Jen's Morocco blog

Culture Shock? Not in Beirut, but…

2007-12-23T20:52:00.000Z

Forgive the delay. Motivation = gone.

I am back in the US, and for all the talk from Peace Corps about “reverse culture shock,” etc. etc., I somehow thought I’d be immune. Hey, I’ve come back from months in developing countries before, and even visited home a couple of times during Peace Corps. Of course I knew that things like shopping (especially this time of year!) would be awful – stuff stuff stuff (now, I like my stuff as much as the next person, and am certainly grateful to have access to some of it again, but really, how much of this does anyone actually need!? And I can't even identify what some of these things are!). I am happy to be with my family again, but otherwise (still unemployed and apparently will be for the foreseeable future) within a week I was going stir crazy. Enough student loans to pay for a small HOUSE aren’t good for my psychological state either…

How can I be so tired of traveling and yet want to do something already?

I visited Beirut for a week on my way home from Morocco. Honestly, hitting a few nice(er) restaurants, shops (not that I had money to spend), an amazing museum, and even a jazz club made for quite a nice culture fix. I was flattered when people in the street spoke in Arabic to me (and shocked to understand a word or two since it is a very different language from anything I picked up in Morocco), but French and English were everywhere. Yes, there was a strong military presence – soldiers everywhere and a tank every couple of blocks – and plenty of remaining bombed out buildings not too far from quite a bit of redevelopment, but (and perhaps this was the neighborhood where I was staying – near the American University of Beirut and the Hamra shopping district) I often felt like I might as well have been in New York! After seeing King Mohammed VI’s portrait all over Morocco (to the right, in Al Hoceima), looming billboards of Rafik Hariri (Lebanon’s Prime Minister who was assassinated in 2005) seemed perhaps morbid to me, but not otherwise unusual. A friend showed me the site of the blast that killed Hariri – a large hotel on the Mediterranean coast – which remained a shell of a building. Politically, Lebanon remains unstable – enough so that some of my Moroccan friends asked me to reconsider my travel plans. I had hoped that a new President would be elected during my visit, but the December 7 deadline came and went. I left two days before the assassination of General Francois al-Hajj.

A variety of religions represented in downtown Beirut.

That said, I wish I had stayed longer, and seen a bit more. Due to an unfortunate bit of miscommunication with my would-be host, I didn’t plug into my own agenda until later in the week, thus missing the ruins of Baalbek, which I had very much wanted to see. Other out-of-town sights weren’t necessarily at their safest, but I still made several nice day trips. One afternoon I visited the stunning Jeita Grotto (sadly, no photos allowed), where my claustrophobia was not at all an issue. Even though it seems set up for tourist traffic to the point of potentially being a bit cheesy, it was nearly empty during my visit, and admittedly one of the more beautiful natural spots I’ve seen in my life.

I spent a day in the town of Byblos, with several hours trying to figure out all of the archeological layers and history in its seaside ruins. Indeed, there, Beirut, and even looking at the artifacts in the National and university museums, I simply had a hard time wrapping my head around the millennia of history literally at my feet.

Byblos

Apart from a couple of other short trips north of the city, and viewing part of the legendary cedar forest, I also traveled into the Chouf Mountains – traditionally a Druze stronghold. There, I visited the Ottoman’s Beiteddine Palace (built by Italian architects in an Arabic style...):

I have to say that, on the whole, one of the best parts of this trip has been my opportunity to learn a bit more than my spotty BBC signal and out-of-date Newsweeks (not my publication of choice, but it’s what I got my hands on most regularly in Morocco, courtesy of Peace Corps) had previously afforded me. I’m hardly an expert on the Middle East, and found the unique religious and cultural complexities of this country to be especially compelling.

Saying Goodbye

2007-11-26T18:37:00.000Z

A couple of weeks ago, the new volunteer who will replace me came to visit Assoul. What a wonder it was to see it again through her eyes. And it made me that much happier that I could see all this through, in spite of all the things I wish I could have accomplished but did not…

This has been a hard week for me, both logistically and emotionally. I thought I had my packing all planned out. But by midweek, I’d dispensed with my entire “MAYBE” pile, and was starting to give away things like hiking boots, a (nice) backpack, small electronics… After this lifestyle, one would think I’d not be quite so attached to stuff anymore. Mina grew increasingly frustrated that it was taking me so long to finish getting organized and emptying out my house (hamdullah my replacement is not letting my greedy landlord benefit from any more Peace Corps rent!). “If it’s old, then don’t take it,” she told me. If only it were that simple. There are souvenirs and gifts, and of course I need to not be naked for the next two weeks (or quite so cold, for that matter). Of course being the packrat that I am, I am very impressed to see my Moroccan friends happily take and make use of stuff that most folks I know (but not me!) would throw away: shredded mosquito netting that I had used to keep flies out during the summer, all varieties of packing material that came from my numerous and very welcome care packages, (bubble wrap was an especially big hit), and plastic bags, both cheap Moroccan mikas and leftover (some used) Ziplock bags from home. Mina’s excellent Ziplock advertisement: picture a Berber woman standing by the window of her mud house, holding up a Ziplock and exclaiming in Tamazight, “You close it, and it stays closed!”

And, of course, I much preferred to be spending time with friends in Assoul than rummaging through my junk collection. There were far more tears in the end than I expected. It turns out that, for all my ups and downs here, saying goodbye to Assoul was just as tough as saying goodbye to my family 27 months ago. Will I come back? Insh’allah.

But my travels aren’t quite over yet…

On the perils of cultural integration:

2007-10-23T18:16:00.000Z

3 cavities

Slipping Away...

2007-10-18T16:22:00.000Z

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…

Shebekia!

2007-09-16T14:13:00.000Z

Shebekia may be the best thing ever. And it is everywhere during Ramadan (the month of fasting, which began this week). Yummy, nutty dough rolled out and cut and knotted, then deep-fried and dipped in honey. I’ve gotten fat off of this stuff in previous years, and this year I finally learned how to make it!

These are some of my cooperative members - Mina, Aicha, Fatima, Mina, and Mina (another Fatima didn't make it into the frame of any of these, but also worked hard!) - in action:

Lixus

2007-08-26T15:57:00.000Z

I’ve been in the northern town of Larache for a couple of days now. The kind folks at my hotel tried to dump a bunch of English-language books on me, saying they didn’t remember the last time they had an English-speaking guest (among tourists, mainly Spanish and some French). Alas, my bag is heavy, and I still have another week in Rabat to go before I return to Assoul, so I only took one, swapping it for a novel I just completed. Besides, now that I only have 3 months left in Morocco, I really need to do my best to stifle my book hoarding tendencies… Time is short, and if I start feeling obliged to read everything I still have on-hand (which doesn’t appear to be possible at this point), I won’t get around to some other things I really need to be taking care of as well right now! And I know I am just impractical enough to want to try to carry home every unread book I have accumulated in this country, on top of all my other possessions (that said, I hardly own an article of clothing here that isn’t stained and/or in shreds, so it’s not like much of that will be coming back to the States with me!).

Still, a little reading material (and a stack of DVDs) certainly doesn’t hurt here in Larache. I realized after planning my vacation, but too late to want to bother with changing my itinerary with the Peace Corps Morocco powers that be, that there isn’t really all that much going on here. Even the “real beach” is 14k out of town (I have no desire to go play with Moroccan boys on the rocks here in town), and after having a pretty good dose of that earlier this month both in Asilah and Essaouira, I just can’t seem to motivate for that haul. Besides, I have yet to find a beach in the world that I enjoy so much as my Outer Banks back in North Carolina! It’s never the same here.

I did, however, walk (I am tired of public transportation, and miss all the walking I do back in Assoul!) north to the Roman ruins of Lixus – the main curiosity that led me to put Larache on my itinerary at all. These were very run-down, yet fascinating in their contrast to Volubilis, outside of Meknes. Guided by the groundskeeper, I walked through some parts directly beside the busy Tangier highway, before heading to the top of a windy hill overlooking the Loukkos Estuary. We ran across three Moroccan tourists picnicking at the top, but the place was basically silent, which I loved! I could have guessed the spot but would never have seen the only remaining mosaic had it not been for the caretaker, who carefully pushed away some rocks and dirt before pulling back a small piece of plastic to reveal a portion of tiles depicting the god Neptune. While part of me thinks it is a shame to see these pieces of history deteriorate, the postmodernist in me also appreciates the beauty in nature’s winning the battle with the relics of humanity. It certainly does not diminish the history itself.

Asilah and Tangier

2007-08-23T16:54:00.000Z

Well, I’m on vacation. Again Seems like I do a lot of that here, but then it’s been a pretty slow summer back at the ranch.

So I spent the first few days of my last Moroccan vacation (for now, I should say) in the northern coastal town of Asilah. Like Essaouira, Asilah abounds with Portuguese influence, although as a vacation spot, unlike Essouaira, it remains dominated by Moroccans. Still, my stay there involved reasonably peaceful days, punctuated by some gorgeous seaside strolls (sans camera, I’m afraid, in an attempt to lighten my load), a little sunbathing, and exploring what may be the most sterile medina I have ever entered (I have to agree with my guidebook on this point). Interestingly, stroll is about all I do (and sometimes eat, of course – shrimp yum!). While I have been known to make the occasional impulse buy during my almost 2-year stay in this country (September 13 marks the anniversary), I have yet to go on a major souvenir/gift-buying binge! My apologies, in advance, to friends and family, just in case the shopping bug permanently fails to bite!

Wednesday, I headed up to Tangier. Perhaps to seek a little literary inspiration, given my failure to write (1) blog updates, (2) grad school statements of purpose, (3) any epic e-mails (although surely the usual recipients of those are probably enjoying the respite!), or (4) anything otherwise thoughtful or interesting.

I’d been to Tangier once before – a brief overnight stay on my way to Spain via ferry. Suffice it to say that under those circumstances, the city didn’t do much for me. This time, however, I booked a slightly pricier (or perhaps I should say, “less cheap”) pension outside of the medina. A breezy, polite little place that is making things all the more comfortable. So I could go walk around the city’s not-quite-as-sterile medina, and then return to some relative peace and quiet. Not to mention there are actually museums and fancy restaurants here!

View from Terrasse des Paresseux in Tangier.

My weird cemetary thing: I had company at St. Andrew's Church.

Perhaps, literary inspiration permitting, more updates will follow, as I have a few more days of leisure travel before heading to Rabat for a meeting next week. (Meetings or not, Rabat is always a welcome break for me!). Normal travel stresses notwithstanding (I’ll leave griping about those for another day as well), I have very much enjoyed the change of scenery. This part of the country always feels so much more developed than my home in Errachidia…

Random thought for the week: I miss rain. A good, solid rain. Every time I watch a movie or TV show with a good rainstorm, I feel so nostalgic. It’s not that it never rains here, or that it isn’t sometimes horribly inconvenient and dirty when it does, but it’s a rare enough event that, as I grow more and more anxious about returning to the States, it is one of those little things that I realize that I never realized I would miss the way I do!

Essaouria...

2007-08-08T20:49:00.000Z

Ramparts, as seen from my lovely hotel view... That's the island of Mogador in the distance.

Me chillin' on the beach in low light, so you cannot notice the awful shade of red I have become...

Treats at a nearby supermarket (that would be a rabbit, for those who don't read French, and that would be its guts seeping out, for anyone wondering what that blob is that's barely visible above the label)...

Reach Out and Beep Someone

2007-08-06T17:06:00.000Z

So, my village finally has mobile phone service! It is as though, after nearly 2 years, I am almost living in the real world! People are nuts over it too. Everywhere you go, folks are experimenting with ringtones, consulting the local American "experts" on how their phones work (if only they knew...), and "Berber beeping" like crazy -- a practice that, to the best of most of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers' understanding, is simply meant to remind you that your friend So-and-So exists when So-and-So calls you, lets the phone ring once, and then hangs up. But sometimes it can also mean that So-and-So actually wants to talk but would rather you pay for the call. It is hard to tell which is which. So, now that my phone works all the time, I have, ironically, taken to leaving it on silent mode far more frequently!

Outside of that, most of my technology has been down the tubes for the last month. Apart from not having electricity for two weeks in July (see below), my computer crashed once and for all (but a new one is on the way thanks to a friend who just visited the States...!).

In any event, I have escaped all that (and I should have done so about a month earlier, it would seem) with a lovely, albeit brief sojourn in the beach town of Essaouira. Details and/or pix to follow (probably pix - the summer lethargy and laziness are sure to set back in the second I get home...!)

Forever Young

2007-07-09T10:29:00.000Z

I am officially hooked on the Facebook. Gotta keep up with the young'ns these days...

Meantime, I had a little meat and fried food fest last week in celebration of the 4th. The expansion of my culinary repertoire here constantly amazes me, especially with somewhat limited resources. Although I can now do without meat or fried food for another year...

Other fun news: my digestive critters are back. Fortunately, I have confirmed that is not connected (directly, at least) to the meat and fried food. None of my guests -- at least the ones I have run into since Wednesday -- have accused me of poisoning them!

Unfortunately, my landlord is convinced that I possess the secret means of turning the electricity back on in my house, which I don't. We quickly reached an impasse. So, the hottest week of the year (so far) and there has been no juice since last Tuesday. At one point, I was lying in bed convinced I would get brain damage from my 103+ degree fever (damn s%#t critters), unable to turn on my precious fan!

Ahhh... time for another vacation! I was planning my last few "to-do's" in Morocco (Essaouira and Toubkal), but now thinking a short European escape wouldn't be the worst thing!

Just as fun as it looks... (?)

2007-07-01T15:34:00.000Z

As promised...

This is me doing a really crappy job of harvesting alfalfa while Mina learns to use my camera!

Mina shows me how it's really done.

Me trying to prove you can look cute and pretend to work.

Mina actually working (this is hardly the worst of the loads that I wrote about last time!).

It's summer again...

2007-06-11T16:57:00.000Z

It’s summer again. Don’t get me wrong – any of you who know me well will believe me when I say that I’ll take this any day over being cold. However, there are a few things I don’t like so much about summertime here:

1. Bugs. Flies everywhere. Only a few manage to breach my house on any given day (although that’s enough to drive me nuts), but most everyone else doesn’t cover their windows or even close their doors. In spite of the livestock (and livestock leftovers) right outside! And it is considered dirty to kill them, so a little lackadaisical shooing away from the food is the best one can hope for. Then, even in my house, all those little things that eat you alive have no problem infiltrating my faux curtains (shredded mosquito net). So I go to bed feeling all creepy-crawly. Itch itch itch. And then there are the larger ones that just somehow manage to go wherever they please… And there are also these little armored brown things that seem like flies but are actually some sort of evil alien creature that bite the crap out of you and then REFUSE to die even after being pounded and squished multiple times. Unfortunately, they seem to really enjoy the odor of human sweat.

2. Scorpions. Technically could be categorized as “Bugs”, but I believe they merit a special mention.

3. Mushy body. Who can possibly exercise for long in this? Plus, just sitting all day can put me in a really wicked mood. (Upshot: who feels like eating?! Also, less sweat means fewer alien flies attacking me.)

