Dakar, Senegal - Muslims round the world are known for their strict Ramadan fasts, but Senegal's massively outnumbered Catholics are also tightening their belts during Lent.
The period leading up to the central Christian feast of Easter is traditionally a time of repentance and self-denial, its 40 days symbolising the time Jesus Christ spent in the wilderness early on in his ministry.
While fasting was quite strict in the first centuries of Christianity, with only one meal allowed after sundown, reforms over the centuries loosened it to the point where Catholics, for example, simply give up meat on Fridays and sometimes also pass up on favourites such as sweets or alcohol.
But here in Senegal many Christians shun food and water during daylight hours in much the same way their Muslim neighbours during the month-long fast for Ramadan.
"I feel free within myself. I feel good because I'm doing this for God. My spirit is free and I feel uplifted. You don't even feel like eating," Yolande Sarr, a Roman Catholic high school student in the capital Dakar, told Reuters.
Such strict fasting for Lent is a recent development in Senegal, said Father Jacques Seck, a prominent Senegalese Roman Catholic clergyman and scholar.
Now in his 70s, Seck says he never saw people fasting when he was growing up in Senegal.
"Some people would snack for two very small meals, and have one normal meal in the evening," he recalled. The first time he remembers meeting someone fasting all day was in the late 1970s when he was a priest at Dakar's Catholic cathedral.
Now, he said, total fasting is more common. People want to show they are as serious about their religion as Muslims and feel pressure to compete on the level of self-denial, he said.
Some Christian communities around the world practise similar strict fasting, but for most Christians the Lenten fast has become altogether more relaxed.
"Not eating meat, not eating butter, not eating animal products. That's a very common fast for Christians," said Dana Robert, director of the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University.
Others simply forego treats like chocolate or alcohol -- except on Sundays, when Christians get a day off fasting.
"WE ARE TOGETHER"
At nearly 1 p.m., trainee tailor Marie-Simone Mbengue would normally be getting up from behind her ancient but pristine foot-pedal-powered Singer sewing machine for lunch.
But today she hasn't eaten since dinner last night, and won't again until the sun sets.
"We sacrifice, pray, and we do good deeds to show our devotion to Jesus," said Mbengue, a devout Roman Catholic. "We can't suffer as much as him, but we should do the maximum."
Ndeye Binta Lo, Mbengue's sewing instructor, is Muslim, but sometimes fasts for a day or two during Lent in solidarity with her Catholic friends as well as observing the month-long fast for Ramadan, which moves according to the lunar calendar.
"We grew up together," she said. "We are together."
Senegal has avoided the sectarian conflict seen in other West African countries like Nigeria. Its communities are often religiously mixed and it is common for Muslims to invite Christians to religious festivals and vice versa.
"Even if one's family becomes Catholic, they're linked through many community connections to many, many Muslims," said David Frankfurter, religion professor at the University of New Hampshire, who has studied the impact of religions on each other.
Senegal's first recorded contact with Christianity came with the arrival of Portuguese Catholic traders in the 15th century. The faith reached most areas of Senegal through French missionaries in the mid-1800s.
But Islam has been around since the 11th century and spread more widely from the 1700s, so when Catholics began observing Lent, many were already familiar with fasting for Ramadan.
The Muslim fast itself likely grew out of some pre-Muslim tradition, noted Boston University's Robert.
MIXED SIGNALS
Seck doesn't counsel people to fast, saying the spirit of Lent is more about charity and sharing: "and when someone doesn't eat, they get short-tempered".
But some of his colleagues differ.
Abdoul Aziz Kebe, a professor of Arabic and Islamic Society at Dakar's Cheikh Anta Diop University, said he had heard "one of my friends ... telling young Christians that it is important for them to try to be as serious as young Muslims during the fasting time, during Ramadan, and in the manner of respecting Friday prayers".
Some Catholics are at pains to point out the differences between their own fasts and Muslim traditions, but can nevertheless betray a subtle sense of pious rivalry.
"Muslims eat an early breakfast, before sunrise, but we only eat once at night, and then go a full 24 hours without eating," school pupil Sarr said.
Religious scholars say such blending across religions in contact is common, even if it is not a conscious process.
"It's not so much someone decided, 'Oh let's use Ramadan practices to make sense of Lent'," said New Hampshire's Frankfurter.
To Christians, he said "these practices don't seem in any way Muslim; they seem like this is the way people engage with a sustained period of time when you're supposed to deny yourself."