So, today is the first day of Ramadan here in Morocco, and I have to confess that I have elected not to fast this year. Last year I fasted, and even though I did get a lot out of it (indeed, there was a lot more of me at the end, thanks to many many rich, sugary meals to break the fast each evening), I am opting for staying healthy this year (I've also gotten into a fairly satisfying exercise routine that I don't care to disrupt by starving myself)... My dilemma is that I hate lying, and this is one of those situations where, although people would certainly understand that as a Westerner and a non-Muslim I am not obligated to fast, my conversations on the topic will remain shorter and far less annoying if I simply tell people that I am fasting.
Other news of the week: I discovered that the small ceramic piece to which one ties the carbon cloth "bulb" for my buta (gas) lamp can randomly explode. That was fun.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Monday, September 18, 2006
Floods, wildlife, and a little shopping
Well, after a trip up to Rabat for a meeting a couple of weeks ago, I figured it was time to stay put… for a little while at least (although I am dreading that trapped feeling that I expect will be coming soon enough this winter!).
And indeed, there has been quite a bit of activity in Assoul. Every year, two weeks before Ramadan (which is a little earlier each year, due to the differences between the Islamic and Gregorian calendars), Assoul holds a festival, or moussem. Here, that amounts to a large souk, covering the market square and main street through town for several days. While nothing like some of the better known moussems in the region, Assoul’s nevertheless draws people from significant distances, many of whom have family connections here in Assoul or in nearby villages.
For me, the effect was something akin to having to walk through a big shopping mall to go anywhere, only the novelty of an American woman walking around was fresh for all of our out-of-town guests, so I experienced a lot more hassle than usual. I did, however, buy a few more blankets, as I also had a houseguest for a couple of days, and realized that unless I want to spend another winter in my sleeping bag, the 2.5 blankets I already had will not be enough as it begins to cool off outside.
In any event, after being disappointed with my artisans’ efforts in Saidia, and having our opportunity to travel to the Imichil Festival last month fall through, I was also eager to see a few of my women in action closer to home, where they might be more comfortable with the sales environment (a couple had excitedly shown me pictures from last year’s moussem). Unfortunately, this was not to be. I inquired on behalf of our nascent cooperative and was told that only our nedi, which is directly affiliated with the community association, would be given a sales space. However, when we brought in some women from the nedi to discuss the opportunity, they said they had nothing to sell. Having recently reviewed their inventory, I have to admit that it was rather weak, but if ever there was a market to get rid of some of these more simple, less traditional products (mainly knit and crochet goods, macramé, and embroidery, mostly of mediocre quality), this was it!
I did, however, remain busy working with a representative of Errachidia’s Artisana from Assoul, who had decided to kill two birds with one stone while visiting his family for the moussem. We had a number of meetings to complete a technical study on the formation of the cooperative – assessing formal interest and availability of capital by going door-to-door with a couple of the women, as well as working with the local association to develop specific organizational goals (beyond the obvious making and selling of products, we were focusing on social and economic development issues). This all sounds very productive, but in fact it left me feeling as disheartened as ever. I still feel like only a few of the women who want to be involved are truly motivated to work, while the rest are getting caught up in the same petty politics and social drama that made such a mess of the nedi. I can feel the feminist in me being crushed sometimes, as I myself am simply at a loss for what can be done to “empower” people with this mindset… It’s mainly Mina, the president, who keeps me going right now, which makes me sad, because some people are ganging up on her because she’s illiterate (never mind she’s the best worker!). The other day she told me that no matter what anybody else said (because a lot of folks don’t understand what I am doing), she knew that I was working hard, and God knew. I can easily say the same about her.