4. No more sun tan. (Upshot: a 3-month detour from my road to basal cell carcinoma). I pretty much bake on my roof all winter in an effort to stay warm. Now, the sun is my enemy, even if it means sacrificing fresh air too.

5. Transportation. It’s crowded, and people here refuse to let you open the windows. Because the wind will make you sick (that damn fresh air again). Why this rule doesn’t apply to houses and flies I do not know…

6. Napping. I’ve just never been good at it unless I am violently ill, so I can’t quite manage to join in on the fun. But it’s hard to feel like a productive volunteer when everyone else is asleep all afternoon (even the few women who still go to our co-op can often be found passed out on the floor there!).

7. Stinky garbage (see also, Bugs). The dumpsters in Rich have disappeared one by one (and it goes without saying that we have no garbage collection in my village, in spite of some noble efforts on the part of my first sitemate – I’m on my third one of those now, by the way, and that’s not counting the 2 who’ve also passed through the village right down the road!), so now I have to get rid of everything but glass (often of the hashuma variety that I don’t want anyone in my village to know that I possess) a little closer to home. But there are days I just can’t cart it out into the desert fast enough! (Not to worry – everything I dispose of here is biodegradable, and there are occasional rooftop fires to speed that along as well!). My kitchen is permanently foul. (The clogged sink doesn’t help either).

8. Stomach crud. I’ve been luckier than a lot of volunteers on this front, but still… I don’t have a refrigerator. After no electricity last summer, I didn’t feel like investing in one now for such a short time (and a cheap used one recently slipped through my fingers). I’m having to readjust my produce storage habits – eat more beans and fewer veggies, etc. etc... And I got a good reminder this week that I need to stop buying more than 2 eggs at a time, and use nothing but powdered milk till September (besides, that European boxed stuff is weird anyhow). It’s just that it’s so hard to throw out GRANOLA, even if it is covered in lumps, so you just do your best to pick off the “milk”… (I’d do it again in a heartbeat)!

9. Local diagnosis of stomach crud: “Najia, have you been drinking warm water again?”

For a few weeks there, our village fields were incredibly lush – much more so than last year, as our water situation has improved a little bit. I periodically accompany some women into the fields around dusk, after things have cooled off – sometimes to harvest, and sometimes just to hang out. And the sights and sounds really are lovely right now, which is good since every time I have ever followed a woman here somewhere, especially through the fields, we seem to take the least direct route possible. I can forgive these detours though, because the fields (each of which is about the size of my smallest New York studio apartment) all kind of look alike to me, and I have come to realize that sometimes the woman I am following is just as lost as I am! How they know whose is whose remains a mystery to me, although I am getting better at recognizing one or two patches.

After all this time here though, I still am simultaneously amazed and disgusted by the loads I see women carrying back from the fields… These are the same loads that the donkeys carry, and donkeys – as cute as I still find them to be – are pretty much considered lowest of the low among beasts here. I’ve even had to stop and help women on the side of the road who’ve sat down for a rest and can’t stand back up again. It is utterly demeaning. When I am out for a stroll (the running has pretty much stopped for now, see #3 above) the women applaud my attempts at exercising in the hot sun, but then invite me to get some real exercise by carrying packs like theirs. I smile but refuse. I told one woman heading back into town that it was horrible for one’s back, pointing out how stooped over she was. Not missing a beat, she promptly explained that if she stood up straight, she’d fall over (that silly American girl just doesn’t understand the laws of physics!), and began to demonstrate. That’s one of those moments here where you think you’re having the same conversation with someone, but then not really… I’ve tried to find an opportunity to photograph this for you (and honestly, I think I know a few women who wouldn’t mind if they knew it was to show people in America how hard they worked), but I just feel uncomfortable whipping out my camera and overtly focusing on someone who, in my mind, is in such a humiliating posture. I may still find a willing model…

Couch Potato

2007-05-23T15:51:00.000Z

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!):

Merzouga

2007-04-29T16:25:00.000Z

Dead Turkey

2007-04-22T16:41:00.000Z

I know I have been off the radar for a bit. Some of that is sheer laziness, but there has also been a lot going on. I spent a little time at home in the States - a little reverse culture shock this time, but quickly settled back into many of the comforts (plus I discovered that I can run like the wind back at home now that I have been "training" - and I do use that word loosely - at higher altitude!).

Happy retirement Dad!

I returned to Morocco just in time to have to say goodbye to another sitemate. At least we finally ate that damn turkey not long before he left. Kebab style.

Can you spot the anorexic turkey?

So this past week, I have been taking my "re-integration" into Assoul slowly, although I realize that I am at a pretty good place in my life here if - even after feeling like I really broke my groove with a trip to the States - getting out and about town again, for the most part, does seem to lift my mood a bit. (Yoga, reading, and DVD escapism get me the rest of the way, more or less…)

I brought back some seashells to share with friends in Assoul. This isn't something they've seen a lot of, and there isn't even really a word for it in Tamazight, so they're called imzyan n islman (literally, "fish ears"). It took a while to explain to my friend Mina (who went to the beach with me last summer) that they weren't actually fish ears, but that the fish live inside (we didn't even get into the fact that these fish don't look anything like sardines -- the only fish that ever make it to Assoul!).

And this weekend, I finally made it down to the desert dunes of Merzouga (most of the desert around me is rocky, but this is what you might imagine the Moroccan desert to look like!). I rode a camel (a first), slept under the stars, and had various adventures that cannot all be reported here... (although my face is feeling remarkably exfoliated after a little sandblasting). It was gorgeous, and a much needed mini-vacation after a bumpy return from the States!

[Pix to follow - unlike my buddy Laura, I opted not to carry my computer out into all of that sand!]

Bees

2007-03-11T11:51:00.000Z

So, I got stung by a bee last Monday – first time in years. Interestingly, it was not around my house by one of the bees that keep trying to build nests on my roof or around my windows. It was not while I was off hiking through the fields. It was on my transit. Or, rather, inside my transit.

There was not just one bee inside the transit. There were many. One moment, it was a normal, cramped, smelly ride. Suddenly, a scream came from on top of the vehicle, and the driver stopped. “Uh, I think we have a bee problem,” my sitemate pointed out to me (I was just starting to drift off). Sure enough, bees everywhere. People screaming and swatting at the air (I might add there were not so many bees as to induce total hysteria). Apparently, someone was transporting a hive on the top of the transit, and it had somehow come open.

At no point did it occur to anyone to open the back door to the transit to let the wind simply blow the bees out. And, I had previously learned that, as dirty as flies are, Berbers think it is even dirtier to kill them (go figure). Apparently, the same rule applies to bees. Of course I worry a little about good karma and all that, but I let all that go when one little guy stung me through two layers of clothes while my sitemate was picking another one out of my hair. So as I started pounding away at any creature that got near a hard surface (i.e. not my body), everyone else was attempting to implement a catch-and-release technique using hats, etc. (still, no one had opened the back door to try the wind tunnel approach). Bees were crawling all over everyone, and few of us escaped their evil pursuits. One poor guy (maybe the one who had been riding on top with the bees) had stings all over his head.

But the local honey sure tastes good!

How To Pretend You Speak Berber

2007-03-04T11:41:00.000Z

So, for any of you who have actually been paying attention to the blog, or suffering my more in-depth e-mail complaints about the Tamazight language, you will know that one of my primary gripes is its failure to express adequately many concepts that most of us would consider to be rather basic. Now, that doesn’t mean that most people around me cannot grasp any complex ideas. Rather, most Berber dialects (to the dismay of the more hard-core advocates of a linguistic revival), borrow heavily from both Arabic and French. So, if you know just a little French, for example, you are likely to recognize the words (used in both Arabic and Tamazight, even where indigenous alternatives may exist) for commonplace items such as a car (tumubil), cheese (lfrmaj), telephone (tilifun), or toilet paper (ppapiyi jinik). Moroccan Arabic permeates Berber’s verb roots, as well as makes up for the lack of Tamazight nouns for more modern concepts. For example, all of the vocabulary I learned for my mock trial project last year was actually Arabic. The words simply don’t exist in Tamazight, so otherwise you are limited to phrases like “I have to defend myself” when you really want to say that you have an alibi.

With nouns borrowed from Arabic, the convention in Tamazight is often simply to add the letter “T” at the beginning and end of the word (these words are usually feminine, by the way; if a word is exactly the same as the Arabic, it will more likely be masculine, unless it already happens to end in an “A” sound). I have no idea how this happened. Did someone just think this was a sneaky way to co-opt another language without anyone noticing? Because, to me, that would be a lot like Pig Latin or Ob or one of those other ridiculous fake languages I used to torture adults with when I was a kid (“…wobon obof thobose robidobikyobulobous fobake lobangwobajobes obi yobusobed tobo tobortyobure obadobults wobith whoben obi wobas oba kobid”). For example, the word for “Arabic” in Arabic (Darija) is laarbiya, while in Tamazight, we call it tarabt (Tamazight also tends to lose the Arabic indefinite article “l”). The word for “house” in Arabic is dar, whereas (surprise!) in Tamazight it is taddart.

Then, there are words that are universal, such as “pizza” or “taxi.” (Way to go Western hegemony!!!)

So, a friend of mine who learned Arabic but who lives in a predominantly Berber town, has taken to calling Coca-Cola “tacokt.” The first time he said that to me, I laughed (once he explained what the hell he was talking about), but then felt – in a moment of Berber solidarity – a little offended. Yesterday, I realized he was not at all out of line. Because I don’t have Internet or mobile phone service where I live, and because I am a muskina (poor thing) for living alone away from my family, I often field questions about how often I speak with them and by what means. While I happen not to be a huge fan (especially when I cannot do it in the privacy of my own home), Internet chat is HUGE in Morocco. I listen to people on online dates all the time at the cyber cafés (often quite laughable). Anyway, yesterday, a girl I know who now lives in Errachidia (where Internet cafés abound) asked “Is dattchat?” (In this sense, “Is da…” is the equivalent of asking about whether one engages in an activity habitually). Now, even though we were talking about the Internet, my brain had apparently shut down. “Dattchat” sounds a lot like “you eat” or “you are eating,” but I knew that didn’t make any sense given the context. I asked her to repeat herself, but to no avail. Finally, knowing my friend speaks a little French, I asked her what that verb meant. “Chat!” she answered, “You know, when you use the Internet to talk to people.”

Taduuht.

ELECTRICITY!

2007-02-25T13:20:00.000Z

Thursday, February 22, 2007, 3:30pm GMT: The light bulb in my salon came on. Yes, there will be some time before I stop constantly expecting the lights randomly to go off again (which they did Friday night), like they used to do when we had the generator powering Assoul some evenings (although it's been months since we've even had that luxury!). And, oddly, I almost feel as though I’ve given up a small badge of pride (one of the few stereotypical Peace Corps things I’ve had to deal with in Morocco). But I am not complaining. Yesterday, in celebration, I watched three movies and did a yoga DVD. It’s nice not having to plot my course around the house in the evenings according to where I have planted my gas lamp. Although I still catch myself trying to wear my headlamp to the toilet at night…

Ironically, when I arrived in Rich this morning, the power was out.

Itto

2007-02-18T13:48:00.000Z

Have I told you about Itto yet? The old Berber woman who sits in front of my house all day? Itto yells out her own name every time she sees me (I think, at one time, she worried that I might forget, even though unlike Ait Hamza, I’ve only encountered two women named Itto in Assoul so far). In a world without telephones, most every visit to my house tends to be a drop-in, so Itto (along with my neighbor Aicha), also serves as my old-fashioned answering machine, telling would-be visitors whether they even need to bother knocking on my door. (My sitemate has one of these too, but his old lady is legitimately crazy, and not always particularly helpful or accurate in her efforts: “Oh, he went out, but maybe you should knock anyway… Knock harder, sometimes he plays loud music… See, I told you, he’s not there. Can I have your shoes?”). In the summer, with my windows open, I can even listen to Itto’s updates to other women as to what the tarumit (foreign girl) might be up to in there. When I go out for my morning walk or run, she always laughs and says she would join me, but her knees hurt.

The funny thing is, in spite of my periodic aggravation at my lack of privacy in Assoul, I have never viewed Itto as an intrusion – only a delight. When she smiles and yells her name at me, I simply smile and yell it back. Too bad the only photo I have of her is the only time I’ve ever seen her without a smile.

Please keep reading. I posted two at once today...

Trying to Light a Fire

2007-02-18T12:56:00.000Z

Suddenly, I’ve been busy. So busy that I miss those days when the neddi is locked up for no good reason (uh, well, that’s often still the case), and all I have to do with myself is go for a run, read a little, and perhaps drop in on a friend for tea.

Two weeks ago, I was back up in Rabat for a Gender and Development (GAD) Committee meeting. Sometime several months ago, it was decided that of course the Harvard lawyer would be an appropriate chairperson (if only they knew!), so suddenly, these little trips up north are less about hours of DVD shopping and fancy (relatively speaking) meals out. Now, I have to work. It is nice feeling genuinely responsible for something – and at a policy level too – again. Our whole mission is to focus on better integration of women’s and men’s needs in development work, and to promote volunteer awareness and projects to that end. The problem is, in a country like Morocco, GAD is such a core element of all of the work that we do that it often goes unrecognized and unreported, and therefore remains underappreciated among our support staff (with a few exceptions, of course).

Just look at what I do. It is all about women’s empowerment and capacity building; about teaching female artisans and their counterpart (and primarily male) association to work together without creating dependency. And yet this, my primary Peace Corps project in Small Business Development, turns every feminist ideal I have on its head. How do I effectively “empower” these groups when, over the course of the past year, my own confidence in their ability to effectively organize themselves has been shattered repeatedly? I know this is really a problem of a rural mindset, which happens to play out on the gender front, but… Here I see women who won’t even show each other respect, show up for a meeting unless a male association member has intervened. Or they turn to me – who can barely even speak the language – to tell them what to do in the most basic decision-making situations (“Should we take a bus or a grand taxi to Errachidia? You’re coming with us, right?”).

We finally held our General Assembly meeting this week to officially begin the cooperative. And even after a year of discussion, the women began arguing about capital, product focus, and officers as though they were hearing it all for the first time! They still don’t know exactly who the cooperative members are (a final list being a requirement at this point!)! With my government supervisor present, I was mortified. He has no way of telling if I’d even tried to organize these women beforehand (I have).

At least Mina, the cooperative president, may eventually rise to the occasion. Last weekend, I accompanied her and Aicha, the neddi’s treasurer, to a GAD conference organized in Errachidia. Unfortunately, even though Peace Corps had been told this was a training conference for rural leaders, the host organization, in fact, had a far more elitist agenda, trying to turn away people at the door who didn’t speak French (when much of rural Morocco actually doesn’t), saying that they required a minimum educational level not only for language, but also for concept comprehension. HUH?!? A colleague and I fought hard to have all participants included, and ultimately, it was the guest speakers – truly practicing what they preached – who stepped in and helped out, offering to present all of their programs in Arabic (mainly Darija, although some materials were already printed in Classical Arabic), and during breakout sessions, being awesome facilitators by going out of their way to include even the least educated in the group.

