Last night when I got home from school, the water was, again, not on. Apparently, it shut off right after I left for class yesterday and stayed off all day. Guess the water problem wasn’t resolved… as I suspected.
At about 10pm last night I heard the toilet running, so I turned the faucet on and the water worked. Except it was brown. We let it run for a few minutes, but the color didn’t really change, so we all went to bed dirty. The water was back on (and clear) this morning, but after yesterday I am not expecting anything.
The biggest news I have is that Ramadan began this morning. I heard my mom and sister up at 5:30 this morning, because that’s what time you’re supposed to eat in the morning before you begin your daily fast. It’s surely going to be an interesting month, and I’m expecting the dynamic of the streets to change a little bit. I’m sure there will be less people out in the streets, less energy, less vendors. We’ll see… Hopefully the lack of food won’t make my mama any more difficult than she already is.
The nice thing about this whole procedure is that when I get home from school every day at 7:30pm, the sun will just have set, which means that it will be time for my family to eat again. I’m hoping that dinner will be ready and on the table instead of me having to wait, famished, until almost 9pm to eat.
The unfortunate thing is that the next day I will be eating the previous evening’s leftovers EVERY DAY because they sure as hell aren’t going to cook me anything new for lunch.
I’m really surprised by how many of the American students in my program have decided to fast. I can count at least 8 off the top of my head, and there may be more. I don’t know why on earth anyone would choose to fast if it wasn’t a religious requirement. Especially in this heat. I know I couldn’t go a day without food, but even more, I couldn’t go an hour without water. These people go 14 hours ever single day without either! All I have to say to the American students is GOOD LUCK.
Ramadan Begins
