Ramadan for Non Muslims; An Annual Tradition
I wrote this post when I was living in Kuwait, for my readers in the US in particular, who knew little about Ramadan. I wrote it because I had discovered that much of what I knew about Ramadan was wrong. Living in lands where Ramadan was celebrated helped me see the month – and many of our own traditions – in a new light.
It has become a tradition to post it – or a similar post – annually for those who are interested in what Ramadan is all about.
I am repeating this post from September 13, 2007 because it found so much interest among my non-Muslim friends. We are all so ignorant of one another’s customs, why we do what we do and why we believe what we believe. There is a blessing that comes with learning more about one another – that blessing, for me, is that when I learn about other, my own life is illuminated.
(I didn’t take this photo; it is from TourEgypt.net. If you want to see an astonishing variety of Ramadan lanterns/ fanous, Google “Image Ramadan lanterns” and you will find pages of them! I didn’t want to lift someone else’s photo from Flicker or Picasa (although people do that to me all the time!) but the variety is amazing.)
Ramadan will start soon; it means that the very thinnest of crescent moons was sighted by official astronomers, and the lunar month of Ramadan might begin. You might think it odd that people wait, with eager anticipation, for a month of daytime fasting, but the Muslims do – they wait for it eagerly.
A friend explained to me that it is a time of purification, when your prayers and supplications are doubly powerful, and when God takes extra consideration of the good that you do and the intentions of your heart. It is also a time when the devil cannot be present, so if you are tempted, it is coming from your own heart, and you battle against the temptations of your own heart. Forgiveness flows in this month, and blessings, too.
We have similar beliefs – think about it. Our holy people fast when asking a particular boon of God. We try to keep ourselves particularly holy at certain times of the year.
In Muslim countries, the state supports Ramadan, so things are a little different. Schools start later. Offices are open fewer hours. The two most dangerous times of the day are the times when schools dismiss and parents are picking up kids, and just before sunset, as everyone rushes to be home for the breaking of the fast, which occurs as the sun goes down. In olden days, there was a cannon that everyone in the town could hear, that signalled the end of the fast. There may still be a cannon today – in Doha there was, and we could hear it, but if there is a cannon in Kuwait, we are too far away, and can’t hear it.
When the fast is broken, traditionally after the evening prayer, you take two or three dates, and water or special milk drink, a meal which helps restore normal blood sugar levels and takes the edge off the fast. Shortly, you will eat a larger meal, full of special dishes eaten only during Ramadan. Families visit one another, and you will see maids carrying covered dishes to sisters houses and friends houses – everyone makes a lot of food, and shares it with one another. When we lived in Tunisia, we would get a food delivery maybe once a week – it is a holy thing to share, especially with the poor and we always wondered if we were being shared with as neighbors, or shared with as poor people! I always tried to watch what they particularly liked when they would visit me, so I could sent plates to their houses during Ramadan.
Just before the sun comes up, there is another meal, Suhoor, and for that meal, people usually eat something that will stick to your ribs, and drink extra water, because you will not eat again until the sun goes down. People who can, usually go back to bed after the Suhoor meal and morning prayers. People who can, sleep a lot during the day, during Ramadan. Especially as Ramadan moves into the hotter months, the fasting, especially from water, becomes a heavier responsibility.
And because it is a Muslim state, and to avoid burdening our brothers and sisters who are fasting, even non-Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, touching someone of the opposite sex in public, even your own husband (not having sex in the daytime is also a part of fasting), smoking is forbidden, and if you are in a car accident and you might be at fault, the person might say “I am fasting, I am fasting” which means they cannot argue with you because they are trying to maintain a purity of soul. Even chewing gum is an offense. And these offenses are punishable by a heavy fine – nearly $400 – or a stay in the local jail.
Because I am not Muslim, there may be other things of which I am not aware, and my local readers are welcome to help fill in here. As for me, I find it not such a burden; I like that there is a whole month with a focus on God. You get used to NOT drinking or eating in public during the day, it’s not that difficult. The traffic just before (sunset) Ftoor can be deadly, but during Ftoor, traffic lightens dramatically (as all the Muslims are breaking their fast) and you can get places very quickly! Stores have special foods, restaurants have special offerings, and the feeling in the air is a lot like Christmas. People are joyful!
There were many comments on the original post, and, as usual in the history of Here There and Everywhere, the commenters taught us all more about Ramadan than the original post. If you want to read the original post and comments, you can click HERE.
