The Holy Month and taxes
During the last two weeks my lunches have mostly consisted of apples, porridge or bread with spread cheese and/or sardines. Besides the end of delicious free meals with loads of rice, oil and fish at work, the month of Ramadan in Senegal means that everything slows down when people are more tired due to fasting during daytime.
August is one of the hottest months in the region of Thies where I am located, and this does not make fasting easy. Yesterday the rain cooled the temperature to a level where I actually felt cold – this has not happened often since May, so every time when I get shivers I am worried that it might be a fever coming : ) But today the humidity and heat are back, and the sky shows no signs of rain as yet. As it was already difficult to concentrate and keep up the energy levels throughout the hard afternoons before the fasting, I am wondering how do people manage here?
Thank God for the rain!
I was told before the beginning of Ramadan in Senegal that ”soon you will see everybody presenting themselves as the most devout Muslim, with prayer beads and a long tooth stick as basic accessories and doing the minimum requirement of five prayers a day.” And this really happened! I could not believe my eyes when on the first morning of Ramadan I saw a familiar shopkeeper with a prayer bead in front of his shop, refusing to shake hands with me while busy with praying. This is the man who usually tries to hit on every (at least white) woman, and jokingly asked me to be his third wife a few weeks back.
People seem to be having a competition with their tooth sticks: the longer and bigger, the better. These tooth sticks, sothie in Wolof were a familiar sight also in Benin: they are used as tooth brushes, and seemingly working when looking at the state of people’s teeth without dental care. Apparently chewing a tooth stick does not, then, break one’s fast, whereas a chewing gum (even sugarless!) would.
I am being asked constantly to join fasting for ”solidarity”, since that is what many of the local Christians do as well. I feel less hungry in general, perhaps due to the lack of food odours around me. But thirst is inescapable with this heat, and I begin to feel dizzy quite soon when not drinking water. Perhaps the most difficult part for me is waking up, as the breakfast should be taken before the sunrise, by 5.30 am. Strangely enough, the two times when I did take the early breakfast – when leaving for Kolda from Dakar early in the morning, and returning from Kolda even earlier in the morning – I felt less hungry, and lasted until 4pm on my way back from Kolda without any problems before indulging myself with a sweet, cold, refreshing bissap juice (sorrel is the word often used for bissap in English).
Bottles of freshly prepared bissap juice.
Ramadan is a collective struggle of all Muslims, a way to sympathize with those in the world who are hungry and thirsty every day. Being generous is even more important than normally during Ramadan, and evening meals are supposed to be shared with those who have less. It is also a blessed month, the time for praying and focusing on religion. Senegalese TV channels have several discussion programs focusing on the month of Ramadan, and the usual pop music videos have been largely replaced by religious chants, khassaides, or the recital of Qur’an.
Besides food and drink, also sex and smoking are forbidden during daylight hours. Alcohol is, of course, supposed to forbidden at all times for Muslims, but during Ramadan even those who do drink – such as the mystic Mouride brotherhood of Baye Falls, perhaps a topic of another post – try to cut down on these worldly pleasures. Yet, in the big cities the month is less visible: I was told that for the first few days in Dakar the night clubs and bars are quiet and often closed, but that the second week already brings in the thirsty customers.
Sunset at the beach of Mboro.
The current focus on religion has strongly influenced some of my recent discussions. I have been posed the question: “What do you believe in if you don’t believe in God – do you believe only in yourself?”. I have tried to explain in my less advanced French on spiritual-philosophical matters that even people who don’t believe in Bible or Qur’an can be moral and good people, and believe in different things.
What do I believe in, then? My answer is still not fully developed, and I wonder if it will ever be. But hearing the local people often say how ”God did not create the world equal”, and that “full equality is impossible”, I have become more and more aware how much my world view has been shaped by the education system in Finland and the social democratic ideals of equity and income distribution. And maybe, maybe by the state church. Yes, we have two of them in the so-called secular country of Finland, Evangelical Lutheranism and the Orthodox church, myself being initiated in the former.
No matter where you start from, you should have the same right and possibility to educate yourself and be protected by a basic safety net – and in Finland this happens, though not perfectly or even adequately, with the help of income distribution and taxes (and some debt). The fiscal system in Senegal, even combined with international aid (funded by tax-payers abroad) cannot still offer social services to everybody, meaning that people have to rely on informal solidarity networks and family support. The poorest, such as handicapped people and street children survive thanks to the duty of Muslims to give alms, zakat – another form of tax.