Fortunately, I had hired my friend (and former teacher) Malika to come translate for me (plus, I knew that Malika would very much enjoy the event for its content). Malika ended up being a great help also for both of the women from Assoul. Aicha, even though she didn’t complete high school, is quite smart: literate, multi-lingual, and perfectly capable of following even some of the more abstract topics being discussed at the conference, as she has attended similar events in the past. She is, however, quite reserved, and I worry that her treatment by the host organization may have been a blow to her confidence (I was hoping she’d return to Assoul and teach about some of this stuff). Mina, on the other hand, is completely illiterate, and not even particularly functional in Darija, much less French or Classical Arabic. Nevertheless, when these Rabat academics specifically sought her opinion during workshop sessions, and fellow association leaders offered to switch small group discussion to Tamazight for a bit (which all but one participant in our workshop group spoke anyhow!) in order to make her more comfortable, I could see her start to blossom a little. Maybe she really is ready to lead this cooperative, I thought, as she began speaking up more during our meetings back in Assoul this week. (Too bad it was often to complain about money and product focus…!)

In any event, this week I am finding myself simultaneously encouraged by the behavior of some and disappointed by others. The conference, as envisioned by the host association, was fabulous. For a bunch of Harvard students. Good thing the rural leaders were ready to look out for each other…

Rabha (Imilchil’s cooperative president, whom I seem to run into nearly everywhere I go), me, Aicha, and Mina, at the fanciest hotel in Errachidia.

* * *

A final note, thanking my former sitemate Zach for leaving me the cheesiest jigsaw puzzle ever. Of course, I couldn’t resist doing it anyhow (and it was harder than I expected!). Only problem was that I had a Curious George Goes to the Hospital moment. See if you can spot it:

Houria

2007-01-25T17:16:00.000Z

I first met Houria a little over a year ago. She had completed her university degree and was enrolled in an advanced English program in Meknes. Her family lives in Assoul, and she was home for the Eid holiday. She had sought me out because she was writing (in English) a monograph on the teaching of Tamazight in Moroccan schools, and wanted feedback from me both as an English speaker and a Tamazight learner. She taught me quite a bit about the evolution of her language and its role as a cultural marker. On a personal level, Houria was often distressed to see the erosion of her language even in her home, as more and more Arabic and French words replace what my tutor often refers to as the “old language.”

Thoughtful and driven to expose herself to more of the world than most of Assoul's women genuinely aspire to see, Houria became a quick friend. We visited whenever she was in Assoul, and would often speak or send messages when she was studying or at work in Meknes. She often struggled with the limited options facing educated women of her generation – jobs are unavailable, but for many, a more “traditional” marriage back at home becomes untenable as well. She told me about the places in the world that she wanted to visit one day, and we discussed how she could continue to build upon her chosen field of research – the preservation of Tamazight culture through its language.

Last week, she was back in Assoul to celebrate her father's return from the Hajj. I happily spent time with her family and one-on-one. As a perpetual “outsider” in Assoul, I very much valued her sincere kindness and curiosity about how my culture compared to hers. She was supposed to return to Meknes last weekend, and we were already discussing plans for our next opportunity to meet up.

Sadly, last Wednesday afternoon as I was running errands in town, people began to stop me, breaking the bad news about someone they knew to be my friend. Houria had died of a heart attack. She was only 22. I am sad not only to have lost a friend, but also to know that perhaps one of Assoul’s most promising young women will not have the opportunity to make the mark she so dearly wished to make in the larger world…

Anna Nicole Smith

2007-01-21T12:41:00.000Z

So, I just finished reading The Sex Lives of Cannibals, by J. Maarten Troost - a hilarious read, and one that gives a pretty good sense of the sorts of adjustment issues, deprivations, and daily absurdities one might face when transplanted into the developing world for a couple of years.

One thing Troost talks about is his starvation for any and all information from the civilized world. I definitely feel that too, although (not being stuck on a desert island) I haven't done too badly on most fronts. Peace Corps volunteers maintain a pretty good network for book and DVD circulation, and I do make it to the internet once a week, more or less. And, like Troost, I do a constant dance with my shortwave radio, seeking out a little BBC, or, barring that, anything in English (although I am occasionally disappointed to realize I have, in fact, stumbled onto Vatican Radio - not exactly the semi-objective news source I am normally seeking out).

One interesting side effect of living abroad for some volunteers is an enhanced obsession with celebrity gossip. I know people who circulate mass text messages with updates from People.com (I'm out of that loop now that I don't have cell phone service in my village). Still, I too am somewhat susceptible. A couple of months ago, an American visitor to my house left a copy of US Weekly. I confess, I read it.

... And then I took it to my friend Najat, who is probably the closest thing I have to a "girlfriend" (in that giggly teenage sense, although Najat is at least my age) in Assoul. Having spent plenty of time with her browsing through various French fashion and celebrity magazines (and sometimes Arabic ones) from the 1970s and 80s, I knew Najat would not likely be offended by photos of women in skimpy dresses or underwear, candid (i.e. kissing) photos of celebrity couples, or a shirtless David Beckham in a "Got Milk" ad (yum - have I mentioned just how non-existent my social life is in Morocco?!). Indeed, it was Najat who informed me that Beckham was going to the US (she's also a big radio listener), so she definitely stays somewhat posted on pop culture, although she's one of the few Moroccans I've met who doesn't seem to know who Celine Dion is (but I digress...).

Due to the dearth, and cost, of popular publications in Assoul, once people get their hands on a magazine, they keep pulling it out and re-reading it (or just looking at the pictures, if it happens to be in the wrong language). This is why I am constantly having to tell women that shoulder pads are not, in fact, fashionable. So even though I'd given Najat the US Weekly a while ago, one day this week as I was visiting, out it came again.

Najat opened it up to a spread about Anna Nicole Smith and the disputed paternity of her new baby - new husband (and her lawyer), or ex-boyfriend? As I again explained the contents of the article, Najat was fascinated, asking about how they could perform blood tests, etc. "This woman is hashuma," I explained, hoping to impress her with my respect for local values (hashuma roughly refers to any number of social/religious taboos - in many cases pertaining to sex, alcohol, or - as I've heard a few times - single women who do not live with their parents...). "No she's not," Najat said. This baffled me as, obviously, Anna Nicole has been sleeping around.

Now, Najat's French is not very good, but neither is she too inclined to try to follow my heavily accented Tamazight, so the details of our conversations occasionally get lost in the garble that we speak together. Nevertheless, I pressed on, "She married a very old, very rich man just for his money." "That's okay," Najat answered, "Maybe he just couldn't find anyone else to marry." At this point, Najat's younger sister Miriam jumped to defend my point. Miriam, who rarely leaves the house and speaks only Tamazight and Arabic, seems to have a startling knowledge of English obscenities (words and gestures) thanks to American movies on TV (back in the days when Assoul's generator sometimes worked). "She could get SIDA [AIDS]," Miriam said. Way to go Miriam. As a reward for her insight, I asked her if she had yet learned the word "slut."

Still, Najat maintained her point: "Well, she's not hashuma because she's not a Muslim." Miriam and I both explained that some things are also frowned upon (if not to the same degree - although I kept that nuance to myself) in America or other Christian cultures. I added, "And she posed naked in magazines." Najat started showing me pictures in a French magazine of Spanish soap opera stills (folks in bathing suits making eyes at each other). "Not like that," I said, "a SEX magazine." "Oh," said Najat. This led to a digression about her finding a rather, um, informative, book possessed by one of her relatives when she was a teenager, which she subsequently passed around to all of her friends before it disappeared. "But," she added, "you realize that I only know about these things. I don't do them." [I believe this]. "See, I don't even wear make-up when men are around."

Then, we got to talking about the responsibilities of unwed mothers in the US, and the controversy over the veil in Europe. But we never reached an agreement about Anna Nicole.

Blogger Sucks!

2007-01-14T12:33:00.000Z

I don't know what's going on lately, but during the very few occasions I have had to travel to civilization during the last few weeks, I have had a terrible time logging into Blogger. So here's what you've missed:

A Sevillano Christmas

In spite of the fact that much of my vacation involved consuming all sorts of food and beverage products that are unavailable to me in Morocco, I did manage to squeeze in a little more sightseeing over Christmas, including the layering of Moorish influence and inspiration in the Alcázar of Seville…

…and Seville’s cathedral, the largest gothic cathedral in the world. There, I saw a sarcophagus containing the remains of Christopher Columbus, whose tomb, interestingly enough, I also saw in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, when I traveled there about seven years ago. A true traveler, that man!

This photo was taken from about halfway up La Giralda, a 35-story minaret co-opted by the cathedral’s builders.

I also got a little taste of the modern while strolling through a temporary art exhibition in Seville’s Plaza Nueva, where gigantic and slightly bizarre sculptures by artist Igor Mitoraj dominated the square.

Once back in Morocco, I battled Eid Al-Kbir travel angst – not unlike our own holiday mayhem at airports etc., but far worse when coupled with all the usual transportation craziness one faces around here. Still - even after all of the niceties of civilization - I was happy to be back in my own bed for a few nights before the carnage began...

Eid Al-Kbir, Part Deux

Like a good Berber woman, I woke up the morning of Eid, and paid my social calls. In doing so, I actually avoided witnessing any slaughter (last year I saw it twice, so I'm good). I did my part, eating sheep guts again, although this year I could confidently refuse stomach, and fat wrapped in intestines. I also passed on the head again.

Just a reminder what a beautiful site I have:

...And One More Random Transit Ride

So it appears that a number of women in my village are going to get a gig picking strawberries in Spain for a few months. Sounds a little sketchy to me, but... In any event, a load of them traveled to Rich last week to get the scoop on this opportunity, and I was on the transit with them coming and going. I listened to a woman wretch behind me the whole way back. Nevertheless, as we were passing a village on the way home, a man on the street waved down our transit and offered to share a platter of couscous (which he was eating on the side of the road). I passed. The carsick females, however, seemed to have no problem with it. While I found this interesting, I realized (having been in this country for a while now), I realized I didn't think it was particularly strange. A friend of mine who lives in that village explained later that this is an occasional form of charity people offer, ostensibly for women working in the fields (never mind that this is not harvest time).

A Few Days in Granada

2006-12-22T17:38:00.000Z

So, Granada is wonderful. I have spent quite a bit of my time enjoying (cheap!) drinks and tapas, window shopping, and exploring local sights like the Alhambra and the cathedral.

One of the interesting things at the cathedral was the amount of northern European art. And I was thrilled to hear a couple there talking with their 10-ish year old son about problems with anatomical dimensions and general anachronisms in paintings of that period. That´s the kind of parent I might like to be one day!

Santa Pimp

Yay – Spain!

2006-12-20T20:00:00.000Z

Uneventful travel (for once). Even if it took three days.

Nice man on ferry gave me coffee for free when I didn’t have small change in Euros.

Beautiful scenery on train ride to Granada.

Pork.

Chocolate-dipped churros (fritters).

Christmas decorations.

Wow, I really don´t know any Spanish. And for some unknown reason, I keep trying to speak to people in Arabic!

CITY!

Holiday Spirit

2006-12-16T13:42:00.000Z

After being worked over by the PC docs (and an unbelievably awesome dentist) in Rabat last week, I returned south via Errachidia (a necessary detour, as it is one of the few places I get any real work done).

The night I returned to Assoul, it began snowing. And snowing. And snowing. The first day was great, as I’d been trying to work myself into a bit of a holiday mood. But then I began to worry. See, I’d planned at first to ride out the holiday in Assoul. The Muslim holiday of Eid al-Kbir hits around New Years this year, and some related Peace Corps travel restrictions had made it pretty much impossible to return to the States for a proper Christmas without using up all of my vacation days and then some (score one for volunteer morale). But then my common sense got the better of me. Last year, I managed Christmas in Morocco (my first ever away from home, at the age of 30!) because I was still so caught up in the newness of everything. Now, I just needed a vacation anyway! So I’d made very last minute plans to go visit my old sitemate, Zach, who now lives in southern Spain. Problem is, what if I got snowed into my site, and missed my own vacation? (This has already happened on a smaller scale, but here we are talking about a serious vacation!). Three days later, the snow was still falling! Now, I’ve seen this in NYC (where most of it quickly disappears and the rest of it just turns black) and Boston, but there they have infrastructure! And now even my host father was telling me that in his whole life he’d never seen anything like this in Assoul. Oh no, barely December…

Here’s our local landmark, the mountain Baddou. I took this photo from my roof a couple of days into the blizzard. Once it was finally clear enough to differentiate between earth and sky.

I’d diligently written Christmas cards, but since no vehicles were coming or going for several days, the post office was closed (sorry folks – you’ll have to celebrate all over again a couple of weeks after the fact, the same way we Americans have to do it over here as our mail trickles in, although there’s nothing like holidays and birthdays dragging on for months!).

But when the post office finally did open, I got what may have been the best care package ever (and, in general, my mom sends some pretty awesome care packages!). Back before I’d made plans to travel over the holiday, I’d asked for a little cheap, lightweight Christmas décor to help brighten my holiday a little. I’d expected paper crap, but couldn’t believe what I got… THANK YOU!!!

[Yes, those pathetic looking “curtains,” are, in fact, chopped up, mosquito netting (the tinted window panes are not, however, my doing). I hope PC doesn’t expect me to return it intact, as – as cheap as I am capable of being – they do actually serve a functional as well as aesthetic (hah!) purpose.]

Oh, and the fact that you’re reading this means that I did manage to make my escape from Assoul… And when I first got my hands on that essence of civilization – the Internet – do you know what I did? I happily watched holiday commercials on ABC.com (which, BTW, is a horrible, horrible entity for not allowing people overseas to view episodes of “Lost” online even though they have no qualms about constantly foisting all their non-holiday advertisers upon us when all I want to do is read a couple of sentences about what happened on “General Hospital” the previous week).

Anniversary Reward

2006-12-02T12:48:00.000Z

I have officially lived in Assoul for a year now. In celebration, I am on my way up to Rabat because it is time for our "Mid-Service Medicals." I.e. I get to defecate in a cup. (Luckily, none of my occasional intestinal distress has been severe enough to merit this before now).

Favorite mystery meat of the week: sheep face. (Because it was only a piece of face, I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking at -- only that I didn't think I wanted to eat it -- until my hostess popped an eyeball out). I politely declined.

Friend or Fowl

2006-11-26T00:00:00.000Z

Seasonal changes… I’ve already begun sleeping quite regularly in a hat and gloves – not sure that bodes well for the winter to come, although I do concede that my cement house with high ceilings tends to aggravate the situation. Fall here is definitely not what it is at home – as we instead experience a rather sudden shift in temperature (not unlike the loss of Spring that I always lamented when I lived in New York and Boston). Still, I have my occasional reminders of what it ought to feel like. As I passed through Immouzer a few weeks ago to help out with a training, I felt fortunate to be in one of the few places in Morocco (that I’ve seen at least) where I could actually experience a little genuine fall foliage. It was raining rather hard when I arrived, but enjoying the smell of the wet leaves more than made up for the fact that I was slipping all over them! I had actually visited this cute town about the same time last year, but somehow I forgot… and after a year here, I am much more aware of the absence of these little tastes of home in my day-to-day environment.

