Evening

As the sun was setting, the sky began to clear. The formerly solid sheet of grey was swept into small white puffs whose indistinct borders trailed into the pale blue sky. Night fell, and the stars began to sparkle in the blackness.

I stepped onto my back veranda and switched off my flashlight. The orange glow from my neighbors’ kerosene lamp danced off the cement walls of their house. The chirping crickets mingled with the solemn sound of the azan. Together they formed a chorus that almost drowned out the distant hum of the generator across the street, the only source of electricity for miles.

Slipping off my flip-flops, I walked carefully into my gravel-covered backyard. The stones were cold, but mostly dry under my bare feet. I lay down, settling my weight so that no sharp rocks would dig into my back. I was hidden by the dark and the zinc slabs that fenced in my backyard. Invisible to the world, I listened to the chattering of children next door, the slightly crackled voice coming from a radio, and the crunching footsteps of someone passing by my house.

My eyes followed the stars, tracing Orion’s belt and the big dipper. Even in rural Ohio, I had never seen such a multitude of stars, so I felt certain new constellations must be waiting to be discovered. I formed the pictures in my mind. A giraffe stretched its neck up to the leaves of a tall tree. A child waved her legs and arms out to make a snow angel.

“Manungima?” A passing voice called. It was a question asked to the dark to see if I was still awake. It was a greeting that did not really demand a response. Nevertheless, it broke the spell; it cut through the sensation of being alone and invisible under a vast starlit sky. I got up and went inside.

Ramadan

It was a smell I associated with those fair trade Tibetan gift shops on Coventry or with midnight mass in the Catholic Church on Christmas Eve. The scent of burning incense would settle among the sarongs and beaded necklaces; it would waft down the church aisle with a robed priest and the solemn melody of a hymn. As I knelt in the mosque in Sembehun, I found it interesting that one smell could conjure up two such distinct memories.

I rocked forward onto the balls of my feet, trying to mimic the graceful motion of the other women as they rose. The woven prayer mat felt smooth beneath my toes. Light filtered through the slits in the cement wall that divided the women’s portion of the mosque off from the larger room. I liked feeling invisible under the lappa I was using as a head covering. When I kept my head down, only my hands and bare feet betrayed my white skin and for a moment I was anonymous. When people recognized me, they acknowledged my presence with small welcoming smiles. I followed the others as we listened to the repeated refrains of Allah Ahkbar.

Allah Ahkbar – we bent forward at the waist, hands on our knees.

Allah Ahkbar – we stood straight.

Allah Ahkbar – we knelt, foreheads pressed to the ground.

Allah Ahkbar – we sat up, palms open.

Allah Ahkbar – we laid our foreheads to the ground again.

Allah Ahkbar – we stood.

I decided on a whim that I would fast for part of Ramadan. I had planned to be traveling for most of the month, but was spending one week at site in my predominantly Muslim village. When my neighbors asked if I was fasting, I figured I might as well try. They say it is not good to cut fast alone, so my neighbor Regina came to my house every evening after the 7pm call to prayer. We had both cooked earlier, so we would sit on my veranda dipping our hands into the same bowl to scoop up rice and plasas or cassava with soup. After eating, Regina invited me to the mosque for the evening prayers.

For a year, I have enjoyed listening to the call to prayer pouring from the mosque behind my house. Especially when school is not in session, I find my days punctuated by the azan. I wake up before dawn with the first call to prayer and stay in bed waiting for the first glimmers of light to shine through my window. I walk by the mosque every Friday afternoon, but I had never entered. I was curious to see inside the mosque for a change, so I agreed to accompany Regina.

One of the things that I appreciate about Sierra Leoneans is their religious tolerance. The tension that characterizes relations between Christians and Muslims in much of the world is completely absent here. Instead, regardless of whether you choose to pray in a church or a mosque you will be welcomed with open arms. For me, fasting for Ramadan had little to do with religion. On the contrary, it was a way to be a part of my community – to have a child teach me the words of an Arabic prayer, to have my neighbor wake me at 3am to give me a steaming plate of rice, to understand something I didn’t understand before.