Ramadan

It's currently three weeks into Ramadan here in the 'desh. And quite surprisingly for a month of fasting - it's seems to me to be all about the feasting! During the day most people are tired and hungry, meaning nothing much seems to gets done for a month work wise. But come sunset (around 6:30pm) the whole country stops for Ifta, the breaking of the fast. Like seriously the whole country stops, last week I was in the airport at Ifta time and I had to wait for the security man to chop up his cucumber on the baggage belt and eat his rice before I could go through to the gate. But nobody else seemed to mind. This is Ramadan.

So to ensure every food outlet in the country doesn't go out of business for the month, there is special food for Ifta, which is sold out the front of most food place across the country. The Ifta food can be characterised under two headings: Deep fried or Sickly sweet. So needless to say my hips are loving me this August. 

And even though I'm not missing my meals during the day, obviously I can't say no when my work or landlord give me special boxes of Ifta treats, I am here to experience the culture after all.

Ifta is a social time too, so it's been fun to be invited to share the meal with friends in their homes.

But there is another part of Ramadan that isn't so sweet, there is a huge increase in the number of beggars. One of the 5 pillars of Islam is to give alms (money) to the poor, and it seems Ramadan is the time when many people give their alms. I thought I was overwhelmed by the beggars when I first arrived, but at the moment it's that times 10. It's overwhelming, especially as I attract quite a bit of extra attention, so being out and about on the streets at the moment seems even more exhausting.

But I'm learning to take the sweet with the not so sweet, because as everyone keeps telling me here: This is Bangladesh.