Thanksgiving has come and gone. Even though I’ve missed my share of family holidays even while living in the States, somehow it’s a little harder here knowing that it is a prologue to an entire holiday season that I simply won’t be experiencing. I try to explain this to some of my Moroccan acquaintances, but Thanksgiving can be a little confusing given that it carries no religious significance. Still, in terms of explaining its cultural and family importance (along with Christmas), I try to draw parallels to Lعid al-Ftir and Lعid al-Kbir. Unfortunately, due to my limited language skills, my explanations are often limited to something like, “We celebrate sharing and blessings, and we eat a big dinner.”

That said, of course most volunteers know how to make the most of things and celebrate however they can. This year, a few folks headed to Assoul the weekend before for a quasi-pot luck meal. My sitemate’s turkey, Pickles, was supposed to be the star attraction. Unfortunately, Pickles didn’t turn out to be such a big eater (or perhaps she was just incredibly clever, although we all know that she is simply delaying the inevitable), so the butcher wouldn’t kill her. We had chicken instead. Now I will be stuck taking care of a turkey throughout the rest of the holiday season while my sitemate is away doing normal person things.

Speaking of chicken, in addition to the occasional cow in the transit, our drivers fairly regularly carry crates full of chickens back from Rich on their roofs. It is actually perversely amusing if you go to one of the areas in Rich where the transits park – you occasionally hear a series of squawks only to realize that each one represents some poor bird being tossed by a guy standing on the ground up to a guy on the roof of one of these vans (I guess it would be too slow – or simply lacking in entertainment value – simply to hand them up). Last week, however, I had cause to wonder if those few airborne moments perhaps give some of the birds ideas. As I was riding back to Assoul, several of us noticed something fall past the window and began yelling at the driver to stop. Sure enough, there was a chicken lying in the road a couple of hundred meters behind us. Apparently, the poor thing had seen its chance at freedom and tried to take it. “Immut" (“It’s dead”), an old man behind me said. Someone ran to grab it, and miraculously, it began flapping its wings and squawking – a real fighter! So back on the roof it went, probably only to have become someone’s lunch (possibly even mine) the next day. How depressing! Somehow, I think the story would have been far more heroic and inspiring had – barring a successful escape attempt – the thing simply died in the road.

Oh, as you may have noticed from my lovely portrait with Pickles, I have finally given up on the idea that simply pulling my hair back for two years would somehow be more practical. In fact, it was getting rather gross. Many thanks to my friend Anne for her help with the chop job (out of sheer frustration, I nearly engaged in a far more brutal one several weeks ago, but instead settled on simply taking a few inches until someone else could do it properly). Surprisingly, very few Moroccans have said anything to me, besides, “You cut your hair.” Thanks for the update. I have to say that, in addition to improved washing and winter hat-wearing conditions, I’ve been happy to feel a little more like myself again. It’s sort of like how I miss my regular wardrobe. It’s not especially diverse, but I never realized how much I felt like my own “sense of style” – and I do use that term loosely in my case! – helps define me. Here, with only one or two exceptions, my wardrobe consists entirely of clothes that I intend to throw/give away (even the stuff I brought from home), so you can imagine that there’s not all that much that I really love wearing here!

Another important aspect of “being oneself” here stems from friendships – more than I expected. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. Of course none of my friendships with Moroccans are exactly “normal,” if such a thing even exists. I have my host father, whose fantastic English and relatively open mind (although I do still push a few boundaries), renders him someone I can talk to about nearly anything. Mina – our cooperative president – is perhaps the most genuinely nice and caring friend I have made here, although our language and educational differences make it difficult to get into any complex conversations. Still, when I tried to tell Mina that I was feeling a little homesick about the holidays, she began tearing up as she assured me that my next year here will pass even more quickly than the first one. I so often feel so judged and on display here that it is nice to be reminded that some people do really look at me just like any other human being. And then there is Najat – who speaks sloppy French and refuses to understand my Tamazight, and yet offers my most relaxed Moroccan friendship. We look at fashion magazines (frighteningly outdated ones, I’m afraid), and talk about movies and men. The other day, she read my fortune, and we played cards all afternoon along with her sisters (I love how admittedly hashuma this house full of women is!), with the loser of each round being forced to sing, dance, or perform various acrobatic feats. When I left, she was going to feed the animals and offered to eat some of their feed if her sister and I each paid her 5 dirhams (a little less than 50 cents). Even though Najat is older than I am, I love that we can play like little girls, and that I am not being judged for not being a proper Moroccan woman (well, not being married, officially here I am still a “girl,” although I am trying to convince people to think about women a little differently on this front!).

One last lesson of the past week: If you drop $12 Sony earbuds into a bucket full of dirty dishwater, they'll still work after they dry. So even though their computer batteries suck, at least the company has redeemed itself in my eyes.

Broken Record and Bulimic Romans

2006-11-07T06:29:00.000Z

... Not "record-breaking" (but perhaps that...), but that I sound like a broken record. I had big plans two weekends ago (once Ramadan finally ended) finally to visit the Saharan sand dunes of Merzouga (and undertake my first camel ride) -- one of my last major "must-sees" in this country (although with, in sh'allah, a year left, there's plenty more that I hope to do or revisit). Anyway, yet another rainstorm blew into Assoul for a few days. Our dry land couldn't handle it, and the end result yet again was widespread flooding, roads and bridges washing out in all directions out of town, and my getting stuck in Assoul for several days (which beats getting randomly stuck out on the road somewhere, which has happened to me more than once in the past) without any form of communication (remember, even the teleboutiques don't work when the sun isn't shining!). So my desert plans were literally all washed up.

Still, I couldn't feel too sorry for myself, merely missing out on a little vacation time, as I explored the damage around town. This time, there was basically a wide river of rather rough waters flowing past town in place of what had been everyone's fields. People (women mainly, of course) immediately came out to begin surveying their losses and cleaning up after the water began to subside in the following day or two, which I certainly admired. My life is not so hard.

This past weekend was a three-day weekend culminating in a holiday on Monday in celebration of the Green March, so I finally was able to get up to the city of Meknes long enough to visit the nearby Roman ruins of Volubilis. Some of the mosaiacs were surprisingly well-preserved, although I still struggle to imagine what life must have been like in these ancient buildings when they were fully intact, painted, etc. I have visited other Roman ruins in England and, of course, Rome, but somehow an interesting fact had heretofore managed to escape me (and I can't imagine having learned and subsequently forgotten this, but...!). Our guide, Rachid, led us into the ruins of one affluent home, showing us the latrine (which was set up like a bench so folks could continue socializing while they did their business) and a "vomitorium." "The Romans," he explained, "were bulimic." Apparently, the rich ones had nothing better to do but to eat and to have sex all day (the latter evidenced by a brothel with a large, carved-in-stone male organ marking the entryway). I supposed they had to find some way to reconcile the former activity with the latter and maintain their physiques. The fact that they ate lying down couldn't have helped either.

This week, I am repeating my Gender and Development training for some new Youth Development volunteer trainees before I head back to Assoul. Back at home, my life has been full of political intrigue regarding our new cooperative-in-progress, basically causing it not to progress very much. There is still no electricity, so I am reading a lot again since my two computer batteries can barely get me through one movie (thanks Sony). That said, if anyone can hook me up with the last four episodes of Season One of "24," I'll... well, we can negotiate your reward depending upon your personal requirements! In the meantime, the fuel supplier for the town generator has cut us off, because, in theory, they'll be losing Assoul's business anyhow once the real electricity gets hooked up (never mind that those crews have all gone back up to Imilchil -- our two villages take turns protesting in order to get work done, but apparently there are simply not enough labor resources to work both places at once!). My sitemate has a new creature gracing his garden -- a turkey named "Pickles." We'll be eating Pickles for Thanksgiving with the help of a few of our colleagues, although I have gracefully bowed out of any of the slaughter and cleaning activities, and have offered up my garlic baked mac & cheese instead (so what if I've never had that for Thanksgiving before!).

Holiday spirit

2006-10-06T10:20:00.000Z

One of the things that I like about Ramadan is that -- to balance out the craziness and testy attitudes that begin to emerge late in the afternoon (not to mention some dangerously fast driving that left my heart in my throat yesterday) -- there is also a festive and generous spirit much like what we experience during our own holiday season. Case in point: the hotel that is my home away from home in Rich has been offering a charity lfdur every evening, alowing those in need to come and break their fast for free. Sometimes the volunteers staying in the hotel will join them, and sometimes we go elsewhere, but yesterday, it really gave me a good feeling when I stumbled into the hotel right at sundown, after an afternoon of traveling, and had a couple of guys who work there (who hadn't yet broken their own fasts) insist that I sit down in a comfortable spot and have some soup, coffee and dates...

Déja Vu

2006-10-04T13:30:00.000Z

I just arrived in Azrou, one of my two homes during my first few months in Morocco last year. This time, I get to be one of those "older and wiser" (HAH!) volunteers who comes in to help train the newbies (whom I have already heard to be far more brilliant and experienced than we were). Actually, I am just around to do a little Gender and Development training - ideas about how volunteers can account for and respond to various gender roles in carrying out their primary assignments, as well as other project ideas for promoting broader thinking about gender roles in our communities.

I should be happy for the excuse to travel, as life in Assoul has been a bit slow lately, but frankly, I've enjoyed being a homebody, and traveling kind of sucks during Ramadan. Lots of places open late, transportation - particularly in rural areas - can be way too unpredictable, and it's kind of hard to find a respectfully discreet place to eat if you want to maintain a little respect and consideration for those who are fasting.

Meanwhile, back in Assoul, I have finally finished the second season of "Lost." Very disappointed about having to wait indefinitely to catch up with season three as that gets aired (I did look at a couple of spoilers for the premiere, before realizing that is a really awful thing to do to myself, not to mention a little pathetic!). So, instead, the plan now is to get started on "24." Seven episodes in two nights, and counting...

"How are you watching all of this television?" you may be asking. "Do you finally have electricity?" NO. But after the commune made the very unwise decision to discontinue fueling up the town generator, the teachers went on strike. Yay teachers!

Other excitement:

(1) Another scorpion in the house, but this one was small.

(2) I finally learned how to make zmetta - crubbly nutty sugary oily goodness that is one of the Ramadan staples for breaking the fast around here.

I'm having a good time running lately. The nedi is closed more often than not anymore, so I actually get a lot of community face time this way (and occasionally get a little business done). And now that folks have gotten used to it, I find all of my encounters on the road (and I do say hi to everyone) far less stressful than I once did. People get excited that they know what I am doing now, say hello, ask about my exercising and occasionally where I am going, but rarely try to force me to stop anymore. There are a few older ladies around town whom I like to tease, telling them that they ought to accompany me, and once or twice on the road I've had some Berber woman shuffle along, carrying her MASSIVE load from the fields, for a few steps behind me before she laughs and gives up. But yesterday I had my biggest laugh. I had about 10-15 minutes left, and two women who I don't know, but who I suppose I had waved to while passing them going the other direction, dropped their loads and came bolting out of the fields. In their dresses and the blue plastic shoes that are rather ubiquitous among the women of Assoul, they actually ran with me, one of them (Miriam) making it all the way back into town! It may not fit into Peace Corps' formal definition of development, but clearly I am making some sort of impression around here!

Again?!

2006-09-24T13:30:00.000Z

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.

Floods, wildlife, and a little shopping

2006-09-18T11:02:00.000Z

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…).

The Real World?

2006-08-28T09:52:00.000Z

For the last few days of my vacation, I returned to the Mediterranean coast – first to Martil and Cabo Negro, two beachside towns near Tetuan, and then spent one night in Tetuan itself. The beaches there were far different from that in Saidia, with calmer, cooler waters, probably due to coastlines facing more towards the east than the north. They also felt a lot more low key and family-oriented. To borrow from friends I met along the way during my trip: Saidia is more like Myrtle Beach, SC, while Cabo Negro is almost like the tropics. (I actually stayed in Martil, but took one day to walk up the beach to the more upscale Cabo Negro).

Tetuan began my transition back to the “real world,” but then, not really. Like everywhere I visited in the region, Spanish was the first language spoken to tourists (although my French served me as well as it does in any other touristy area, even if the Tamazight got me nowhere given the radically different dialect spoken by the Rifi Berbers. Even so, people often praised me for the few words of Arabic I do know!). I enjoyed one last seafood meal there (the cilantro-stuffed, fried sardines that are considered a treat elsewhere in the country just don’t do it for me!), although the highlighted seafood meal had been a fairly decent paella that I shared with my pal Jonathan in Martil. The paella had no mussels or sausage (of course!), but lots of tasty shrimp (how will I miss all the shrimp I have eaten this month – and it wasn’t even all that much!!) and reasonably accurate spices… (I had feared that we might be served something like the pathetic yellow rice my mother and I had suffered when we made the mistake of ordering paella in Brussels several years ago!). I also took in the Spanish influences in Tetuan’s architecture (for more on that history, I would recommend C.R. Pennell’s Morocco Since 1830: A History, which I am reading now).

Tetuan:

However, one of the things I’ll miss most about traveling up north was how genuinely nice all the people were (not wanting to talk trash about my own region, I’ll avoid too many specific comparisons for now). Perhaps, in part, they are used to a different kind of tourist from those who go caravanning through the more common touristy areas elsewhere in the country, but in all the places I visited, I was taken aback by the pleasant, friendly tone of everyone, even vendors and shopkeepers. Even in the medinas.

Let’s contrast this to Fez, where I made a stop on the way home (volunteers aren’t allowed to travel at night, so this obligatory stop was more or less a toss-up between Fez and Meknès – Fez barely winning out of sheer stubborn determination to try to figure that city out). This was my third (equally short) visit to Fez, although as I noted earlier, the first one, when I was sworn in, hardly counted (at the time, I had a stunning view of the Merenid Tombs, without the slightest clue what I was looking at). Like my second time there, I spent most of my energy trying not to kick or punch anyone (and I mean Moroccans, not other tourists). For one thing, it is just REALLY crowded (and those of you who know me well know about my crowd issues – I can get quite irritable, sometimes dizzy, and occasionally just plain nutty). And especially in the medina, restaurant hosts will literally jump in your way (I finally just started telling them that I eat Moroccan food every day and to get out of my way), little boys follow you, pointing at signs in the hopes that they’ll be tipped for being your “guide” (even just looking for a hotel, when I finally started telling them to leave me alone, that I could read the signs too… but to no avail), and storekeepers yell at you with increasing hostility once it becomes clear that you have no intention of stopping in their shops, which usually look an awful lot like the ones on either side of them.

