Maulid Day

Will this be a three-day weekend?  Should I (Misha) plan for the translators I supervise to take a trip to the village next week or will a holiday mess up that schedule?  Do I need to wash my dishes on Sunday or not?

Thanks to Maulid Day, the above are some of the questions I was asking myself last week and over the weekend.  Maulid Day is the celebration of Muhammad's birth and is a national holiday in Tanzania, a country which is very fair in celebrating both Christian and Muslim holidays (which means we have a LOT of holidays to celebrate!).  The problem with Muslim holidays is that the dates are not known until the evening before the holiday since they are according to the Islamic calendar, which is based on the moon.  If the moon is sighted, then the next day is the holiday.  If it's still dark in the sky and no moon is visible, then there's no holiday the next day.  So we usually know within a three-day range or so when a holiday might be happening, but it's impossible to know until the night before when it's actually going to happen.

There is not really a proper system in place for announcing if the head Muslim guy for the country saw the moon or not, unfortunately.  After making plans and if-there-is-a-holiday-on-Monday-or-Tuesday back up plans for the translators going out to villages, I settled into my weekend wondering whether or not it would be a long weekend.  There is a woman who comes to do some housework for me on Mondays, but she doesn't come on holidays.  So on Sunday, having no news of any holiday, I set about washing lots of dishes.  It took a good portion of my day, but I couldn't let them keep piling up!  Then in the evening, it was about 8:00pm when Andrew and I realized that if there was a moon, it should be up by then, and we should have some news about whether or not Monday was a holiday.  We tried online searches, we tried calling people, but to not much avail.  We finally heard that some people thought it had been that day (Sunday).  Well!  All those dishes washed for naught!  Nothing like hearing on Monday morning that Sunday had been a holiday and I hadn't even known.  Well, so be it.  At least it didn't end up messing up any village trips!