Breaking Fast

On Sunday we were invited to break fast with the KOPEL (the village co-operative we’re volunteering for) board members and their families. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, breaking fast is an event that happens during Ramadan. Tradition is that Muslim families will fast during daylight hours, then will get together after sun down to have a big meal and celebrate together. It is also often used as an excuse for companies or organisations to have a get together.

KOPEL were having their monthly Board Meeting, so used this as an excuse to have a breaking fast meal afterwards with staff and their families. It was a lovely event with lots of sweaty, hyper kids (who just wanted to climb all over Bro and me and have piggy back rides), lots of the friendly faces we’re now getting to know, and lots of unfamiliar, but very friendly faces from the community. 

Despite one or two faux pas on behalf of Bro and myself (eg. Bro trying to copy the men eating with his fingers disastrously which they all found hilarious, eating the dessert with our main course as we thought it was pea soup (it was green porridge), Bro somehow bringing up circumcision with the Chairman of the Board which went down like a lead balloon…you get the gist), we really enjoyed it. 

We felt very welcome and everyone was extremely friendly. The board had also just seen the video we’ve made for our crowd funding project, so lots of them wanted to chat about it and the project and they were all extremely positive and excited about it which we found really humbling.

On the way home in the boat with Martin, Janet and the kids, we found ourselves in pitch darkness with 3 thunderstorms raging at different points on our horizon. It was magical. Martin killed the engine and we all just sat there in silence watching and listening and breathing it in. I wish I could have bottled it all up and shared it with you all….not sure I’ll experience anything like that again any time soon!