Nevertheless, I did feel somewhat more successful than on my last trip, surrendering myself to the not-half-bad, color-coded sign system that can be used as a guide through the medina, based upon your specific interests: gardens, historical buildings, viewing traditional crafts, etc. (I say not-half-bad because, like the road signs that were often my nemesis in Boston, sometimes one is conveniently absent right at a confusing intersection where you need it the most!). So this time, I tried to stay on the “blue” (monuments) trail, with a few accidental diversions to the “pink” (crafts) trail, and found that I noticed a lot more than I did last time around – numerous mosques (which non-Muslims are not allowed to enter, although I got a few nice peeks from the outside), medersas, fountains, and stunningly-carved doors (although in one such case I was disappointed to look up and see that the door now marked the entrance to the ubiquitous Banque Populaire). And the morning that I left for the final leg of my trip home, I stopped by a must-see Fez sight – the tanneries. The walk there, first thing in the morning, was quite pleasant, as the medina was still basically empty, and I was becoming comfortable enough navigating the signage (pink) that I had a little less fear of becoming hopelessly lost and subsequently missing my bus. To view the dyeing process, you have to enter one of the shops, so we located a cooperative with a pleasant proprietor, who took us out to the store’s back terrace to observe the huge vats of dye while he explained the differences between different animal skins, dyes, etc. I had been warned that the smell would be terrible, and having set my expectations accordingly, found that it wasn’t so bad. Thankfully, I barely had enough cash on me to get back home, and I had left my credit card at the hotel, as there were some pretty amazing products at the cooperative, and they ship overseas… (times like these I do wish I were a real tourist, and not a volunteer who is overcome with guilt on the rare occasion that I do splurge on some souvenir!). Oh, and I almost saw a donkey fight on the way back through the medina – never have I seen such an evil look in one of those creature’s eyes!

Fez tanneries:

So, I have now returned from my small (and not especially arduous) vacation with a renewed sense of both wanderlust and homesickness. I have many more freedoms when I travel (dress, beverages, communication with family and friends, and simply being able to go out at night!), and, as I anticipated before I left the US last year (nearly a year ago!?), living abroad can become its own sort of rut, offering plenty of challenges but – after a certain period of time – little of the sense of exploration of traveling to new places. Living in a Berber mountain village for this long, many of the initial novelties have become mundane facts of life, if not outright aggravations! Now, although I am happy with the “comforts” (still no electricity) and solitude of being back in my own home, I find myself wanting to do more, see more – cultivating ideas for future trips both within and outside of Morocco. So (not that I have any intentions of visiting Afghanistan in the near future!), when I got home, I pulled out one of the many books inherited from my former sitemate, Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. In spite of my general enjoyment of travel writing, I had put off reading this one because I saw it had been written by a Brit in the 1950’s, and couldn’t imagine it to be anything but dull. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised – it was hilarious! As someone who never feels more than partially competent in my own travels, I found it perversely encouraging to read such a self-deprecating yet uplifting account of an incredibly ambitious journey. If only, and perhaps in another life…

Treat of the week: Swiss Miss and powdered milk (with water, of course!)

More Chefchaouen Flavor

2006-08-16T16:40:00.000Z

This morning I took a small hike up past a nearby spring to the ruins of a mosque (built by the Spanish, but by my understanding never used by the locals) overlooking town. I can't get over all of the green out here!

Every night, the call to prayer is mesmerizing -- the numerous mosques around town blending together in a way that is surprisingly musical compared to what I hear back in Assoul (where the new loudspeaker has made it quite a bit more difficult to sleep through early morning prayers).

I can't stop feeling like I am in a European mountain town.

And I am making myself ill off of goat cheese, which I did not realize was a local speciality until I arrived here.

Al Hoceima and Chefchaouen

2006-08-15T16:20:00.000Z

Last Saturday, I finally got out of Saidia. As nice as it was to spend two weeks at the beach, I was ready for a change… So I hopped into a taxi to Nador, where I met my friend Nam, and we traveled on to the city of Al Hoceima, which was a fairly clean, seaside town (although with only one small beach in the middle of town, and several others on the outskirts). This area was devastated by an earthquake a couple of years ago, although it was the surrounding villages that suffered the most destruction.

Me in Al Hoceima:

Leaving Al Hoceima Sunday, we met up with a couple of other volunteers who were also heading to Chefchaouen. Together, we suffered the worst bus ride EVER. Now, the road between Ouarzazete and Marrakesh is notorious, but this was a whole other level – basically 6 hours of non-stop puking and wretching thanks to bouncy, winding roads (but not such sharp turns that the driver couldn’t take them at full speed anyhow). Thank God I’ll be taking a different road to get out of here!

As promised, Chefchaouen is BEAUTIFUL – a mountainside town full of Spanish flavor, with a bluewashed medina and generally chill atmosphere in spite of the number of tourists here this time of year. The night we arrived was also a part of a long, holiday weekend, so we couldn’t find a place to stay and ended up sleeping on the roof of one hotel in the medina. Many of the tourists come as much for the kif – a crop so dominant here that we have seen fields and fields of it driving into town and hiking to villages on the outskirts – as for the culture. The Berber dialect spoken here is so completely different from Tamazight that I’ve gotten no language practice, and even though, throughout Morocco, I tend for some reason to hear a little more Spanish than most volunteers (do I look it?), it is still unusual to hear so many Moroccans trying to speak Spanish to us instead of French. Strolls through the medina are quite pleasant, with not as many aggressive sales tactics (or simple attempts at extortion) as one might experience in Fez or Marrakech. So in spite of just having spent two weeks at a craft fair, I have still enjoyed browsing through the numerous craft stalls, and even having a few more in-depth conversations with a couple of local artisans. We also visited the local kasbah, which contains a pleasant garden, small ethnographic museum, contemporary art gallery, and prison cells left over from the Spanish occupation. I felt so wonderfully lost in this small space – more able to simply kick back and enjoy exploring than I usually do here when passing through places while traveling for work.

Chefchaouen medina:

I have, however, gotten one sad piece of news this week. My sitemate called me yesterday to tell me that my host family’s new baby passed away last week after battling significant respiratory problems. I am feeling pretty bad about not being home right now while they are going through this, but at the same time am not sure how much more I could actually do for them other than keeping them in my thoughts. I hope you’ll all do the same.

Moroccan Whiskey

2006-08-11T17:39:00.000Z

So Saidia is one of those beaches where guys walk up and down selling various snacks: candy, soda, ice cream, sandwiches, nuts, and even hot coffee or mint tea (heat is no deterrent to consuming hot beverages here). As I was lying in a state of semi-consciousness the other morning, I heard one of the tea guys yelling out "Whiskey marocain!".

Anyway, beach is nice, but crowds and tackiness are beginning to overwhelm me a little, and I am hoping to get out of here early tomorrow. In spite of dismal sales, Fatima has decided to stay a few more days until the end of the fair. I've bought one or two souvenirs from other artisans here, but on the PC living allowance, and with another year to go shopping, there is no need to rush.

Saidia Week One

2006-08-07T17:26:00.000Z

So, the Saidia craft fair has been officially up and running for about 6 days, although the tents actually went up late, as can often be the case with events here, so we’ve really only had 4 full nights of work. The festival itself is running from 5pm-midnight, so daytime has been freed up for me to go swimming and sunburn all the parts of my body that haven’t seen the light of day for nearly a year! Beaches are crowded, and the water and currents have been suprisingly rough (but fun) for this to be the Mediterranean. When you head towards the eastern end of the beach, you can see the Algerian border post -- not allowed to cross!

Since Fatima and I didn’t come with a lot of products, we opted to share a tent with Halim, an artisan from the town of Boujaad, which worked out nicely for us in that it created a good aesthetic balance in our tent set-up without adding a lot of product-specific competition. We’re still struggling with sales, but after feeling a little down on things the first day, Fatima began to make the most of it, meeting other artisans, getting product ideas, and even consulting with Halim, who has a really sophisticated sense of aesthetics, color, etc.

Here I am with Fatima in our tent. The things on the walls are some of Assoul's traditional products, while the boxes and purses are from Boujaad.

Saidia itself is a bit bizarre – lots of Moroccan ex-pats home for vacation, but many actually dressed for the beach, which is startling given what one gets used to seeing elsewhere in the country. The town swells to crowds of tens of thousands this time of the year, although the rest of the year the population is quite small. Some of the artisans let their hair down and play on the beach, while others, including Fatima, have found their first trip to the beach to be a letdown, given all of the hashuma attire they see on the beach, with men and women right next to each other! When we got off the bus, Fatima immediately told me how shocked she was to see so many men running around with their shirts off…

The festival lasts through mid-month, but I’ll only be here through the end of this week (and the first week flew by, thanks to long days on the beach and long nights manning the tents followed by occasional additional “socializing”). I do hope we eventually manage to sell a thing or two…

Nobody works in the summer...

2006-07-31T20:01:00.000Z

...except for Peace Corps volunteers.

It has been quite a week, and I've been stumbling all over town in spite of all sorts of digestive distress (and subsequent lack of nourishment), fever, etc., just trying to find a few pockets of motivation among the women of Assoul. Why? Because tomorrow marks the first day of their first really big craft fair, in Saidia -- a town on the Mediterranean coast next to the Algerian border. Two months ago, everyone seemed really excited about the prospect of possibly selling a thing or two, someone getting to go on a pretty big trip... But last week, only the new president and vice-president of the cooperative seemed motivated. How disappointing! Most days, the nedi was locked up tight, and the vice president, Fatima, and I went around knocking on doors (many of which weren't being answered) just to see if anybody had any products to sell ("any" meaning not dirty and not ugly). Mina, the president, had been working hard weaving, even trying out some new product ideas that we had discussed. Everyone else was either "occupied" (sleeping, due to the afternoon heat), or "waiting for the cooperative to start" (I keep explaining that we are in the process of starting it, so they need to work now!). Somehow, we miraculously ended up with one large souk bag full of stuff very late in the day Saturday. (All this was echoed in my attempts to complete other work as well this week -- no one was answering phones at any office I called! My understanding is that I can expect this through the end of August).

Sunday morning, Fatima and I left for Meknes, where we stayed with her uncle's family. I still didn't have much of an appetite, and was opting for starvation over possible intestinal distress during two rather long bus rides (been there, done that), but I nevertheless sampled a couple of the blander baked goods that the women of the house were preparing in bulk, as they were catering a wedding -- delicious! Today, we had one more long haul for Saidia. And, en route, I spoke with our regional delegate from the Ministry of Artisana, who told me that the women of Assoul have now been formally invited to hold their General Assembly meeting to begin their cooperative. Does this mean their next craft fair (at the end of August) will cause less stress? One can only hope, but...

In the meantime, I am excited to be here with Fatima. Regardless of what she sells, she is super-smart, and I think she will get a lot out of this experience (in addition to selling, she's going to be able to attend a number of training sessions). So I will be working ("working"?) here at the beach for a couple of weeks before I take a proper vacation. More on Saidia as our stay here progresses... By the way, it turns out it is hot and muggy here.

My other excitement this week was that my host family has a new baby boy! I paid a few visits, but unfortunately, I had to leave before the big naming ceremony. Although given the last such party I attended was in the winter, and remembering how hard I sweated then, I'm not sure it is such a bad thing to miss one in the dead of summer.

Besides, I had a vicarious party the night before I left Assoul -- someone had loudspeakers going at a wedding in town until 4am (when my alarm was set to catch the morning transit -- ARGH!). Even though it was on the edge of town, they might as well have been blasting straight into my window! No sleeping in the summer either, it would seem.

Goat Feet and Keeping Cool

2006-07-23T12:18:00.000Z

For only the second time since I have been in this country, I had to tell someone not even to bother asking me to eat something (the other time was a sheep head during Lﻉid). One common dish served here (in rural areas, at least) is plain couscous in buttermilk. People here drink buttermilk straight and like it. It makes me gag. But even that I have choked down before, most recently at Mina’s house where, no matter how many times I tried to explain that it was the buttermilk that I didn’t like (I’ve learned that, while I should be polite, I actually do better to set boundaries early when it comes to foods I don’t care to consume in large quantities), she and her sister kept offering me more buttermilk, thinking it was the couscous I didn’t like. So, last Friday, I was there hanging out at lunchtime, and Mina began frying a couple of eggs while her sister Aicha went to get the main dish. “You can eat eggs,” Mina explained, “if you would rather have that than couscous.” “I love couscous.” I told her, “It’s the buttermilk I don’t care for.” “We’re not having buttermilk,” she replied, and I was thrilled! Sure enough, as Mina and I were snacking on eggs and bread, Aicha walked in with a platter of delicious looking couscous, with zizaw (cabbage-like greens that are often used in soup here – no clue if such a thing even exists in English, but they are pretty bitter raw). We all dug in.

Normally, with both couscous and tajines, the meat is in the center of the platter, often buried under vegetables (if there are any). Apart from my host family, who all have a healthy respect for my minimalist meat-eating habits, I often worry about what I may or may not have to politely pick over when I eat at someone else’s house. The meat is the prime part of the meal, and it is rude for me to refuse it, especially when someone else picks it apart and places your serving directly in front of you (it’s a little easier for me during meals where everyone just tears at the same pieces in the center of the dish). Well, as the zizaw started disappearing, what began to appear were two goat legs. The lower leg, to be specific, so I couldn’t make out where there was any actual meat – just skin and hooves. There was also some unidentifiable long, slimy thing. I didn’t understand Mina’s explanation of what it was, as she was pointing at her head, but it definitely was not brains. It hardly mattered – I was already not enjoying my couscous and zizaw any more, as I was looking at the goat feet with a combination of nausea and fear. When Aicha finally went to divvy up the meat, I immediately said I couldn’t eat meat today (I have, in fact, done a pretty good job of convincing people that I really do feel sick if I eat too much in this heat). I took advantage of the presence of the remaining eggs, and said I would be happy to finish those. Thankfully, they didn’t fight me (a lot of people here would)! Still, lunch wasn’t over, and I had to keep eating, and looking at those things, and then listening to them crunching, crunching…

So, the heat is getting pretty bad around here! Even so, I know not to complain too much. Last week, in Errachidia, I was dying because it was so much worse than Assoul, but I was staying with a friend from even farther south in the desert who was rejoicing that he was somewhere cool enough to potentially sleep through the night (demonic cats notwithstanding).

Another friend living near Marrakesh recently posted to our volunteer web group a list of tips for staying cool without air-con. It left me thinking about what exactly it is that I do, in my world where an electric fan is not even an option (and believe me, that will be one of my first purchases if and when they finally do hook up the electricity in Assoul… I see the poles going up, really!).

The answer is, simply, water. Wet rags, wet towels, wet bandanas, wet newspapers. Buckets of water. Anything wet. Although this in itself can be a challenge in our world of massive drought and water flow regulated to an hour a day (and that can sometimes be a rather pathetic hour when it does come). Not to mention that, no matter how much insect repellant I wear, I suspect that all this standing water in my kitchen and bathroom has something to do with the fact that I walk around itching to the point of near insanity.

I sit around my house with wet bandanas tied around my pressure points. (Unfortunately, although tank top and shorts are my indoor clothing of choice, I have to keep long sleeves and pants handy to change into quickly whenever someone knocks at my door. My friend Najat has already teased me after seeing me – from someone else’s house – up on my roof improperly covered!).

Likewise, we have something called a “bled fridge” (bled is the term we use for rural areas). I am too lazy to do that, but it involves a clay jar wrapped in a wet towel, sitting in another bucket full of water. Not the same as a real refrigerator (a decent one at least), but it works. My m.o. is to eat my produce as quickly as possible (I never prepare my own meat anyhow), with no leftover prepared food. Any beverages I want to keep at a tepid (as opposed to warm) temperature I wrap in the wet towels or newspapers, and try to keep them near a draft (although the wind situation here remains rather all-or-nothing). I use a lot of powdered milk, but when I can’t resist the real thing (i.e. when I am treating myself to real coffee as, alas, the Nescafé mystique has now worn off, and I see it more as a necessary evil), I buy the specially treated milk that is available at our local hanut, and again consume it as quickly as possible. Anyway, this works all right for me. A real fridge would be nice, of course, but that’s a pretty big purchase, and it looks like now I’d only have it for one summer here… maybe not worth it.

