1/27

I’m doing okay. Yes, just okay, as though contentment is inferior to other emotions. I’m not swarmed with moments of joy gnatting at my ear, and I never let the raincloud over my head grow large enough to storm. I just let be what wants to be, as long as it leaves me be, too.

 

As Comoros is 98% Muslim (locals would argue 100% of true Comorians are Muslim), the entire country has been participating in Ramadan since we arrived. During this month-long holiday, people who are Islamic fast while the sun is up –from dawn until dusk. Along with abstaining from food, the fast includes no drinking water and even no chewing gum (which I thought was superfluous before I learned that many Comorians don’t even drink their own spit during the daytime).

 

One overly patriotic Comorian woman from our host village, Mvouni, extended the fast beyond Islam to everyone on the island. She argues –literally—that fasting is a sort of respect: you fast because everyone else has to fast, too. I didn’t buy into that logic, which made the woman a little angry once when she confronted me and a few other PCT’s on the way to buy phone credit (we decided to play dumb, and pretend we didn’t understand what she was saying. It ended with shared laughter, so I’d call that a successful encounter).

 

But Ramadan has ended. It’s been just over a month since we arrived. A month of being asked if I was fasting every day by a stranger who would always scold me when I said “no.” A month since I’ve had a warm bath. A month since I’ve used a toilet that always works. A month since I’ve watched TV (quite the stretch for me), or seen my twin sister’s face in real time (I’ve been lucky enough to FaceTime my new baby nephew with wifi from the HQ office). A month since I’ve had a complete night sleep uninterrupted by morning prayer (or those freaking roosters…or cats, oddly enough).

 

I miss a lot of things from home, I’m not learning the local language as quickly as I wanted to, and I’ve been a little sick for the last few days. But I also have a family that treats me like their own after only three short weeks, and I’ve found identity with my group of trainees.

 

I’m still lost in the hedge maze of “why peace corps,” but I know the answer is waiting to be found somewhere toward the center. And I know there, too, hides another piece of me (As my Peace Corps wife and writing buddy, Nora, would quote: “All wonders you seek are within yourself” –Sir Thomas Browne).

Running Low

Today, it’s really cold at 70 degrees. A month ago, I’d have added to the eye rolls: “70 degrees isn’t cold! -20 is cold!” But now, I’m shivering in my desk chair and staring at a video of a fireplace that’s playing on Emily’s (my colleague) laptop as if staring at it will make me warm. Even the coffee I made (a luxury I’ve had since I arrived in Comoros, though my supplies are dwindling) is cold now. I sip at it and let the taste fool my tongue for a moment before recognizing this taste associated with warmth is not as it should be. That nothing, really, is as it should be (except, perhaps, culture shock).

 

Every morning, I wake up to the sound of roosters. Even this isn’t as I’ve imagined. My family never owned chickens, though I’ve had plenty of experience with them in the kitchen (deboning a chicken is one of my favorite tasks). I’d bought into the “cock-a-doodle-doo” of the cartoons and children’s books dictated in my childhood: as the sun starts to lighten the day, papa rooster rises from his slumber and shouts a “good morning” to the earth. Let’s end this unnecessary lie –waking up to roosters is like waking up to a forest fire. My first “morning” –it was 4am—I jolted up in bed and crawled out of my mosquito netting toward the window. I don’t know what I was expecting to see. Hundreds of children getting spanked at once? Maybe there really was a fire, and the town was crying in empathy of their neighbor. There wasn’t a stir outside. The sun barely lit the horizon, but I could see enough to know that everything was alright. Then, a few houses away, I saw a rooster on a flat cement roof, peacocking toward the roof’s edge.

 

I groaned, crawled through the mosquito net to my bed, and tucked it under the mattress. As my ears started to ignore the ongoing shrill of roosters and the cinema of my mind started a malaria prophylaxis-inspired dream, a loudspeaker pointed directly at my window began to praise Allah loud enough so he could hear from heaven.

 

I guess I’ve gotten used to the roosters and prayers now. I wake up at 6:30am, begging my alarm for more hours –minutes even. When I manage to pull myself out of bed, slide into semi-dirty clothes, and work up the energy to get water from the cistern to brush my teeth, I’ve worked my brain back into a Comorian normalcy:

 

“Quazi, mama,” I tell my host mother who sits on a plastic lawn chair in a cement kitchen. In the morning, she is always sewing golden thread patterns onto black cloth.

“Mbona. (In Shingadzidja:) Did you wake up?”

I struggle to find the right words: “I woke up. I’m cooking coffee.” Not the best grammar, but she understands my point and nods. And I prepare coffee using the last of my beans from home.