HSBC Bank Bahrain
On no! There is a problem with my non-existent bank account at HSBC Bahrain! (Note to self: If I ever decide to become a scammer, surely I can do better than this):
Dear, Suspicious activity has been detected on this account.
For your protection we are restricting access to account sensitive features.
We implore you to click myaccount to verify your information
Thank you.
HSBC BAHRAIN
Code: yw2w9
Saturday Stat Anomaly
I’m sitting here in my office, organizing some photos and verbiage into another entry to be time-shifted and I notice my stat page looks very strange. Like, it’s Saturday. It’s pretty steady, and the lowest day of the week. What I see is this:
It keeps blogging fun. Every now and then something weird happens, and there is nothing I know that can explain it. Someone has shared a minor article I wrote over a year ago, and in one hour, it’s sent my stats totally out of whack.
Jet Lag, iPads and Small Things
The first leg(s) of our travel are completed; today we head for our destination, the Robin Pope Camps in the upper Luangwa in the eastern part of Zambia. We took the relatively new Delta flight 200 from Atlanta to Johannesburg, leaving out of the new airport terminal in Atlanta for international flights. More on that later when I am back to my computer and can more easily insert photos the size I want them.
Fifteen hours is a long flight. There are a couple ways of doing long travel; one is to break up the journey, like go through Paris and spend a couple days, then fly on to your African destination. I say Paris, because it would be our destination of choice, but you can as easily connect through London or Frankfurt, and a few other places. Many people like doing that, and one of these days, we might, too.
During our years in the Gulf, we developed a pattern of just gutting it through, getting on a very long flight and just getting there, dealing with all the consequences once we reached our destination. For me, going west, it is a piece of cake. For some reason, when I fly east, my body rhythms are jangly for two or three weeks, my sleep patterns erratic, and all you can do is gut it through. We have learned that getting on schedule at your arrival destination helps, getting sunshine and exercise helps, but nothing keeps you from those long lonely hours awake in the middle of the night.
It has hit each one of us differently. I got almost no sleep for two nights, then got a good eight hours (broken) last night. AdventureMan is getting lots of sleep and having very little trouble adjusting.
I am getting used to using the iPad. Just before leaving, I discovered a Sudoko program, and very shortly learned a couple things – electronic Sudoku is just different from paper Sudoku, it is harder to quit. You also can find you’ve lost hours to playing and it gives you a splitting headache – unlike paper Sudoku. It also eats up your time, and although the battery is supposed to have ten hours, either it runs out faster when you are playing Sudoko, or it FEELS like it runs out faster because the time passes so quickly. All I know is that I suddenly became aware that ten hours is not all that much, and I am constantly looking for re-charging places; it has become a priority.
At the last minute, I also pitched my books, and downloaded books to the iPad. I find I am enjoying reading on the iPad (I never thought I would), but once again I am constantly concerned with how fast the time is going (it doesn’t seem to use as much battery time when I am reading) and when and where will I be able to recharge? I am wondering if the camps in the bush have made allowances for their customers increased reliance on electronics – iPads, cameras that have batteries that need recharging, etc.) and I am also wishing I had brought a book with me – it’s just easier.
On the other hand, I have also discovered that on the iPad I have a little program called “notes” where I can make . . . notes! I can do it on a daily basis and it keeps them separate, and it is much faster than writing notes in a little notebook.
The internet at the Taj Pamodzi in Lusaka is much more reliable and much faster than the last time I was here. I hope it is also more secure.
Small things. We are hearing a voice singing outside, we heard the call to prayer from the mosque this morning and felt oh, so nostalgic for our times living near the mosques of Qatar and Kuwait. The singing voices are coming from a nearby school; we can’t understand the words, but it sounds joyful. We have a newspaper, it is much wider and thicker than our Pensacola News Journal, and I think I remember our newspapers also were wider and thicker once. The first few pages were full of people being arrested for corruption, and it makes me happy for Zambia, not happy that they have corruption, but happy that their police are free to arrest highly placed corrupt officials who are stealing from the Zambian people and their heritage, and also that they are free to name the names.
I have lived in countries where offenders are not named, so as not to bring shame on the innocent families, but I believe that when the offender is named, it is a deterrent to corruption. And for what? Is a shiny Mercedes worth the shame, and the jail time? Even though corrupt people in high places steal on an unimaginable scale, the things they buy with them are . . . just things. When you place your value in things, you lead an unsatisfied life. No thing can fill the void that lack of integrity leaves.
Long Legs and Blogging
“Your posts have long legs.”
Every now and then, WordPress sends a critique, a kind of how you’re doing on your blog sort of thing, and I kind of like it that my blog has ‘long legs.’