Also, there is very little exercise, apart from uber-lazy yoga, so I am getting mushy yet again, in spite of what an appetite killer the heat is.

One upshot is that I do engage in some sort of bathing on a daily basis. And these days, even my awesome solar shower gets too hot, so I often just squat in my banyo (like a “low-rise,” wide plastic bucket, where I normally do laundry) and dump cool-ish water on my head or wherever else I need it). I may feel sweaty and gross all day, but let’s compare that to the winter situation when being naked is so unbearable that the bottom layers of clothing don’t even get changed more than once every few days, and being naked and WET is such a horrible thought that a weekly hammam visit is all many of us can bear. (The alternative is potentially killing myself by turning on every gas device I own and shut myself in a room with them while I bucket bath). So I know that I really am living a more hygienic lifestyle, courtesy of the heat.

So STILL, it beats winter, when I walk around wearing all the clothes I own and cursing out loud about the wind and the cold. If anything, this just forces you to relax a little. And no one else is doing much of anything either in the heat of the day, so I could actually aim for all-out laziness if I chose to do so, and probably face little criticism. (The reality is that I stay in and read a lot, so some people think I am inside sleeping… I don’t care…).

In other news, the women of our soon-to-be-cooperative have finally selected their initial officers! It may sound like a small thing, but it is a huge hurdle for them (and for me, as it is hard to make things happen when there is no clear chain of command). Next week, in sh’allah, one of them will travel with me to attend their first big craft fair. And, hamdullah, it’ll be up on the Mediterranean coast, away from this oven!!!

Sweltering Summer Camps

2006-07-15T10:17:00.000Z

Well, as much as I like chilling out (please don’t take that term literally – it is July!) in my own house (where I have mastered the art of opening and closing different windows at different times of day so as to maximize ventilation while minimizing extra heat from the sun), and tearing through my numerous self-improvement, social science, and just plain fun reading during the heat of the day (thanks again Em for Love in the Time of Cholera – I LOVE it!!!), I still keep going to hotter places, where projects tend to come and go a little bit faster than my attempted work in Assoul often does.

Of course I make my daily appearances at the nedi when I am in Assoul, reminding them of the next steps they need to be taking in preparation for the official formation of their cooperative (even though they’re in bureaucratic limbo at the moment, that’s no reason to put the organizational discussions on hold!), and lately, trying to get them focused and prepared for going to their first big craft fair in a couple of weeks (let’s hope that all comes together!). But I still have various GAD (Gender and Development) projects going on – some little and some bigger. One evening this past week week, as I was preparing for an early morning departure for some meetings in Errachidia, my neighbor Fatima, who has one of the stronger business minds among members of the new cooperative, dropped by for one of the one-on-one troubleshooting chats she likes to have with me. I explained, yet again, that among other things, I had a GAD-related meeting to attend with other community leaders in the region – perhaps a little too apologetically noting that this work requires some extra travel and that women and development (I don’t know how to say “gender” in Tamazight) issues are really important to me too. Rather astutely, Fatima echoed a thought that I have often had as well, saying “Well, you need to develop the women at the nedi.” Indeed. Some are more prepared than others for the responsibilities of running a small business, and more and more, I see my “Small Business Development” work as being more of an extension of my GAD work – not only teaching basic business skills, but also pushing them to take initiative, risk new opportunities, and build confidence and leadership skills. In the end, I’ll be happy if even just a few of the women with whom I am working come out a little stronger, because right now I am not sure they will see too many financial rewards from our efforts until after my Peace Corps service is over.

As far as other GAD projects go, last week, I stayed in the town of Rich with several colleagues. There, we partnered with a local association to host a GGLOW Camp, with a variety of educational and recreational activities ranging from nature walks, hygiene and nutrition sessions, English lessons, discussion of gender roles and issues, and world music, dance and yoga! I still hate that I don’t have enough confidence in my Tamazight to be very effective in large-group discussions in that language (but it just didn’t seem right to use French when only half the students understood that), but I was fine helping out with small-group work. Of course at my nedi I have mastered the art of yelling out made-up yoga pose names in Berber, so that worked out all right, and for African dance and group sing-alongs I just used what God gave me. Oh, do I miss doing all those fun artsy things sometimes! Other sessions were led by volunteers with better substantive/educational expertise in those areas anyway, although I was a little disappointed that all the gender discussions were held in Arabic. Some of those girls really got into it, and I would have loved to have understood more! (The upshot of that is that we passed along resources to local association members to allow them to facilitate the gender sessions, fulfilling Peace Corps’ “capacity-building” goals by encouraging the association to hold similar programs on their own in the future!).

As I noted last time, Rich isn’t my favorite town in Morocco, but since I am there so often, it is nice to have had the opportunity to forge some new relationships there, both with members of our partner association – who were remarkably enthusiastic and open, often getting up on stage and dancing and singing along with the children – and with some of the young girls who enjoyed talking to some of us one-on-one, some inviting us into their homes… I really fell in love with one girl in particular, named Nadia, who had a genuine sense of joy about here, discernible in a huge smile that never left her face. Nadia has a clubbed foot, but seems to refuse to let it drag her down either literally or figuratively. Even though we were exhausted from all the invitations we’d received by the end of the week, Nadia had put in her request for our company very early in the week, and it was a pleasure to spend the final evening of the GGLOW camp eating couscous at her house, meeting her family and talking with them about their efforts to improve Nadia’s situation. My thoughts will stay with her, and sooner or later, I have a date to go back to her house for henna.

Also, as I had a whole week in civilization, I got to watch both of the semifinal matches for the World Cup. Even if no African teams were left, as one of my friends reminded me, France was basically an honorary African team. But then again, another friend was happy to see Italy’s success due to their, um, aesthetic appeal (she was actually hoping for an Italy-Portugal final on those grounds). So I felt a little like a real person, watching the sports! Of course there are a couple of cafes in Assoul with solar panels where I could have gone to watch other games if I had really felt passionate about that, but like most cafes in Morocco, those tend to be male turf. As an American woman, I could probably get away with it, but that’s just one of those judgment calls where I prefer not to stir things up too much. I get enough extra attention already.

Right now, I am on my way back from hot hot Errachidia, where I sweated all night while my friend’s crazy cat kept trying to chew off my toes! It was my first opportunity in a couple of months to talk with my government supervisor face-to-face. He is incredibly helpful and encouraging with our efforts to form the cooperative in Assoul, and he seems genuinely interested in making sure that the volunteers under his supervision (he works with all the Small Business Development volunteers in this region) get a lot out of being here. Even though he knew I was primarily in town to help facilitate an evaluation session for a previous GAD conference (a first step towards planning our next one, to be held this fall, in sh’allah), he made sure that my colleague and I knew about a cultural festival going on in Errachidia this weekend. So that evening, after the sun went down, I went with another volunteer and Houssein, a Moroccan friend from the town of Tinjdad who is super laid-back and speaks great English, to Errachidia’s main square. There we checked out some local crafts and live “Moroccan” music ranging from Ganoua (which I love for its strong West African influences) to perhaps the worst rapper I’ve ever heard and some guy dancing and lip-syncing to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” (that’s about the time we left). Then we went to Houssein’s house to grill brochettes on the roof. Turns out, Houssein is actually in the process of building the house, so here I am in a real city with real infrastructure (i.e. electricity), and it feels just like Assoul, with buta lamps and flashlights. But it was pleasant – more like camping when you’re out in the open air (and it’s not your own, somewhat furnished house that you are tripping around in the dark).

One thing is for sure – I must buy a fan if and when our electricity ever gets hooked up!

Fez, Home, and Things I don't Want Crawling On Me

2006-07-03T14:25:00.000Z

“To do good is noble. To teach others to do good is nobler still, and less trouble."
- Mark Twain

I’m exhausted. Never been happier for a week back in my own house, in spite of the near absence of electricity (still not connected!) and water. If anything, I was even glad for the lack of communications infrastructure, having been massively overexposed to the institution that is Peace Corps Morocco over the previous two weeks.

Anyway, I don’t get my full respite just yet, as I am now back in Rich for a week working on a GGLOW (“Girls and Guys Leading Our World”) camp with some local students. Rich isn’t my favorite town in Morocco, but it is my home-away-from-home once a week, and the communications lifeline for a number of us volunteers who live out in the bled (rural villages) in this region, so a few of us thought we’d try to give a little back. More on that another time…

As I mentioned last time, I didn’t exactly make it straight home from Agadir. So on my way home from Rabat two weekends ago, I made an overnight stop in Fez, mainly to hang out with a friend, but also because I hadn’t yet had the obligatory experience of getting completely lost in its medina. Turns out we did a great job of that, winding our way past numerous shops and interesting architecture until suddenly we were stuck in a maze of almost empty streets! These photos are both not too far from the entryway, before it really gets confusing (I refrained from taking photos as we got buried deeper and deeper, so as not to entice further the groups of little boys who seemed more than willing to extort money in exchange for “guiding” us).

Just from sitting in a café and observing the passers-by, I’d have to say that, in terms of the people, Fez has proven perhaps the most extreme Moroccan city (in my observation) in its mélange of contemporary with conservative – girls in skimpy tank tops followed by women covered in black with only their eyes showing…

So, in spite of my accidental grand tour of Morocco (ok, that’s an exaggeration, as there are still plenty of places left to visit), I’d say that my biggest smile of the month of June occurred last week, as I was finally on my way home, when a cow got into my transit. Good thing I was sitting near a window… It did, in fact, smell like a cow, which is all the more noticeable inside of a hot Mercedes van driving along the winding road that leads to Assoul.

(Aahhh… my beautiful ride home)

I have definitely gotten used to the ubiquitous livestock, although I do blame them (and their excrement) for the swarms of flies that attack me at my nedi and in some of my friends’ houses. My own house isn’t too bad, as I finally chopped up my mosquito net and used it for the more practical and less claustrophobic purpose of covering all the screen-less windows in my house. However, the place is hardly sealed up, and I did have to capture and liberate some sort of 5-inch long insect the other day. I didn’t think it was going to bite me, but in it’s apparent desperation to escape (it kept flinging itself against the white portions of my walls), it was making a ridiculous (and rather aggravating) amount of noise. Besides, I didn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night to find the thing on my face. I also have to keep replacing the fragile, carbon cloths that are the light source for my buta lamp. They keep disintegrating, thanks to the smaller, kamikaze flies and moths that don’t know better than to try flying directly into a burning ball of gas. But still no scorpions (yet).

As for other supposedly domesticated animals, I still think the donkeys are cute, although much as I used to experience with goats on city streets in Ghana, I still can’t help but laugh out loud at the unbelievably hilarious yet creepy (and earsplitting!) noises they are capable of making. Especially on the morning of souk day (Wednesday), when there is an entire chorus of them not far from my bedroom window. The feral cats that have the run of people’s houses here have done nothing to win me over to their species, while the packs of wild dogs that run around at night are certainly no ambassadors for theirs. I hold them at least partially responsible for my inability ever to get a full night’s sleep anymore, as they usually wake me up (seemingly in the process of killing something) well before the roosters do!

So it is getting pretty hot here. I’ve again given up my running regime. The sun – which had been my only reliable source of heat in the winter – is just way too much to take these days! So on those lucky days when I don’t have to travel, I stay inside my house and read as much as I can. (The problem with being social is that, as a guest in someone’s house, you get served copious amounts of sugary, hot tea, which is especially unpleasant this time of year!). Still, it beats winter. Besides, we still have the occasional wind/dust storm to keep things bearable, even if that means my furniture and floors will never be free of their layer dirt!

Agadir: The Beach Resort I Barely Saw

2006-06-20T16:51:00.000Z

Last week, all of the volunteers who arrived in Morocco last September converged upon the beach resort of Agadir for IST (that would be In-Service Training for all you normal folks who don’t speak in acronyms all the time like we do). For me, it was a first real opportunity to travel west, and on the way there I stayed in both the film capital of Morocco (Ouarzazate), and, finally (both going and coming), I saw Marrakech.

I did, however, get an unusual perspective on these cities, as I was traveling with Mina, a teacher at Assoul’s nedi and member of our cooperative-to-be. Although somewhat better-traveled than most of the women with whom I work, this was a new experience for Mina as well, culminating in utter confusion as to what was going on after we got into the elevator of our swanky Agadir hotel for the first time. Anyway, while I suspect she struggled to understand everything that was going on – some of the big picture Moroccan government policy discussions, for example, as well as the fact that all of our sessions were translated into Arabic, which is her second (and only) language after Tamazight – I was really excited that she had this opportunity to come and learn about the work of other artisans and volunteers, which I hope she will share with the women in Assoul. I also convinced her to participate briefly in my project presentation to the volunteers, “counterparts,” and government officials in attendance by showing some of the women’s products. Not many counterparts or artisans did this, and I thought it was a great confidence-building exercise for her. (Even finding women with the confidence to travel at all remains a challenge in my site).

Here is me presenting my fabulously rushed PowerPoint presentation about Assoul:

I’d even taken my computer to the nedi a few days before I left for Agadir (where Bzi told me it was the first computer the women had seen – a reminder to me to be careful of advertising my wealthy western possessions and lifestyle too carelessly), in order to get feedback from some of the women on what I planned to say about their work. Sometimes I struggle with them, but I really want them both to feel involved and to understand that I have been paying attention and trying to begin responding to some of their needs.

Anyway, training sessions kept us busy all day, and I would hardly label it one of my more relaxing weeks in Morocco, although by the end of the week most of us had managed to use our lunch breaks a little more creatively in order to enjoy a little poolside time at least. And of course I managed one or two seaside strolls. On the whole, however, the strip was quite touristy and developed (hello McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, although I do admit to dining at the latter one time, although only because a friend and I got lost looking for a Mexican restaurant we’d heard about). Granted, a welcome change of pace from Assoul, but still perhaps not somewhere I would have gone on my own.

Here’s a view from my hotel room:

I also had to take another oral language test. Whatever. Berber I am not. I didn’t even ask what my score was, but was happy that I at least understood all the questions the tester asked me (unlike what happens when I talk to people in Assoul!).

On my way back I stopped through Marrakech again with some friends (and this time no Berber ladies – finding the city a little easier to handle in that respect). Sadly, far too tired to take advantage of the city’s nightlife, although I went with some other volunteers to price yarn at a carpet store in the souk, and there was substantial strolling through the famous Jemaa el Fna (known for its array of snake charmers, storytellers, musicians, spiced tea, etc.). Also, for reasons I won’t get into here, I felt in need of a little shopping therapy – something in which I almost never indulge in Morocco unless DVDs are involved – and bought these awesome slippers:

Had to talk the guy down from 600 dirhams to 150. But I still hate bargaining (apart from just being poor, the bargaining is a big reason I don’t shop much here – I’d rather pay more and be non-confrontational). And God knows when I’ll ever wear these (certainly not through the donkey dung in Assoul!), but they sure are pretty!

