Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Couch Potato


I just put our cooperative president, Mina, on a bus for her first solo mission to a craft fair down in Zagora. I feel like a parent sending her child off to college for the first time (too bad I couldn't join her... for once lazy me wouldn't have minded the travel!)! Worry worry... But the ladies are doing all right these days - working together a lot of afternoons, and even baking to earn a little extra money (no, that's not some strange Berber bread, it's wool being dyed red for our traditional tamindilts, or bread wraps):


How is it possible that I am loving Assoul more than ever, but at the same time, feeling pangs of homesickness? The more I have to start planning for (well, thinking about planning for) Life After Peace Corps, the harder it is not to sit around imagining myself doing “normal person” things – reading quietly in a café (without being leered at by Moroccan men) while I nurse a hazelnut-amaretto latte, going to museums, going on a real (gasp) date, sipping wine nice mellow lounge (hashuma!), wearing sleeveless clothes (or anything showing much skin for that matter (I’ve suddenly realized that now I pretty much always have my head covered when I am in my village, although that’s more because the awesome haircut I got when I went home in March didn’t grow out so nicely, plus I don’t have to wash it so much when it’s covered…), and FOOD FOOD FOOD. (I can’t complain about the latter though – I’ve done all right with all the fresh produce I can get either in Assoul or Rich, and Mom keeps me hooked up with the Rocher chocolates, granola, and energy bars in-between my Big City trips!).

[Oh, point of clarification: “Life After Peace Corps” may not necessarily include “normal person things” either, so I guess I ought to keep my daydreaming under control… ]

All of this has been made worse by the arrival of electricity in Assoul. As I have mentioned in the past, there is nothing like a DVD for true escapism (even with a book, it’s hard to ignore the Berber music that is usually blaring from my downstairs neighbors – a couple of Arabic-only speaking guys who are residing here temporarily to work on road crews, one of whom has already proposed to me). So on my “bad volunteer” (e.g. recluse) days, of course there are the movies… and I’ve done an okay job keeping up with new(er) releases and amassing a collection of my all-time favorites. But then so much of my movie viewing is historical, political, or in some other way “good for me” (recent recommendations include “Bobby,” “Blood Diamond,” “The Last King of Scotland,” “An Inconvenient Truth," “Thank You for Smoking” – well, that one’s more pure entertainment! – and “Paradise Now,” which, happily, I found I was able to manage just fine with French subtitles, after making multiple unsuccessful attempts to find it with English!). But the real beauty is in watching American TV shows. Everything I have either tried to stay caught up on or gotten hooked on while here:

- “Lost” (weekly downloads keep me at the cyber café far longer than I care to be, but this is the most important one of all!)
- “West Wing” final season (finally – I brought this back from my last trip home)
- “24” (I began at the beginning, and am currently halfway through Season 3)
- “Nip/Tuck” (although by the end of Season 2 of that one, the number of times I have caught myself yelling “eeeeewwwww” out loud has reached a point where I am reassessing how much further I may continue…)
- "Weeds"
- “Alias” final season (ok, a little embarrassing, but who doesn’t like to watch skinny girls kick ass, even if they are pregnant-skinny!)
- “Sex and the City” and “Friends” smattered here and there, now in circulation courtesy of one of my favorite departing volunteers. (“Sex and the City” is so much better sans the TBS edit!)
a season each of “The Simpsons” and “South Park” (reliving the good old days, thanks to my first sitemate)
- …and waiting in the wings, “Grey’s Anatomy,“ “Dexter,” and a few discs of “Futurama” (unsolicited gift)

You get the idea… This is hardly a rough life I am leading, and I feel like a real loser to boot! And I am still not half as bad as a lot of my fellow volunteers! My friend Laura says the appeal here is that you can watch an entire season of something in one sitting. I have yet to do that though. For me, the beauty is that watching TV from home feels, well, so much like watching TV at home. And where the old favorites are concerned, it’s even a little like hanging out with old friends… (pathetic, I know…). And I (sometimes) watch my favorite characters doing things that remind me of the time when I… (I’ll leave it to you to figure out which shows have more bearing on my pre-Peace Corps reality…)

Ironically, now that we have electricity, even my “good volunteer” days also involve a lot more television. I walk around town, and hear the same f***ing shows coming out of everyone’s windows! When I hang out with my artisans, all they talk about is their favorite cooking show (at least the recipes are more interesting, even if I have yet to notice any change in what I eat at their houses!). Usually, I can still tell when they’re gossiping about a TV show they saw as opposed to someone in town (but, my language skills being what they are, not always!), and some of the women in our cooperative have even been complaining about others not pulling their weight because they’re watching too much TV!