My stats are inching back up. At one time, blogging out of Kuwait and Qatar, I averaged around 1200 – 1500 visitors a day, now I am happy to see 800 – 1000 a day. This year I had my highest all time day on this blog 3931 visitors in one day. I don’t really have the kind of blog that attracts that kind of visitor count often; mine is quirky and focused mostly on small things – and great ideas.
But I love the ‘long legs.’ Today the post attracting attention is one I wrote back in March of 2008 about bathroom plumbing in Kuwait. It just always gives me a grin to see an old post attract a little attention. 🙂
Petroglyphs in the Petrified Forest
So here we segue back to the Petrified Forest, and it may not seem logical in a linear, chronological sense, like time-as-pearls-strung-together-on-a-string sort of thing, but in terms of like things, the next chronological entry is going to be on 700 years of culture, the Ancestral Puebloans who used to be called the Anasazi, but before I go there, I want to show you some petroglyphs.
(I’m putting in a lot of links in case you are as big a petroglyph nerd as I am, and want to read more)
I always imagine the problems with being early man. Imagine they are smart, and spend a lot of their days figuring things out, most important being 1. What are we going to eat? 2. How are we going to keep dry/warm? 3. How do we protect ourselves from our enemies? They have the same problems we have, only on a much more basic level, and with fewer resources.
Have you ever thought about how easy it is to get information now? (The hard part being sifting through so you get the most reliable, most relevant information). Imagine a world where you have to figure it out for yourself, every day.
Early civilizations fascinate me. I am always interested in little tiny things that can be very important, like how did they fasten skins together to keep themselves warm? How do you poke a hole in a sharp bone so you can use it as a needle? How do you make a button, or make strips that can be used to tie clothing together?
How do you fasten a spear head onto a spear, or an arrowhead onto an arrow?
Early man was a problem solver, and I am fascinated by petroglyphs, which are either early attempts at documentation, or early attempts at communication, or maybe both? The first petroglyphs and cave paintings I ever visited were the Font de Gaume Caves near Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, and they took my breath away. I didn’t even hesitate because it was a cave, I wanted to see them so badly.
I want you to look at this photo of a fairly early dwelling in Les Eyzies de Tayac-Sireuil and hold it in your mind before we move on:
Later, living in Saudi Arabia, one of the most fun day trips ever was to a rock formation called Graffiti Rock, which had no protection, so very old petroglyphs mingled with modern carvings, but some of the older carvings were so interesting, so intriguing.
Coming across petroglyphs in the Petrified Forest was a delight.
Here is part of what the national parks website has to say about petroglyphs found in the Petrified Forest:
In 1977 a spiral petroglyph at Chaco Canyon National Monument was discovered which displayed a precise interaction with sunlight at the time of summer solstice by means of a narrow shaft of sunlight that moved down a shadowed rock face to bisect the center of a large spiral petroglyph. Subsequent observations found that on winter solstice and equinoxes there were intriguing interactions of sunlit shafts with the large spiral and a smaller spiral nearby. No other example of a sunlight interaction with prehistoric or historic petroglyphs was known at this time. However, there was a tradition of Pueblo sun watching in historic times, particularly of the varying sunrise and sunset positions throughout the year, to set the dates for ceremonies.
As a result of the Chaco Canyon find, Bob Preston initiated a research project to determine whether other petroglyph sites in the Southwest functioned as solar “observatories.” Over the last 16 years he has identified about 120 examples of similar solstice events at more than 50 petroglyph sites in Arizona, New Mexico and southern Utah. Evidence indicates that the phenomenon may have been spread over as much as a 1000-km region. These findings show clearly that certain petroglyphs were used by early pueblo cultures to function as calendrical markers for the winter and summer solstices. Petrified Forest National Park contains the greatest known concentration of solar calendars, with 16 of the sites being in or immediately adjacent to the park, and has been key to understanding their nature.
Shadows and sunlit images are found to move across petroglyphs due to other rocks being in the path of the sun’s rays. As the sun’s path across the sky changes throughout the year, the positions of the shadows and sunlit images change on the petroglyph panels. In many cases the petroglyphs have been placed on the rock faces in just the right position so that specific interactions occur on the solstices. The most common types of petroglyphs on which solsitial interactions have been identified are spirals and circles. The key to determining that these were intended and not by chance is that interactions are seen from site to site, and occur on the solstices more frequently than on other days of the year. These consistent interactions may involve a point of sunlight or shadow piercing the center or tracing the edge of a spiral or circular petroglyph; or shadow lines may suddenly appear or disappear at the center or edges of the petroglyph; or they may move up to the center or edge and then retreat. It is not uncommon for a single petroglyph to display multiple interactions of this type, either on the same solstice or on each of the solstices. In fact, at one site, there are five circular and spiral petroglyphs that show 15 interactions on the both solstices.