Then, having been called last-minute for a meeting in Rabat later in the week, I stopped in Khenifra to break up my trip up north. The last part of that bus ride was a nightmare – not nearly as bad as some of the mountain passes I’ve been on elsewhere in this country, but nauseating all the same. And everywhere that I’ve traveled in Morocco, the puking is common enough that most folks know to carry or ask for a “mika” (plastic bag – usually black for this purpose) when they’re riding in a bus, taxi, or transit and feel the upchuck coming. Taxis are somewhat better (and you can ask them to stop at least, but even then I’ve still had a woman draped across my lap with her face in a mika), but pretty much every bus or transit trip, you’re aware of all sorts of activity of this sort, which Moroccans, for the most part, tend to handle fairly nonchalantly. Truly, these may be my people after all. I’ve even hopped off my transit in Rich early morning to find a girl hunched over and gagging, only to promptly look up, smile, and say hi to me as though she was perfectly fine again. However, sometimes, the system fails. I did end one transit ride with vomit on my backpack, thanks to the woman beside me. And during this trip to Khenifra, at a point when I was already beginning to feel a bit ill myself, I suddenly heard an unusually loud retching sound coming from directly behind me. Turns out the woman in fact had a mika, but somehow missed it and puked all over the floor. Then, one of her traveling companions got to cleaning the floor the way Moroccans always do, by pouring water all over it. So there was a nice little river of vomit down the aisle. And then, as a flourish, the puking woman took a swig of water and spit it out in the middle of this mess. It is a wonder that I made it the rest of the way to Khenifra without tossing my cookies as well! (Did I mention this all happened on one a nicer, air-conditioned national bus line, and not one of the crusty, crappy “souk buses” that I normally have to take to get between cities?)

Anyway, in Khenifra, a friend introduced me to a women’s association doing really amazing work, with a battered women’s shelter, AIDS education programs, etc. I have to say that that’s the kind of thing that makes me a little sad that I’m not working in a city, or at least a larger town. Where I am, it is a lot harder to stay connected to resources like that.

Trials in the Desert

2006-06-10T18:55:00.000Z

I went up on my roof the other night and realized, sadly, that once Assoul gets real electricity, my current view of the night sky and all the stars I don’t usually see at home probably won’t be so crisp and clear anymore. It’s a tradeoff though, and I am ready for a few more conveniences around here… (Frankly, I am used to the electricity situation, and only consider that a minor frustration, but for personal and work reasons, I am becoming increasingly agitated about the lack of power for the large but currently useless mobile phone power just outside of our village, rendering my cell phone entirely worthless when I’m at home!!!).

With regard to my “desert trials,” I first have to say that I totally jinxed myself with my last posting, whining about being stuck with friends for a couple of hours one morning on a washed out road. The very day I posted that, on my way home I dealt with an exponentially worse version of the same thing – one much bigger river, one flash flood, and a longer and far less comfortable wait with no English speaking friends anywhere nearby! I came very close to having to spend the night in a transit on a road in the middle of nowhere (which did end up happening to a couple of Berber women I got to chatting with during the long wait), but thankfully made a last minute escape and got home, only a little muddier, more tired, and generally worse for the wear than when I usually get home from my travels! I’ll spare you any further details here, but if you want the full adventure.

Anyway, I was returning from a trip that has actually proven to be one of the more interesting projects I’ve been involved with here so far. A couple of months ago, I got an e-mail from my colleague Moshay, who is a youth development volunteer posted in a small (but not nearly as small as Assoul!), deathly hot desert town a few hours south of me. Even though I generally don’t feel inspired to do excessive amounts of work with children, in this instance, Moshay rightfully anticipated that I was happy for any excuse to officially tap into my interests in comparative law and women’s empowerment. So during the last month, I made two trips down to Moshay’s town to help him put together a mock trial event, which the students would perform in both Arabic and English. I have to say that Moshay did most of the serious legwork, including arranging for some of the girls in his class to meet with a local judge!

During my previous visit, the class warmed up by asking me questions in English (and making me sing for them!) Then, I spoke to some of the students about their assigned roles as lawyers and witnesses – teaching them new vocabulary and giving them tips about how to be clever in their presentation of evidence. And of course I was thrilled when a few of the girls came up to me after class to ask how they could become lawyers too!

The first trial, in English, was a criminal case, where two men working in a bank had been accused of stealing money. In the second, Arabic trial, we tried to introduce concepts of the Moudawana – Morocco’s recently revised family laws – with the story of a young wife filing for divorce from a husband who had failed to support her financially. The students were allowed a lot of creativity to flesh out their stories, produce evidence, and ultimately decide the fates of the parties, and I thought they did an excellent job! In both cases, the panel of judges (because Morocco is a civil law system, rather than holding jury trials, the judges play a larger role in investigation and deciding the case) decided for the defendant, letting the accused thieves off the hook (the boys playing the defendants brought a lot of emotion to this moment!), and ordering the estranged couple to make further attempts at reconciliation (which is still encouraged here, in spite of the recent changes that at last allow the wife even to file for divorce!). After the event, the students played soccer in the rain, drank tea, and asked us to take lots of photos…

For me, this was a wonderful opportunity to feel productive in my Gender and Development work, as well as a nice justification for studying up on some local laws and the Moroccan legal system (which, in truth, I’d already begun to do just for my own intellectual enrichment…)! I certainly never lose sight of the fact that, as much as I hope to contribute while I am here, that has its limits, so I had better learn as much as I can as well!

Stranded!?

2006-06-05T12:26:00.000Z

These days, one would think the apocalypse is hitting Assoul. Yes, the crazy spring winds and dust storms have finally slowed down a bit. There’s still a layer of dust covering most things inside of my house, but now I have nothing but my own laziness to blame for that. But, were it not for such extreme changes in temperature and humidity on any given day, I’d swear I was experiencing a North Carolina summer here! For the last two weeks, in the morning, I am dying from the hot, dry sun. But then, if I don’t go ahead and use my solar shower, hang my laundry out to dry, and make any phone calls I need to make at the local téléboutique (which is conveniently useless as soon as there is a cloud in the sky), I am SOL. Heavy clouds roll in over the mountains, becoming trapped in the valley, and crazy thunderstorms and winter-like temperatures ensue. One night last week, this went on from midnight to 6am, which got to be a little creepy after a while in my big, empty, echo-y house. I know this sounds like an incredibly boring thing to mention here on the blog, but it doesn’t take much to make news in drought-ridden Assoul. And, sadly, a "little" precipitation in Assoul usually does mean that all hell has broken loose elsewhere. The last few weeks have seen significant flooding, property loss, and even some deaths just over the mountains, in Saharan towns.

Besides, even though the roads in and out of Assoul are gradually being paved over, things still become treacherous after a little rain. This is what happened when some friends and I tried to escape from the bled last weekend.

We spent an hour waiting this one out in the wee hours of the morning, before a couple of frustrated transit drivers finally decided to brave it…

… and as soon as I let friends in civilization know that we were finally on our way, we came upon this one.

If it weren’t for an incredibly foolish (and lucky) overloaded station wagon that finally decided to brave this one a couple of hours later, we might still be waiting there!

By the way, that blue transit on the left belongs to Hakim, brother to my host mother, and super nice guy. All the transits out in our area have been having a harder time these days. As soon as the roads from Rich to Assoul and Imilchil were paved, the grand taxis tried to take over. Grand taxis are Mercedes sedans that travel between cities in Morocco carrying six passengers at a time (but I’ve seen more for short trips - even with the driver sitting in someone’s lap!). You can sit at a taxi stand for hours waiting for that sixth person - these guys aren’t about to leave with fewer than that unless other passengers have paid for the empty seat (and the taxi pimps seem particularly eager to try to convince a certain American woman you know and love to do this…). That said, I often prefer taxis to buses, but never over my friendly neighborhood transit drivers! And the end result is that, while the transit schedules were not always convenient, they were at least predictable, but now it is now always certain if/when/how one might be able to get in and out of town. Let’s hope that all gets settled soon!

By the way, isn’t this the cutest thing ever?

For once, it was everyone else in my friend’s house who were dressing up like brides. Even the babies!

Reemergence

2006-05-15T16:42:00.000Z

Ah -- as promised, I've gotten lazy with the blog, but these days it's not for want of activity. Although it doesn't help that the state of Assoul's electrical generator is such that I now rejoice on those rare nights when the lights do come on. In theory, I use those evenings for "other work on my computer," although in reality that often translates to watching DVDs. But the electric lines are slowly making their way to us... maybe even in a month or two! (And then you can all call me on my cell phone too!!)

I must say, I was also feeling a bit uninspired after I returned from a few weeks away in March. The women in my nedi, many of whom I find individually inspiring, can be a little more difficult to motivate and pacify as a group. In spite of pockets of ambition and talent, the whole organization seems to get bogged down in petty disputes, many of which are old news and ought to be let go! But slowly, they're moving forward, and after a meeting with a government official a couple of weeks ago, they're working on the legal paperwork to form a cooperative. This is a really big deal -- offering real business opportunities for women both inside and outside the nedi who are willing to make the necessary investments. Moving forward then, the biggest issue is going to be cultivating some leadership. I have to remember all of the social influences working against this goal, where women who are truly capable nevertheless remain somewhat shy to take formal responsibility (even those who work very hard behind the scenes), and sometimes are even most afraid of each other!

I have to mention one woman, however, who is truly impressing me these days. And this is out of several suprisingly sophisticated and well-educated women I've encountered in spite of Assoul being such an isolated village. Bzi, who is quietly motivated and appears to be above the daily nedi strife, will sit and talk to me about her interests and questions. For a woman who never completed school, she has an amazing level of intellectual curiosity. She tells me she has French language copies of Marx and Shakespeare at home. I look through my notebook and see places where she has diagrammed theories she remembers from her geometry and physics classes. In a group where one woman I spoke with didn't even realize that there was a large ocean between Morocco and the United States, Bzi is telling me that she wants to learn Spanish, and knows about Macchu Piccu when I mentioned my one and only trip to South America. In a way, I am embarassed, because when I arrived in Assoul, I feared that the only intellectual interactions I might be able to have would be with some of the men (in truth, I have to be careful where I step on that front, as they realize I like talking international politics, and of course as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I should only go so far with that sort of thing. So mainly I try just to listen...)

Anyway, I've been working harder to stay on top of my reading list (including my "spinach" -- i.e. stuff that is good for me, if not always entertaining). One thing that no doubt pulled me out of my motivational funk last month is Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains. This book had been recommended to me multiple times by various (reliable) sources, and now I must do the same, particularly for those of you interested in the developing world, human rights, public health, or simply reading about amazing people.

As I wait for this cooperative situation to pull together (well, I am involved in that too, but here I am a "facilitator"), and just to keep from feeling completely useless, I've gotten involved in some other activities here and there. Mainly there. Meaning I'm spending less time in Assoul for the next month or two. But more on that another day... I've definitely learned to accept the local attitude that things will happen if they happen.

Here's a pic of some of the beautiful landscapes in a nearby village where I might do some work. I cannot overemphasize how little justice my camera does to my surroundings.

And here is me being forced to dress up (yet again) like a Berber bride by some folks in said village. This game may never stop. The women in my nedi had been threatening to do it too, and they got me last week -- one day being disappointed that I didn't have my camera with me, and the next day (after seeing this photo) deciding that the wardrobe they'd offered was inadequate. So I think I am getting this again when I return home at the end of this week!

I inherited a pressure cooker and a shortwave radio from a colleague who returned to the US a couple of months ago. The former I hadn't intended to purchase, in spite of it being a handy way to cook beans, because I didn't want to add any more potential explosives to my housewares. Now I live in fear, but I've been enjoying lentils (my fave!) on a more regular basis. The shortwave I'd also declined to purchase after standing around souk for half an hour one morning trying, without success, to locate BBC or anything else in English. Fortunately, I seem to have slightly better luck with the inherited one. It may have lots of static and require constant adjustments, but at least I'm not getting all of my news between one week and two months late now! (Case in point, my friend Jackie just handed me an October issue of The Economist, which had apparently made a little trip to Iran before finding its way back to her small village!).

I also now own my first djellaba -- an impulse buy, I'm afraid. Even though I'd been thinking of getting some nice, traditional garments as souvenirs before I return to the US, there is no need for such a thing right now! The nicest outerwear I ever see on the women of Assoul is a taharuwit (I've no doubt butchered that attempt at transcription!) -- a thin, black, embroidered cape that is common in the south. Anyway, my purchase followed a meeting in the city of Khenifra (adding one more amazingly beautiful yet completely different landscape to my list of gorgeous Moroccan drives!), where I was pleased to catch up with a number of friends whom I hadn't seen in months. [You know, I think some of us have these fantasies about "going native" (sorry to be a little politically incorrect) as Peace Corps Volunteers, but as it turns out, I have to say that I am grateful that I see fellow volunteers a lot.] While in Khenifra, I visited a tailor shop where one of my colleagues does some work. Well, I was just browsing (and coveting some really fancy, expensive stuff), when I must have blacked out or something, because next thing I knew they were putting a djellaba on me. When it didn't turn out to be a boxy monstrosity or a ridiculous price, I just couldn't say no. Of course, now, lazy person that I am, it's just sitting in a plastic bag getting wrinkled. But I could wear it, if the need ever arises... A couple of my friends and I also were invited to a nice meal at the tailor's nice house afterwards. Until midnight. So I was awake all night digesting kefta (meatballs), but, thankfully, had a buddy present who likewise seemed to be experiencing some insomnia. I suppose the Moroccan dining schedule is somewhat more tolerable if you have the right company to share it with! [For lack of any other Khenifra photos -- I never do well snapping pix from the bus -- here's me playing dress-up again in my new djellaba.]

Two weekends ago, I made my first real trip to Meknes (meaning I saw something besides the taxi stand) with a couple of friends. Unfortunately, with just one night to explore (and of course squeeze in a trip to Marjane -- Morocco's answer to Walmart, and I still hate it, as much as I suppose I occasionally need it), I'm already ready for another trip back. But I did make it to a couple of classic sites, including the Bab El-Mansour and a beautiful mederssa hidden inside of the medina.

I realize I must start playing tourist a little more before two years have passed and I haven't "seen anything." And then there is that little matter of escaping from the "bled," as we call it. Ahhh, cities... Where you can eat pizza and pistachio ice cream, hang out with your guy friends without everyone thinking that you're a slut, and where you can simply tell off some stranger who's pissed you off in the street without worrying that it will come back to haunt you in your village of 2,000! (Assoul is beautiful, but I think my experiment in long-term rural living will end when my Peace Corps service does!)

This is not a joke. It is an actual photo of actual toothpaste (or so it says) bought by my friend Anne here in Morocco. Maybe the Peace Corps Small Business Development Program should branch out and do some marketing advice for bigger companies.

We could also talk to the hanuts (shops) that sell eggs with dried, crusty bird droppings and occasional feathers still stuck to the shell. But then, you take what they give you... guess it doesn't hurt business.

A New Level of Jealousy!