It seems that in the end everything works due to taxes: be it through a bureaucratic system as in Finland, the financing of international development cooperation, or the Muslim obligation to give alms. Maybe my answer to the question would be then: I believe in human rights and taxes : )
August is one of the hottest months in the region of Thies where I am located, and this does not make fasting easy. Yesterday the rain cooled the temperature to a level where I actually felt cold – this has not happened often since May, so every time when I get shivers I am worried that it might be a fever coming : ) But today the humidity and heat are back, and the sky shows no signs of rain as yet. As it was already difficult to concentrate and keep up the energy levels throughout the hard afternoons before the fasting, I am wondering how do people manage here?
Thank God for the rain!
I was told before the beginning of Ramadan in Senegal that ”soon you will see everybody presenting themselves as the most devout Muslim, with prayer beads and a long tooth stick as basic accessories and doing the minimum requirement of five prayers a day.” And this really happened! I could not believe my eyes when on the first morning of Ramadan I saw a familiar shopkeeper with a prayer bead in front of his shop, refusing to shake hands with me while busy with praying. This is the man who usually tries to hit on every (at least white) woman, and jokingly asked me to be his third wife a few weeks back.
People seem to be having a competition with their tooth sticks: the longer and bigger, the better. These tooth sticks, sothie in Wolof were a familiar sight also in Benin: they are used as tooth brushes, and seemingly working when looking at the state of people’s teeth without dental care. Apparently chewing a tooth stick does not, then, break one’s fast, whereas a chewing gum (even sugarless!) would.
I am being asked constantly to join fasting for ”solidarity”, since that is what many of the local Christians do as well. I feel less hungry in general, perhaps due to the lack of food odours around me. But thirst is inescapable with this heat, and I begin to feel dizzy quite soon when not drinking water. Perhaps the most difficult part for me is waking up, as the breakfast should be taken before the sunrise, by 5.30 am. Strangely enough, the two times when I did take the early breakfast – when leaving for Kolda from Dakar early in the morning, and returning from Kolda even earlier in the morning – I felt less hungry, and lasted until 4pm on my way back from Kolda without any problems before indulging myself with a sweet, cold, refreshing bissap juice (sorrel is the word often used for bissap in English).
Bottles of freshly prepared bissap juice.
Ramadan is a collective struggle of all Muslims, a way to sympathize with those in the world who are hungry and thirsty every day. Being generous is even more important than normally during Ramadan, and evening meals are supposed to be shared with those who have less. It is also a blessed month, the time for praying and focusing on religion. Senegalese TV channels have several discussion programs focusing on the month of Ramadan, and the usual pop music videos have been largely replaced by religious chants, khassaides, or the recital of Qur’an.
Besides food and drink, also sex and smoking are forbidden during daylight hours. Alcohol is, of course, supposed to forbidden at all times for Muslims, but during Ramadan even those who do drink – such as the mystic Mouride brotherhood of Baye Falls, perhaps a topic of another post – try to cut down on these worldly pleasures. Yet, in the big cities the month is less visible: I was told that for the first few days in Dakar the night clubs and bars are quiet and often closed, but that the second week already brings in the thirsty customers.
Sunset at the beach of Mboro.
The current focus on religion has strongly influenced some of my recent discussions. I have been posed the question: “What do you believe in if you don’t believe in God – do you believe only in yourself?”. I have tried to explain in my less advanced French on spiritual-philosophical matters that even people who don’t believe in Bible or Qur’an can be moral and good people, and believe in different things.
What do I believe in, then? My answer is still not fully developed, and I wonder if it will ever be. But hearing the local people often say how ”God did not create the world equal”, and that “full equality is impossible”, I have become more and more aware how much my world view has been shaped by the education system in Finland and the social democratic ideals of equity and income distribution. And maybe, maybe by the state church. Yes, we have two of them in the so-called secular country of Finland, Evangelical Lutheranism and the Orthodox church, myself being initiated in the former.
No matter where you start from, you should have the same right and possibility to educate yourself and be protected by a basic safety net – and in Finland this happens, though not perfectly or even adequately, with the help of income distribution and taxes (and some debt). The fiscal system in Senegal, even combined with international aid (funded by tax-payers abroad) cannot still offer social services to everybody, meaning that people have to rely on informal solidarity networks and family support. The poorest, such as handicapped people and street children survive thanks to the duty of Muslims to give alms, zakat – another form of tax.
It seems that in the end everything works due to taxes: be it through a bureaucratic system as in Finland, the financing of international development cooperation, or the Muslim obligation to give alms. Maybe my answer to the question would be then: I believe in human rights and taxes : )
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