People here are incredulous that I haven’t purchased a television. But why would I need one? My exposure was minimal when I first came to Assoul – mainly the evening news or American TV shows dubbed (badly) in French on those rare nights when the town generator was running. Sometimes I would see Al Jazeera (which rocks BTW) at one of the cafés I frequent in Rich, when I’m not being subjected to black-and-white videos of Oum Koulthoum (OMG, either there's no Wikipedia link for her - I can't believe that! - or I really can't spell her name!). I’ve only seen the English version (of Al Jazeera, not Oum Koulthoum) once, for a few minutes, but even in Arabic, it’s a breath of fresh air. Contrary to what the American media would have us think, I’ve actually sat through hours of nature programming, historical documentaries, and the like (of course last year there was quite a bit of the Saddam trial, which I desperately wished I could have understood). Last week, I saw a show that had something to do with astronomy. I was watching it at Mina’s house though, and she doesn’t know Classical Arabic. I asked if she understood what it was about, and she started gesturing about things spinning in the sky – impressive enough given her limited education! But I couldn’t remember the word for planet, so when I asked her, I was reminded once again of how limited the Tamazight language is. Takurt. Which also means “ball.” Of course.

I did see one afternoon show in Tamazight. If only there were more – then I might actually have bought a TV so that I could learn something. But I am impressed by my recognition of at least some basic Arabic vocabulary on other shows (not that I can understand anything of substance) – and Mina giggles when I start yelling out what I understood.

My friend Najat and her family have satellite TV. Just like at home, I find that to be a bit overwhelming. And just like Americans, their channel-surfing makes my head spin. One day at lunch, Najat’s sister Fatima had gotten hooked on some Bollywood flick (not understanding the language does little to inhibit TV viewing here – one day I listened to Najat go on for 20 minutes about a movie she’d watched, and only when she got to the part about someone throwing a ring in a volcano did I have any clue what she was talking about!). Fatima left the room, and Najat grabbed the remote and started surfing. Right to Dr. Phil (with Arabic subtitles). [Wretch]. With her satellite TV, Najat keeps up with all the current stuff – better than I do, it would appear! I’d been looking forward to getting into “Grey’s Anatomy” (see above), so I brought some DVDs back from home. No hurry now – Najat gave me the lowdown on who’s sleeping with whom already… And it turns out she’s an “Alias” fan, so I’ve started bringing over my DVDs from the final season for her to watch. Only problem is that I bought those in the US, and the best I can do is Spanish subtitles for her. So she watches that quietly on my computer (Moroccan VCD players won’t play American DVDs) while her sisters watch Spanish soap operas dubbed in Arabic at full volume. In the same room! But here’s the best part: their favorite show is “Lost”!

But, in the spirit of enjoying any and all forms of passive visual entertainment, Najat also asked me to bring over my informational CD-ROM about the new Moroccan family code, which I’ve been showing to some women around town, so I guess I am being a good volunteer after all… [By the way, I learned during this that the going rate on a dowry in Assoul is about 500 Moroccan dirham (roughly $60). Can’t believe I hadn’t picked that up before now!]

Anyway, just so you don’t think I am a total couch potato, here are some photos from one of my more recent strolls through the desert just south of town:

Scary caterpillar (been hoping to get one of these for a while, but I never seem to have my camera when I run across one of them):


You probably can’t tell how big this is from the photo, but I am guessing it’s a camel part (the nomads around here do come through with camels from time to time, not just herds of goats and sheep… and none of the above ever get old for me, be it watching a small camel caravan cross the road, or literally getting caught up in the middle of a herd of goats while I am out running!):