I tried to start my day off at 5am. It didn’t really work out. My cell phone’s alarm went off at 5am, which I immediately turned off. This was followed by me instantly falling back asleep. I woke up fifteen minutes later to the ‘call to pray’ coming from my neighborhood’s mosque. The call to pray is recited every morning just before sunrise and four other times throughout the day every day. It’s all in Arabic and is said over a loud speaker for the whole neighborhood to hear. Each neighborhood has a mosque, so you’ll hear it all over Sotouboua.
Although it sometimes wakes me up, I rather like hearing it in the morning. I feel like it puts me into a trace or at least affects whatever dreams I may be having. I don’t know who exactly does the call to pray at my mosque, but judging by the voice it sounds like an old man who has been smoking five packs of cigarettes each day since he was a kid. Yet I find it really soothing. I have no idea what’s being said because it’s all in Arabic. No wait, that’s a lie, I have some sort of idea because I looked it up on Wikipedia once. It has something to do with expressing the basic beliefs of Islam.
Well, back to my story, I fell back asleep again just to wake up all on my own at 6:30am. I told myself the night before I was going to get up and go for a run. But to do that I needed to get up, which always turns out to be a challenge for me. After a mental pep talk I finally convinced myself not to be lazy. The next half hour was spent getting dressed, brushing teeth, and stretching. 7am came and I made my way to the outside world. Most everyone else in my town had already been up since dawn. How they do it, I will never know.
The women who I consider my host mom was sitting out in our compound reading verses out of her bible. It’s the way she often starts her day. After the kids go off to school, she’ll pull out a little notebook that’ll have a list of what verses she should read for the day. I’ve gone to mass with her a few times. It’s actually pretty interesting and full of dancing… lots of dancing. I really like the sense of community I get when I’m at mass here. Back in America I only seemed to find a sense of boredom.
I don’t really consider myself religious. Many people find that really weird here, and often make it their mission to change my heathen ways. So I’ve learned to just say I’m Catholic.
I’d say Sotouboua is about 40% Muslims and 60% Christians. Everyone seems tolerant of everyone’s religion too, as long as you have a religion. In fact, I can’t say I’ve seen any discrimination against anything like that. I do find it funny though that I’ve never been asked ‘What has Allah done for you?’, but it seems every other week I get asked ‘What has Jesus done for you?’
Well, back to my story again, I left my host mom to her reading and headed out for a run. And that’s it. End of my story. Hope you enjoyed it!
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