On the personal front, I had a pretty I interesting conversation with my host father the other night. On the whole, I find him to be fairly open-minded, but about once every 2-3 months I worry that I’ve spoken a little too freely. This time it started with me lamenting the lack of electricity (I’ve all but given up actually expecting the real electricity to happen anytime soon), saying that I am looking forward to being able to work on my computer without rationing my time because I am thinking about more graduate school when I finish Peace Corps, and it would be nice to have more frequent access to some of the academic documents I have saved, as well as to work some more on my writing. “So what is your program when you finish?” he asked, in spite of my previous comment, “Are you going to get married and have children or what?” Now, he and I have discussed my views on marriage in the abstract (one of the other times I worried I might have gone too far), but this time he pushed: “I want you to get married and have children when you go home.” The twists and turns of this conversation only got more interesting – to the point that it hit a few personal details I’m not about to get into here! (some of you who know me better are welcome to continue this discussion by e-mail, as several highly amusing, and at times sad, points came up) – but we ended up having a fairly candid talk about expectations of gender roles (he believes that, ultimately, women are the ones who control the men in a marriage), the role of religion in our lives (upon which, thankfully, we are in agreement in spite of our different upbringings), and the gay marriage debate in the US (my fault for taking it there – pretty sure I made his head spin, although I made it clear that my opinions on the topic were not necessarily mainstream)… No matter how much I try to temper my opinions, I suspect this was one of those times he left me in a complete daze. I am, after all, a woman, even if he is more willing to also view me as a human being than some of the men in this country would be.
Summer is also, without a doubt, over. One big cold front blew through Assoul while I was still sweating up in Rabat, and then another at the end of the moussem. For several days straight, we had massive storms come through every afternoon, with significant hail and flooding (one afternoon I looked out to see a river running directly by my front door). As dry as it is here, the ground simply cannot take the water when it comes that fast. Several mud houses simply collapsed (but no one was hurt), and one of the men in town told me that it was Assoul’s 9-11. I chose to let that comment go, as I know that was simply his way of trying to relate some sympathy. Now we have returned to clear, warm days and cold nights, although for the time being, I find it quite cozy compared to what I can expect in a couple of months.
My last bit of excitement is that, with the cooling of the air, some of the local wildlife is beginning to seek shelter. And with that migration, I had my first scorpion, and what a monster it was!! One of my colleagues – who has since returned to the US – used to take me scorpion hunting out in the desert, but I never saw him catch anything this size (at least 4-5 inches)! I had thought that I might be off the hook, living on the second floor of my building, but somehow this one found its way in. It was my sitemate who spotted it after we had tried to see how much of “Kill Bill” Vols.1-2 we could squeeze into three hours of generator power. Thankfully, he didn’t discover it the painful way, although given its location, he came pretty close. So he caught it in a pot of popcorn. Of course, when I dropped by his house the following day, there was the scorpion in its new home on the kitchen floor, satisfied with the cricket it just ate for lunch, although not too keen on finishing up the popcorn crumbs. Thankfully, my sitemate’s ambitions to keep his new pet (his adopted dog, named “Earless” for visibly evident reasons, ran away last month), dissipated, and he liberated the poor creature the day before the flooding began (I wonder if it made it…).
And indeed, there has been quite a bit of activity in Assoul. Every year, two weeks before Ramadan (which is a little earlier each year, due to the differences between the Islamic and Gregorian calendars), Assoul holds a festival, or moussem. Here, that amounts to a large souk, covering the market square and main street through town for several days. While nothing like some of the better known moussems in the region, Assoul’s nevertheless draws people from significant distances, many of whom have family connections here in Assoul or in nearby villages.
For me, the effect was something akin to having to walk through a big shopping mall to go anywhere, only the novelty of an American woman walking around was fresh for all of our out-of-town guests, so I experienced a lot more hassle than usual. I did, however, buy a few more blankets, as I also had a houseguest for a couple of days, and realized that unless I want to spend another winter in my sleeping bag, the 2.5 blankets I already had will not be enough as it begins to cool off outside.
In any event, after being disappointed with my artisans’ efforts in Saidia, and having our opportunity to travel to the Imichil Festival last month fall through, I was also eager to see a few of my women in action closer to home, where they might be more comfortable with the sales environment (a couple had excitedly shown me pictures from last year’s moussem). Unfortunately, this was not to be. I inquired on behalf of our nascent cooperative and was told that only our nedi, which is directly affiliated with the community association, would be given a sales space. However, when we brought in some women from the nedi to discuss the opportunity, they said they had nothing to sell. Having recently reviewed their inventory, I have to admit that it was rather weak, but if ever there was a market to get rid of some of these more simple, less traditional products (mainly knit and crochet goods, macramé, and embroidery, mostly of mediocre quality), this was it!
