Ramadan

Senegal is the first Muslim African country that I've been to and its influence on all aspects of life is very apparent, no more so than during Ramadan.

In solidaritary, I attempted to fast for the first fews days, just to see what it is like. This involves getting up at 5am to eat breakfast before the first 'call to prayer', then not eating or drinking anything until 7:45pm that evening when dusk falls. To break the fast, it is traditional to eat a few dates and then wait another couple of hours to eat a big meal. I lasted two days. Eating a ton of bread at 5am and then going back to sleep for a couple of hours is a really unpleasant feeling! During the day, the worst thing was the thirst. I simply do not know how everyone is still fasting like this - day in, day out, and we are into the third of four weeks of Ramadan.

It's no wonder that, in the afternoon, you see hundreds of men asleep on the pavements, trying to ignore their hunger and thirst at the worst time of day. How much economic productivity is lost during the month of Ramadan? It certainly seems that most businesses slow down or even close. In fact, on global scale, with the whole Arab world fasting and working at a lower capacity, does this impact on global economics? If Senegal is anything to go by, then it must do!

I've just been travelling in Casamance and The Gambia (blog update to follow) and it's been difficult to find somewhere out of the public eye to take a long swig from a water bottle without feeling unbelivabley rude. We were worried that we would not be able find places open for lunch during the day, but in each town there was usually a single Christian-owned place still serving food. Nevertheless, we were never far away from a scornful look of someone longing for a drink or morsel of food.