Fasting Again

15 September 2007

Once again it is the time of the annual fast. Economically, this time is a boon to merchants and a bane to household finances much as Christmas has been in the West. The local village market is already selling prayer clothes and Arabic-style month-of-fasting finery. Many people buy new prayer clothes at this time of year. This is sarongs for men and women, black hats and long-sleeved shirts for men and long white head coverings for women long enough to cover the arms too and leave only the face showing. Many people, especially professionals who have a lot of public events to attend this month, buy special Arabic-style finery to wear. This is ornate pantsuits with long-sleeved tunics or long dresses and fancy head coverings for women, and long fancy shirts for men.

Out in the village there aren’t many professionals so farmers at the local market would mainly be buying new sarongs, new headcoverings, new flip flops for everybody in the family plus a new outfit for everybody in the family but not necessarily Arab style. The women buy baking ingredients for the annual cookie baking: flour, sugar, shortening, eggs, spices, glass jars, cookie cutters and molds, maybe a new box oven to use on top of a kerosene burner. People often like to do home improvement at this time – paint the house, buy new appliances. Motorbike sales boom at this time of the year with special fasting-month terms of credit. Shops have later hours to accomodate the crowds.

It is the custom here to pay employees an extra month’s salary at their special holiday time. So Muslims get it now, Christians at Christmas, and other religions at their main holiday. But even so, people are scrambling for extra money at this time of year. So there are lots of door-to-door salesmen selling sarongs, prayer clothes, footwear, medicines, plasticware, and gadgets. Women have not been left behind. In recent years there has been an increase in the number of small stalls springing up where women sell cooked food in the late afternoon for the convience of folks who fast all day and don’t feel up to cooking. (Not only Muslims take advantage of the extra foodstalls!)

In recent years the government has started getting into decorating. Usually it has been lights, asking every household to put up a bamboo arch with lights or something of that sort. But this year they have lighted artifical coconut trees in the center of main roads! In the land of acres of real coconut plantations, it seems to me just a little bit bizarre! But what do I know? The locals seem to think it’s pretty cool.