As of this weekend I’ve changed my fasting pattern. Normally we break fast at 7:30, we eat dinner at 11:00 and then I’m asleep by twelve. The problem is that when I break fast food is the farthest thing from my mind is food because dama mar (I’m thirsty). I’ll drink a 1.5 liter bottle of water and barley be able to move let alone eat anything. Thus I usually end up eating some bread and milk around 8:00 when it doesn’t feel as if someone is sitting on my stomach. Since an empty stomach feels full very quickly, eating has to be approached strategically. This means that if all you have room for is a half a baguette, then you take a third, cover it with layer after layer of chocolate, butter, sugar and sometimes even dates if I’m feeling very tired. This way six inches of bread can carry around six or seven hundred calories and an entire days worth of fat. Overeating when you break fast is a rookie mistake that renders one unable to eat a good dinner, the most important meal of the day.

After three hours I’m always hungry for dinner. The problem is that so is everyone else. Of course we all eat around a large plate and with 8 people in the house as of now we don’t eat as much as we did before. Again there’s a strategy for this. If we’re eating with silverware then getting a spoon is absolutely necessary. I remember when I was little watching a man with Parkensins trying to eat a bowl of soup; every time he would get the spoon to his mouth there’d be nothing left. I vividly remember crying when I saw this. Trying to eat couscous with a fork is as difficult of a task. There’s simply too much at risk. I’ve I load a fork with couscous and a bite of chicken and half way to my mouth it falls on my lap I’m in deep shit. Awa knows that she’s going to have to put in overtime scrubbing the stain out of my pants, everyone is pissed that I wasted a perfectly good piece of chicken and now I have a hundred little grains of couscous stuck in my leg hair. (Side not here I’m pretty sure I’m the only one with leg hair in the entire country) As I said a spoon is crucial. I can take as much couscous with a single scoop of a spoon as I can with four significantly more dangerous forkfuls. This decreases the frequency that one takes from the place but maxims in take. Thus, it seems like you’re eating less and will be inevitably told to eat more.

Dinner usually knocks me out. A full meal after 5 or six hours a sleep feels as strong as an Ambien. However, this is the make or break moment in my life. No matter how full I am its imperative to drink a cup of coffee. This gives me the energy I need to stay up for about an hour and a half when I’ll be hungry again. Around 12:30 I’ll go to the boutique across the street and buy two kilos of bread (about two baguettes). This has kinda become my daily contributions to the household and Babakar and Ibo are always ready to eat when I get back. We heat up coffee and milk, dunk our baguettes in the scalding liquid and eat until we can’t eat any more. Sometimes this process takes multiple trips to the boutique. At this point we’re all tired. We all go to the roof and stay there for as long as we can, as long as our bodies will permit us, which is usually until 2:00. Then we crash.