So it's only been a week and I'm trying to be more contientous about posting regularly. Sadly enough, I feel like I don't have much to write about at the moment. Work is plugging along slowly but surely; this week in particular is just dragging along. My theory is because the extended breakfast breaks no longer exist to break up the day. Ramadan arrived on Friday; it was supposed to start Thursday but like everything else in The Gambia it also did not manage to start on Thursday, apparently you can't start Ramadan if you can't see the moon and I guess it decided not to make an appearance on Wednesday evening so it started Friday instead. It's been an interesting few days to say the least; I actually fasted on Friday as well. I hadn't really intended to but I arrived at work knowing that I wasn't going to eat until after 1pm when I left the office but as it turned out there was meeting that afternoon that someone had forgotten to tell me about so I ended up being there until 4pm without having had anything to eat or drink so I just decided that I would continue on until that evening. It actually wasn't that bad, I didn't even really get really thirstyuntil around 6pm so all in all it went pretty well. I have not fasted again properly and don't really intend to; I generally fast at work because I usually feel too guilty to go and get food in an office full of tired and hungry people.
Ramadan has definately had an interesting effect on people; people's tempers have been better than I expected but they are all very tired all the time because they were up at 5 am to pray and eat before the sun comes up. As you can imagine, in a society that's already kinda lazy, this leads to futher slacking. Yesterday, one of my co-workers decided to take a nap in the conference room when the National Coordinator left the office fore a training seminar. Then the power went off for awhile and when I went back to her office a while later she had disappeared; her computer was off and her bags were gone. It was about 1pm at this point; the office now closes at 2:30 instead of 4pm because of Ramadan and she couldn't even manage to wait the extra hour! It makes me laugh and cringe all at the same time!
Other than that things are going well; it will be nice when Ramadan is over and Amat and go back to accompanying me to the beach so I don't get harassed. I was bored on Sunday evening so i decided to take a walk to the beach...BIG mistake! In the 40 minutes that I was there, 4 people invited themselves to sit down and chat not understanding "I want to be alone!" and that four doesn't include the one who caught me on my way home!! One guy suggested I give him my number so we can get together sometimes...and this was AFTER I told him I had a husband about six times!! Then I ran into him AGAIN, lucky me, when I was walking back alone the beach to go home and he invited me to his house for dinner. I near strangled the guy..."what didn't you understand the first fourteen times"!!! By the ned of the experience I was so frustrated so I don't think I'll be going back to the beach until after Ramadan...only 25 days to go! But overall things are good; can't believe it's nearly 7 weeks now. In a way it still feels like I've been here forever but in another way I can't believe the end of September is already approaching. It certainly doesn't feel like fall here...but I wish it did...without the winter to follow of course! Anyway, I hope all is well with everyone, wherever you may be.
Until next time,
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