Slipping Away...

My third and final Ramadan in Morocco is now over. Yes, all the sugar and fat in the food still tears up my insides, and I am glad to be done with that on a daily basis. But, I am also a little sad. As with Eid al Kbir, earlier last winter, this time it felt like a “real” holiday to me – a time not to observe and learn about local customs, but rather a time to spend with the friends and family that I’ve come to know in Assoul, to live those customs. And this is my last one…

This year’s Eid al Fitr (the day celebrating the end of Ramadan) last Saturday was a fun one. I’ve always thought this may be my favorite Moroccan holiday. First thing in the morning, everyone wakes up and shares a big bowl of mhamza (a sort of thick pasta soup with melted butter drizzled over it – traditional on all holiday mornings). Then, the children and some women walk from house to house passing along holiday greetings (“mbruk la-eid”), drinking copious amounts of tea and eating cookies (and sometimes more mhamza). It’s sort of like a cross-between Christmas and Halloween (some people just take the cookies, which they call hlwa, meaning “candy,” and go), if you can imagine that. This year, I chose to spend it with a few of the families with whom I am closest (beginning the day with an early morning phone call – everyone loves having cell phone service here now! – from my artisan Mina, saying “addud, atftr dghi!” – “Come eat breakfast now!”). After Mina’s, I spent some time with my host family watching a movie, In Berber (! …this is rare…) that was one of the most melodramatic things I’ve ever seen, and then went to my friend Najat’s house where I listened to her and her sisters/friends have one of the most hashuma conversations I have ever heard from a group of Moroccan women, especially in Assoul! (You can e-mail me if you want details on that one!)

October is one of those rare months when it actually rains in my village, so I came home and halfway napped through one afternoon storm, and then returned to Mina’s for some holiday henna. Remember the beautiful henna I got in Ait Hamza? Well, “traditional Assoul henna,” as they call it, isn’t quite the same, as there tend to be no syringes involved here, except among the fancy people. In fact, the last time I let someone in Assoul do it to me, one of my friends told me I looked like a leper. This time, it looks more like cat paws, which I guess is a step up ☺ Since my hands weren’t free to pass the time reading while the henna dried and stained my hands, I watched the news, which was showing the king fulfilling his ceremonial role for the day, as various officials and dignitaries greeted him by either shaking or kissing his hand. It made me think about how awkward I still feel when hand kissing is the greeting of choice with some of the older women around town (it’s not the kissing itself that’s a problem – I lived several years with the kissy-face New York greetings – but rather the timing that I can’t quite figure out!). Even on this holiday, not long after I fumbled through such a greeting, I heard a young boy say in Tamazight to one of my friends (if there’s one lesson I’ve learned here, it’s that you should never assume that someone doesn’t understand you), “Foreigners don’t know the culture.” Part of me wondered what I did wrong, if I had in fact done something specific to provoke the comment. But part of me was impressed with such a thoughtful observation coming from a kid – after all, part of the reason we’re here is to help people understand and accept differences in others…

With about a month and a half left here in Morocco, October has not been the month for me to simply hang out in my village, preparing both logistically and emotionally to leave. Instead, it has been a time for a lot of travel and busywork (let’s not forget that Peace Corps is a U.S. Government agency!). The new volunteer trainees – one of whom will eventually replace me, insh’allah – arrived in Morocco a month ago. I’m now in the middle of my second trip down to their training site to work with them on everything from gender roles in development and sexual harassment to organizational management and adult learning patterns. I’ve spent a lot of time observing this group during training sessions, and chatting with them during meals, and all I can think is, “Wow, has it really been two years already?” I remember how new and scary everything seemed when I was in their shoes, and am grateful that those feelings have passed. Having seen so many of my friends and fellow volunteers leave early – some of whom really needed to do so, and some of whom were not yet ready to go – I am grateful that I am still here. There are so many things that I wouldn’t have known had I not stuck it out. Yes, the novelty has worn off, but then so has the jaded feeling that then follows. There were times when I thought I had it all figured out, and now I realize that time will never come, and I’m sad about that too. But the difference now is that, no matter how much I truly miss about home, it’s nice to look back at the beginning and realize just how comfortable I am here now. I laugh because my artisans keep telling me, “Don’t go. Add another year. The new person won’t be like you, and we’re used to you now!” Of course they’ll eventually get used to her too, and vice versa, but that is a process that, in my opinion, goes a lot deeper than some of the cultural integration tools that Peace Corps tries to instill in us during training. So much of this is about the adaptation that sneaks up on you, not all the effort you have to make towards that end when you first arrive… Just being here no longer feels like work.

A final thought – on a trip down to Ouarzazate, a man in one of my shared taxis turned to me and said, “You know, the Arabs have been here over a thousand years, and they don’t know Berber, but here you’ve been here two years and you do!“ Then he shook my hand. Berber nationalism lives on. I’m gonna miss that too…