Have a blessed Eid al-Fitr (Don's entry)

We sort of celebrated the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr this year.  It is the end of the Ramadan (fasting during daylight hours) month. Since Tanzania has equal numbers of Christians and Sunni Muslims, the country celebrates religious holidays from both faiths.  The estimates vary from 30% to 50% for each faith.  The 50% estimate is too high since there are religions other than those two.  Everybody peacefully co-exists by the way.

This holiday is unlike anything else we have experienced. We are used to American holidays that are known in advance. Well in advance.  Islam follows a lunar calendar (as opposed to our Gregorian solar calendar). Eid al-Fitr, therefore, comes about 11 days earlier each year in the Gregorian calendar than the year before while it is on the same day in their lunar calendar. The thing that was most puzzling to us was the uncertainty.  It starts on the first day of the new moon. While astronomers know when that will be for each month for the next century, this is not an astronomical holiday.  It is a religious holiday so it can only be determined by a religious authority. It isn't official until that person literally sees that it is a new moon.  We could not get anyone to say when the holiday was going to occur.  We were planning to take a trip so we needed to make plans and did so.  We weren't sure we were really on a holiday trip until we were already at the resort for a day. Sunday night it became official. We feasted, but I don't think that what we did counted as Eid al-Fitr.

We stayed in this big tent.

The bed was decorated with leaves, flowers and blanket origami.

bathroom

This is the view from our tent porch. These yellow barked trees grow in this area.  The early European explorers called them yellow fever trees noticing that they got yellow fever when they were in the vicinity of these trees.  It wasn't the trees that caused yellow fever.  The trees just grew in the same damp environment as mosquitoes.  The nearby town is Mto wa Mbu, River of Mosquitoes. 

Don