One of the best, if not the best, things about teaching at Essex County College is experiencing its diversity. I could probably go back to when I first came to Newark in the mid-1980's and found myself exposed to people different than what I experienced growing up down on the Jersey Shore. Newark had a wider range of socioeconomic, cultural, and religious diversity. While I like the melting pot of people, I also do like "neighborhoods" where the people and practices are consistent. Example, "Down Neck" or the Ironbound used to be almost all Portuguese, and North Newark predominately Italian. Today famous neighborhoods like Manhattan's "Little Italy" have had their boundaries, which were once well defined, now fluid between Chinatown and Little Italy which takes away from the neighborhood, and the visiting experience. In tougher neighborhoods gentrification has changed the landscape, while not always bad, and the flavor. My daughters done the Brooklyn tour, Williamsburg, Bed-Sty, and Crown Heights, and it's not uncommon to find a bougie coffee joint or a fancy restaurant where a bodega sat decades ago.
The students in my class this year come from all walks of life and from all corners of the globe. I should really get a list but besides the few born and bred in the USA, we have students from Africa, Jamaica, Haiti, China, Taiwan, Philippines, Mexico, Dominic Republic, and the list goes on. Some of my students are Muslim, which is a religion, not a race, and those students come from a variety of different countries.
Last evening was the start of the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and the start of Ramadan, the holy month that signifies when the Quran, their holy book, was delivered to or seen by the Prophet Muhammad. I can follow briefly all that is Ramadan, but in fact every year I have to brush up on things Lent and Easter as well. What I do know is that in the last week or so Muslims weren't sure when Ramadan would start as it is governed by the siting of the crescent moon in Saudi Arabia. It will last until the next crescent moon, which is March 29th.
For those practicing Muslims Ramadan is a month of fasting, praying, reflecting, and giving back to the community. It is kind similar to Lent, or the 40 days before Easter. Several of my students do the fasting and this year I am deciding to join them. The fasting goes from just before sunrise to just after sunset. It's pretty hardcore, no food or drink, even water, between those times. If you are on your feet all day, working, studying, it's easy to feel the effects physically especially if you don't wake up at zero-dark-thirty and eat before the sunrise. I have had students get woozy due to low blood sugar during this month.
While I won't be praying to points east, like to Mecca, I will get a feeling of what it's like to have to fast during the day hours, when I seem to do the most damage to the contents of the refrigerator and my body. I won't be giving up drinking water during the day though, it's too much with clinical and lecturing for three hours. We'll see how it goes.
If you see a Muslin drop them a "Ramadan Mubarak", which would be similar to Happy Ramadan.
