Lunar New Year

    Today marks the first day of Muharram (Islamic New Year). Unlike American holidays, Muharram is based on a lunar calendar. The specific date of the holiday is literally uncertain until the moment that the crescent moon appears in the sky, because the moon is the only sure means of affirming that the new month has begun.
     You would think that the scientific technology which is readily available would suffice as a means of verifying the official dates of lunar holidays such as Muharram; however, it is apparently preferred to use only traditional methods (moon gazing). Muslims will annually predict which date Muharram might fall on; however, nobody really knows what day the holiday will fall on until they see the moon.
     This year, Muharram was predicted to fall on Thursday, November 15th. The official GWA calendar sent out at the start of the school year marked November 15th as a day off school in observation of the Islamic New Year. Nevertheless.... by Tuesday (November 13th), it became suddenly unclear as to whether or not the prediction of Muharram would be correct or not. Everyone was taking bets on whether the holiday would fall on Thursday (as predicted) or Friday, November 16th.
    GWA responded to this uncertainty with an e-mail informing staff members that the school would only be closed for one day and one day only in observation of Muharram. If the New Year was on Thursday, there would be no school on Thursday. If the New Year was on Friday, there would be no school on Friday. The e-mail concluded by saying, "Please refer to your local news casts for information concerning the actual day of the New Year."

    FYI: the phrase "local news cast" in Morocco means something vastly different than it would in America. While there is maybe one local news station, the vast majority of the foreign hire staff (including us) do not own a television. Furthermore, those who do own a television are limited by the fact that the news broadcasts are in French/Arabic only. For this reason, our only source of "local news" was talking to the local Moroccans in cafes and "hanuts".
     On Wednesday, we continually checked our school e-mail in anticipation of finding out for certain whether we would have school the next day or not. Dave went to a local Cafe to watch a soccer game at 8:00PM, but when he left an hour later even the Moroccans could not affirm when the holiday would be since the moon had not yet been spotted. Ultimately, we did not get official notice of the holiday until 10:00PM on Wednesday night. We were told that the holiday would fall on Friday...so there would be school on Thursday after all.
     So... Nicole had to reschedule a 3rd grade parent event/celebration (concluding a writing project) which was planned for Friday, postpone a test, and wake up to teach on Thursday with absolutely no lesson plans prepared. There were also a lot of absences due to the fact that the official school calendar had originally marked Thursday as a day off school.

Lesson learned through this experience: Lunar holidays test your ability to be flexible. In the end, everything turned out just fine in spite of the initial frustration of not knowing what day we had to work. We decided to celebrate the start of Muharram (and the start of our unexpected 3-day weekend) by going to the new James Bond movie at the IMAX.

Any bets on what day Muharram will fall on next year? ;)

-David & Nicole