Since I arrived in Jambi during the middle of Ramadan everyone around me has been hinting that they would love it if I also took part in the ritual of fasting. Getting the hint pretty strongly from Sumi, I started fasting a couple days ago and its affects have really surprised me. The first day I went without food or water from 4am in the morning when we finished eating the morning meal, sahur, until after 6pm when the call to prayer signaled that everyone is allowed to eat dinner. Despite my efforts, I got a horrible headache by the afternoon from what I think could only be dehydration. Not wanting to go through that pain again, the next day I promised myself a little water after the midday prayers. I made it through the day with half a cup of water and surprisingly the hunger from fasting has not really bothered me at all. I am attributing that to skills learned from meditation that I should just observe the hunger and not let it affect me negatively.
To break our fast, my coworkers and I went out to dinner to a nice Minangkabau restaurant with staff from the PKBI headquarters in Jakarta that had come in for meetings that day. I thought it was really interesting how the women all sat at one table and the men at the other. The men were also dressed traditionally and the women took turns leaving the table to go pray at the nearby mosque. The food was amazing and it was quite funny to eat with my coworkers while we all used our hands to pull fish from bones and mix the curry into our rice, not quite the same as an office dinner in the US!
But the one thing I am enjoying about fasting is the sense of community between everyone who is enduring the same challenges. I also have a little more respect for the lack of work that has been getting done and the number of naps being taken on the office couch; by the afternoon it is hard to do much more than just sit and relax. I am looking forward to tonight when I will try out going to the nearby mosque for evening prayers with Sumi.
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