at the Indonesian language.
The self-esteem blow I experience day in and day out as I
constantly have to say, “Saya tidak mengerti” (I don’t understand). This phrase, probably said by me more than
anything else, is usually met with so much patience and the attempt to use
other words until I do understand. But the emotional blow is almost unbearable
to a confident Carleton grad who is not used to saying, “I don’t get it” at the
simplest things. I yearn for the Indonesians I have met to magically speak
English, come to the US, and see that I am not dumb. Don’t get me wrong, no one
says anything but how smart and beautiful I am, but that is largely cultural.
At the end of the day, when you feel stupid because you don’t understand a
simple thing someone is saying to you, all the “you are so beautiful” comments
cannot counteract feeling like an idiot.
The unyielding stares and shouts of “Hello!” (half of the
time that “Hello!” is followed by “Mister!”) are reason enough for me not to
live here after 2 years. I am patient to respond hello, allow my picture to be
taken, and play the part of celebrity, but it doesn’t mean in any way that I
like it. There are 2 major consolation points, though. Whereas in West Africa I
was always called the toubab or batoure (white person in Senegal and
Togo, respectively), Indonesians rarely call me bule. I am eternally grateful for this, as being objectified as race
sucks. Additionally, and frankly to my shock, Indonesians do not automatically
assume that I am American. I get Dutch a lot because of my pale features and
because the Dutch colonized Indonesia, but I’ve had people ask me if I am
German or French surprisingly often, too. Thank you, Indonesia!
So the Peace Corps is changing. Now there is technology,
phones (thank gosh, how did volunteers 20 years ago stay sane not having
contact with any Americans!), spring mattresses, fans, and grocery stores with
oatmeal and spaghetti. But the
Peace Corps, I am quickly realizing, is still hard. It is emotionally and
culturally isolating. It exhausts my patience. It breeds new hobbies out of
sheer boredom. But most of all, it continues to make me a better person. 2 years
in Indonesian...work your magic!