An intriguing question is whether types of petroglyph images were involved with specific dates. In several cases similar sunlight and shadow interactions occur on spiral and circular petroglyphs on the equinox, and distinctive interactions occur with other petroglyphs on the solstices and other dates. Clearly much of the puzzle remains to be unraveled.
There was a WEALTH of petroglyphs. I’m just going to show you a few of those we found:
This one makes me laugh; it looks so much like our modern day stork-who-brings-babies (LOL, where did that legend/story start anyway??)
LOL, these feet are larger than life, or else they were made by giants!
Early people in widely separated parts of the world carved and painted on rock, probably for a number of reasons, maybe keeping track of solar activity and seasons, maybe magical/religious thinking for a good hunt or nostalgia for a good hunt, maybe just someone who, like today’s blogger, just has to document in some way . . . 😉
Thank You, AdventureMan
This is a shakedown trip for the new iPad. I love the way it travels, and that it is bigger than an iPhone for picking up e-mail, and I have a keyboard, so I can write.
It is a lot harder to blog. It is harder to crop and manipulate photos, it is harder to integrate the photos into my blog entries. It was so much more difficult that I just didn’t do it. I had a lot of ideas and a lot of photos, but not enough time (you know how it is when you are traveling) to figure out how to get the job done.
AdventureMan very generously offered to let me use his computer to upload my photos and integrate them into blog entries. Thank you, AdventureMan!
Hell Bent for Texas and the Country Kitchen
(This is my first blog entry done from an iPad, and I still have a lot to learn about how to make the same technologies work that seemed so easy on my computer. Bear with me!)
We could have taken more time, but we decided to make it all in one day – Pensacola to Bryan/College Station, Texas, to see old Texas friends. We made it out the door at exactly seven a.m. – a miracle, and chat chat chatted our way across the remaining few miles of Florida, flew across Alabama, zipped across Mississippi. About when we figured we were half way, and were hungry for lunch, we found ourselves back in familiar territory – the Atchafalaya Basin, Bayou Teche and serious Cajun country. And – we also needed gas, so drifting into the gas station on fumes, we breathed a sigh of relief and focused on our next project – what to eat, where to eat.
An answered prayer – The Country Kitchen. As we drove into the parking lot, AdventureMan lowered his window and said “Can you smell that??” The smell of smoking meat pulled us happily inside, where we ordered BBQ chicken. I did something I never do – my phone rang and I had to make a quick decision on a side, and I went with cornbread dressing. What a blessing of fate, while it is something I probably should not eat much of, it was SO delicious, hot, spicy and sweet. It was hard to resist. I also had the sweet peas – they were out of green beans. AdventureMan had very much the same, except with rice.
SO Good.
If you find yourself outside of Lafayette, LA, find this gem. The cooking is all real food, probably not the healthiest, probably they use fat in just about everything, but it is oh, so delicious.
Now Google tells us that the quickest way to get to Bryan, TX is to get off the Interstate at Beaumont, TX, just after crossing the state line. This road is hilarious – two lanes, with speed limits of 70 on several stretches, churches along the way with names like Cowboy Church and Lonesome Dove Chapel, and a stand set up selling Mayhaw jelly.
It was a very very long drive, and, at long last, we arrived at our friends’ beautiful, serene house, spent the evening laughing and catching up, with never a silent moment, we all just had so much to say. Finally, exhausted, we fell into bed, only to rise ready for more chat the next morning. Aren’t old friends the BEST? No matter how much time has passed, you can pick right up, share your hearts and you can talk about everything.
It was a joyful breakfast, again full of tears and laughter, and then, the painful parting. We have this wonderful memory though – just as we were about to leave, we asked about those Mayhaws. what were they, and then we asked about a song AdventureMan can almost remember, “Way Down Yonder in the Paw Paw Patch,” which our friend knew and sang, and as we left we were all laughing once again.
Stop Kony 2012
I love this campaign. I love its focus and specificity. I love that it goes after a merciless bully who uses children as a weapon, and twists religion to serve the evil. I spit on you, Lords Resistance Army.
Please, take twenty-something minutes to watch this, what young people all around the world are doing to stop a hideous abuse of children in Uganda.
April 20. Wooo HOOOO!
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