I did, however, remain busy working with a representative of Errachidia’s Artisana from Assoul, who had decided to kill two birds with one stone while visiting his family for the moussem. We had a number of meetings to complete a technical study on the formation of the cooperative – assessing formal interest and availability of capital by going door-to-door with a couple of the women, as well as working with the local association to develop specific organizational goals (beyond the obvious making and selling of products, we were focusing on social and economic development issues). This all sounds very productive, but in fact it left me feeling as disheartened as ever. I still feel like only a few of the women who want to be involved are truly motivated to work, while the rest are getting caught up in the same petty politics and social drama that made such a mess of the nedi. I can feel the feminist in me being crushed sometimes, as I myself am simply at a loss for what can be done to “empower” people with this mindset… It’s mainly Mina, the president, who keeps me going right now, which makes me sad, because some people are ganging up on her because she’s illiterate (never mind she’s the best worker!). The other day she told me that no matter what anybody else said (because a lot of folks don’t understand what I am doing), she knew that I was working hard, and God knew. I can easily say the same about her.
On the personal front, I had a pretty I interesting conversation with my host father the other night. On the whole, I find him to be fairly open-minded, but about once every 2-3 months I worry that I’ve spoken a little too freely. This time it started with me lamenting the lack of electricity (I’ve all but given up actually expecting the real electricity to happen anytime soon), saying that I am looking forward to being able to work on my computer without rationing my time because I am thinking about more graduate school when I finish Peace Corps, and it would be nice to have more frequent access to some of the academic documents I have saved, as well as to work some more on my writing. “So what is your program when you finish?” he asked, in spite of my previous comment, “Are you going to get married and have children or what?” Now, he and I have discussed my views on marriage in the abstract (one of the other times I worried I might have gone too far), but this time he pushed: “I want you to get married and have children when you go home.” The twists and turns of this conversation only got more interesting – to the point that it hit a few personal details I’m not about to get into here! (some of you who know me better are welcome to continue this discussion by e-mail, as several highly amusing, and at times sad, points came up) – but we ended up having a fairly candid talk about expectations of gender roles (he believes that, ultimately, women are the ones who control the men in a marriage), the role of religion in our lives (upon which, thankfully, we are in agreement in spite of our different upbringings), and the gay marriage debate in the US (my fault for taking it there – pretty sure I made his head spin, although I made it clear that my opinions on the topic were not necessarily mainstream)… No matter how much I try to temper my opinions, I suspect this was one of those times he left me in a complete daze. I am, after all, a woman, even if he is more willing to also view me as a human being than some of the men in this country would be.
Summer is also, without a doubt, over. One big cold front blew through Assoul while I was still sweating up in Rabat, and then another at the end of the moussem. For several days straight, we had massive storms come through every afternoon, with significant hail and flooding (one afternoon I looked out to see a river running directly by my front door). As dry as it is here, the ground simply cannot take the water when it comes that fast. Several mud houses simply collapsed (but no one was hurt), and one of the men in town told me that it was Assoul’s 9-11. I chose to let that comment go, as I know that was simply his way of trying to relate some sympathy. Now we have returned to clear, warm days and cold nights, although for the time being, I find it quite cozy compared to what I can expect in a couple of months.
My last bit of excitement is that, with the cooling of the air, some of the local wildlife is beginning to seek shelter. And with that migration, I had my first scorpion, and what a monster it was!! One of my colleagues – who has since returned to the US – used to take me scorpion hunting out in the desert, but I never saw him catch anything this size (at least 4-5 inches)! I had thought that I might be off the hook, living on the second floor of my building, but somehow this one found its way in. It was my sitemate who spotted it after we had tried to see how much of “Kill Bill” Vols.1-2 we could squeeze into three hours of generator power. Thankfully, he didn’t discover it the painful way, although given its location, he came pretty close. So he caught it in a pot of popcorn. Of course, when I dropped by his house the following day, there was the scorpion in its new home on the kitchen floor, satisfied with the cricket it just ate for lunch, although not too keen on finishing up the popcorn crumbs. Thankfully, my sitemate’s ambitions to keep his new pet (his adopted dog, named “Earless” for visibly evident reasons, ran away last month), dissipated, and he liberated the poor creature the day before the flooding began (I wonder if it made it…).
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