Ramandan = No Food = Bad for Hungry Texan.

Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, has made my first week in Guinea a bit more challenging: There is not a single spot of food anywhere within a 1 hour driving radius during lunchtime. And all the grocery stores were closed to prepare for the big fast-breaking dinner by the time I got off work. So it was like a Guinean conspiracy to be sure that Jennifer Klein fasted during Ramadan. Yesterday, I finally made it to "Exclusive Hyper BoBo", the biggest grocery store in town, for a retaliation food-stockpiling session for next week so hopefully I will make it through Ramadan.

Tomorrow, Oct. 20, is a national holiday because all the Muslims are supposed to sleep in the mosque tonight. They originally told me that they were sleeping in the mosque on Wednesday night and I would have Thursday off work. And now, they say that depending on how the moon looks this weekend, I might just have Monday off too.

I'm not used to having my work schedule declared spontaneously by a group of religous leaders based on their judgment of the moon, but as long as they keep declaring holidays, I'm not going to compain too much. Now if they'll just decide to let people open their restaurants in the daytime again, I'll be one happy Muslim-country resident.