2006-04-17T15:55:00.000Z

Not being a "language person," I realize that it is as much my fault as anyone else’s that I have yet to hold anything remotely resembling a substantive conversation in Tamazight! Absolutely, I can understand and answer questions like, "Where did you go?" "What time is it?" or "What did you eat?" And of course I am quite adept at saying "I’m sorry, I don’t understand"!

Occasionally, well, sometimes more than occasionally, I find myself frustrated by an apparent lack of tact or nuance in the language as well. For example, it is difficult to express degrees of ability, need, or emotion. There is either "a lot," "a little," or "none." And while there is "better" and "worse" (although I have been advised to be careful on with the latter, because if you linger a little to long over one consonant, it sounds more like an offensive bodily function!), it is sometimes difficult to express "more," or "less" in exactly the way we’d mean it in English. With all this, not only do I often feel incapable of expressing myself as specifically as I might in English (even if I did speak better Tamazight), but I often find myself feeling unnecessarily offended by what appear to be rather blunt statements made to me ("You don't know anything!")!

That said, Tamazight also has a range of bizarrely specific words - verbs in particular. There is actually a verb (a single word) for the act of scraping meat off of bones with your teeth. But most interesting to me, during a recent tutoring session, was learning the word that roughly describes our concept of jealousy or envy. For us, those ideas - the latter in particular - suggest a notion of "I want what you have." The Tamazight word, "lshrah," however, carries a far nastier connotation (not that we don’t sometimes think of it this way in English as well). If you feel lshrah towards someone, it means, simply, "I don’t want you to have what you have."

Normally, I am fascinated by the idea of what the specifics of a language say about its culture, but I am learning that, when you’re living in the middle of it, sometimes it is best to take what lessons you want from such things, but try not to dwell on it!

My Refuge

2006-02-12T12:44:00.000Z

So, after a sad goodbye to my host family, who kept asking me to stay “just one more night,” or “just until spring” (apparently my host sisters told my host mother that my house is freezing, although of course it’s no colder than theirs!!!). I have finally moved into my own place. It’s on the other side of town, not that that’s very far, and of course I visit or at least see one of them nearly every day! Frankly, I love the host fam, and certainly could have managed living there if I had my own mattress (those ponges look comfortable, but they actually kill you slowly after sleeping on them for two months!). Nevertheless, it is nice finally to have my own space, where I can eat what and when I want, use the toilet without everyone knowing, bathe without feeling guilty for asking my already hard-working host mother to heat up a kettle of water, and just generally be myself without having to worry about being watched so closely!

My place is HUGE too – for those of you who saw any of my apartments in NYC or Cambridge, you’ll understand why I find this one to be a tad overwhelming. The salon alone is far larger than any of my NYC places, and rivals the overall square footage of my Cambridge apartment. Actually, what we would call the foyer in the US (basically unused space here) is bigger than any of my NYC apartments. My intention had been to buy as little furniture as possible, and although I insist on remaining minimalist (not like I am taking this stuff home in two years!), I have had to adjust a little bit. So about a week ago, my sitemate accompanied me to Rich and helped me do a little shopping for the basics: a real mattress (YUM!), three ponges, a stove, two plastic chairs (to go with a normal-sized table I hope to have made for my kitchen), two plastic woven carpets called agrtyls (common here and easy to clean – I did find something not too tacky), and various smaller items to supplement a few kitchen and cleaning basics I’ve been able to find in Assoul. I did also find a low-rider table (most common here) for my salon at the souk in Assoul. I still need to flesh out my kitchen supplies, but have what I need to eat for now. Forks are especially hard to find – my friend Najat loaned me one. All my clothes and personal items are in a pile in the corner of my salon at the moment, so I still need to find a way to organize my stuff (big place, but no storage area!). I also have to cover my ponges with something, as they are currently giving me a headache (see photo!).

Here’s my kitchen. That big green bottle by the sink is there because I only have water between 5-6pm, so I have to come home then in order to fill up buckets, bottles, etc. Annoying, but I’ll get used to it! Note too the giant buta gas bottle under the counter. Now you can see why I am scared!! I also have two smaller butas – one that I use for light when there is no electricity, and one that is attached to a little camp heater. Nothing like having multiple gas flames going in your house at any given moment!

Of course I still have a Turkish toilet (and no proper shower, although maybe I'll rig something up), but more on that later...

But my favorite part (besides the mattress) is the big private roof! I can bask in the sun, dry clothes, and generally enjoy the view of the nearby mountains, or Assoul’s main (only) street, depending on my mood. I know that some of my friends on the other side of the mountains to the south, in the desert proper, have to sleep on their roofs during the summer, but I am hoping it won’t get quite that hot here at night. (Hard to imagine now – it’s still quite cold!)

This week I also attended a local celebration of tizlafin. The lunar new year was January 31 (I believe the year 1427 on the Islamic calendar, but don’t quote me on that). Apparently here, on the ninth night following the new year, there is a big celebration for all the BOYS born during the year. As per usual, the women cook all day, giant plates of couscous with eggs (and meat, of course), and at 5pm, men of the house carry these plates on their heads to a central area where they all eat (very quickly) together while a few of the local women and children watch. Of course the women make this into a small festivity of their own, and in the houses where couscous is being prepared, other female neighbors and family members drop in throughout the afternoon to eat couscous, drink tea, and visit. I went over to the house of my host mother’s family early in the day, where I ate a tajine of olives and French fries (yes), then couscous (and meat), and then made myself busy peeling the largest pile of boiled eggs I’ve ever seen, just so I could miss at least a few rounds of eating. Of course I often get angry at the second class status of women here, but then I realize that they have their own little interesting world, and it’s kind of cool, as an outsider, having access to that as well… Now all I have to do is convince them that we American women are not crazy simply because we don't spend hours every morning pounding out bread to bake! (Of course I will admit that, relatively speaking, we are spoiled for not having to do that every day!)

Back in the big city...

2006-02-02T10:12:00.000Z

So, as some of you already know, before swearing in last fall, my training class nominated me to serve on the PC Morocco Gender and Development Committee (stay tuned -- funding solicitations coming soon!). Apart from the interesting work, one of the additional "benefits" of said position is that I get to travel to Rabat, Morocco's capital, a few extra times a year for meetings. What a shock to my system, to be back in such a modern, cosmopolitan environment! Suddenly, I felt so much more like myself again! Simply going out dancing or to a restaurant, feeling a little less worried about how to respond appropriately to the unwanted attention I inevitably receive as a female foreigner, and just being able to communicate effectively with most everyone I had to interact with! I think I really must be a city girl at heart...

There is also a little slice of wanna-be America in Morocco's cities called Marjane. Rabat has two of them. I'd heard of it from other volunteers and fellow trainees who'd already had occasion to visit, and rave about all the things you can buy there (especially peanut butter). Basically, this is the same as Walmart, and while it did have an amazing supply of just about everything from food and alcohol to clothes, electronics, and sporting goods (I did, in fact, succeed in my quest to purchase a yoga mat, as mine are currently inconveniently located in North Carolina), I enjoyed Marjane just about as much as I do Walmart. And I didn't see the peanut butter. Truth be told, while I can't get exactly the things I am used to having back home, I can find most of what I need (or a reasonable substitute) in smaller towns closer to where I live. But to be fair, I did avoid the housewares, as I would rather actually get settled in my new home to see what unique items I'll need, rather than go nuts and then have to carry a bunch of stuff back home 10 hours by public transport! Yeah -- and like Walmart, Marjane definitely makes more sense if you have a car! Nevertheless, I am sure to return the next time I am in a city with one, but it sure did feel like a geography warp, and not an especially pleasant one at that!

My other exciting news from Rabat is that, after going over two months and only sitting down on a toilet one time, I actually went over 4 days with nothing but sit-downs! Which actually aren't too fun in the winter, as I was reminded! (Rabat is much warmer than my region, but it's hardly summertime, and the weather was a little unpleasant my first couple of days there).

I am on my way home now, where, in sh'allah, I will pick up the keys to my new house/apartment tomorrow morning! More soon...

Lﻉid LKbir

2006-01-17T13:45:00.000Z

(If you're a vegetarian or otherwise squeamish, you might want to limit yourself to the last two paragraphs of this posting.)

Lﻉid Lkbir – the “big feast” (not to be confused with Lﻉid Lftr, the feast at the end of Ramadan) – this is the holiday I’ve been dreading since before I even arrived here in Morocco. But then, I really cannot complain when I consider the fortunes of others… For the last month or so, every time I’ve crossed from the front door to the front gate of my host family’s house, their large, black sheep, whose girth had been increasing exponentially, would glare at me and begin bleating at full volume. A few weeks ago, I think it finally began to suspect its fate, although it didn’t seem bright enough to do anything about it. After gaining its freedom from its pen, it just walked up to the kitchen window and peered in. After being barricaded back into its tiny prison with a wheelbarrow, it again escaped, and as I opened the door to head out for the afternoon, there it was, trying to push past me into the house. By the week before the holiday, this became a daily occurrence – as soon as someone opened the door in the morning, there was the sheep, as though it would somehow conquer its fate if it could only get into the house while it was still alive!

As for the people, they look forward to the holiday with relish! Ever since I arrived in Morocco, people had been asking me what I would be doing for Lﻉid. This question, among children and adults alike, is consistently accompanied by huge grins and throat slitting gestures. I receive looks of pity when I explain that I do not celebrate Lﻉid back in America.

Over New Years, it was confirmed that this year, according to the Islamic calendar, Lﻉid would take place on Wednesday, January 11, although vacation and other festivities begin a few days beforehand. Monday, my host family and Moroccan friends began making gateaux (this drives me crazy – it’s the French word for “cakes,” but in Morocco it means homemade cookies). On the day of Lﻉid, no one can kill his (because the women do not do the slaughtering) sheep or goat until the king has slaughtered his. For some reason, my family decided to work around this rule by buying a small goat to kill and eat on Tuesday. A little concerned about vomiting (nothing like a little death to aggravate my usual pre-breakfast nausea), and sad to see that this cute (and screaming) little black and white thing was going to have a very bad day, I nevertheless opted to go watch the deed be done, as it’s a level of familiarity that most of us Americans no longer have with our food.

I will say that, while not particularly pleasant, Tuesday ultimately did not turn out to be the carnage that I had feared. With the help of the local butcher, who grabbed the animal and held it down, my host father quickly and cleanly slit its throat. Admittedly as humane as could be expected, and not taking an excessive amount of time, I still had a hard time watching the goat go through the process of dying. Afterwards the butcher began the rather interesting process of skinning it. This takes talent – my host father told me he’d tried once and made a mess of it, taking off too much meat. Here, the butcher cut through one of the animal’s hind legs and began to blow into it, the effect of which is to separate the skin from the carcass. He then skinned it carefully and cleanly about halfway before tying it up by its hind legs near the front gate, where he finished the job. After skinning it, he gutted it, slitting open its belly and pulling out the insides. At this point, I was only thinking of two things: (1) My high school anatomy class where I dissected a cat with an intestinal disorder that rendered it so foul smelling that no one else would work near me and my lab partner, and (2) that I was going to have to eat intestines. This triggered the most disgust in me, because I had to watch the butcher clean them out via a prolonged process of squeezing, rinsing, and blowing. Of course I’d rather they be empty before I eat them, but then I couldn’t help but wonder if it would be any more inhumane to give the animals a mild laxative the day before they kill them. It certainly would be cleaner. (It didn’t help that one of my family’s scary cats went to town on some of the leftovers on the ground later on, and I saw it later behind the house – thinking it was coughing up a hairball only to realize it was in fact puking… blech!). Anyway, the butcher finished and was given the skin and the head as reward for his efforts. What was left was a rather clean looking piece of meat (not as gross as some of the stuff I see outside butcher shops in the cities of Rich or Errachidia).

Having experienced all this Tuesday, I still decided to repeat it on Wednesday, the actual holiday. This time, instead of killing the sheep in the front yard, they took it out into the road in front of the house. We’ve already had one light snow since then, but I think it is going to be a while before I no longer have to dodge pools of dried blood in front of many of our village’s houses. I found this experience much less educational – the sheep took longer to die, and I finally had to walk away to see if my host sisters could offer some distraction. Indeed, Imane decided it was time that she begin showing me her photographic skills (thankfully, with digital cameras, I don’t have to keep copies of her many “abstract” shots). It caught the attention of one of our neighbors, who of course then wanted me to come in and take pictures of her guests in her salon, and during that time, I missed out on what would have been my second lesson in preparing an animal to eat. I think I am ok with that. Besides, when I returned to the house (they did bring it back inside the gate to clean it), the remains of its intestinal cleaning were far more evident than those of the goat the day before. As of this posting, I am still having to dodge that when I come in the gate or hang out laundry.

During Lﻉid in particular, no part of the animal is wasted, and the animal is eaten in a certain order, according to local and family traditions. I’ve also been told (by biased parties of course) that Berbers eat even more of it than other Moroccans. It takes days to finish everything. Now, I’m no vegetarian, but I (and my digestive system) tend to be satisfied with no more than the bare minimum of meat, even with the most harmless of cuts. That can be a problem in this country, where such an outlook is unheard of! I’ll try most things once, but until now, the oddest thing I’ve eaten here has been sheep balls (ok – one ball), which, by the way, are called “tiglay” – the same as the word for “eggs,” which is why you never ask only to buy two eggs at the local hanut (store) or souk. I’d seen intestines and the penis (on the plate, I mean), but so far, I’d avoided those, along with eyeballs and brains – all considered delicacies. I’ve tried bone marrow at a fancy restaurant back in the US, but have yet to adopt the local habit of sucking it straight out of the bones at the dinner table.

Anyway, the week of Lﻉid, as expected, offered an overwhelming amount of meat. I paced myself – probably to the point of offending people, even though I still ate far more than could possibly be healthy. Every meal – all meat and bread. On skewers, in tajines, you name it. I stuck with the organ meat – not sure if I got the heart in there (I was late for lunch the first day), but definitely the lungs, spleen, liver (wrapped in fat – which I’ve had here before), stomach, and intestines. The latter were a bit chewy for my taste, and even though they were heavily salted and cooked with massive hunks of fat, as was most of the organ meat, these were still not rendered completely unrecognizable. And I have to say that it’s the salt and fat that gives my digestive system the most grief… Two things I couldn’t do – first, the head. The hair is basically burned off, and the head cooked and served on a platter, where the meat is simply picked off by diners. The evening this was served in my house, I was, mercifully, still so full from my lunchtime meat (which tended to come in several rounds at every house where I ate) that I had no problem looking at that unappetizing platter and saying “no thanks.” Two days in a row, at two different houses, my lunchtime tajine landed brains in front of me (it didn’t help that the first day, my host brother ran waving the brain at me before it was cooked and asked me what it was called in English). Now, I do intend to try this at some point during my stay in Morocco, but between feeling generally overwhelmed this week and visions of Hannibal, this time I could barely stand to look at it while I was eating.

Lﻉid has offered its other intrigues as well. I learned that traditional henna in Assoul does not consist of intricate designs, but rather you wad up henna in your hands, wrap them up, and (attempt to) sleep. No doubt that my friends and family would take one look at my hands right now and ask what happened, as the tips of my fingers and my entire palms are varying shades of blackish orange. During all the henna and gateaux-making, I’ve enjoyed some colorful conversations with the women in my host family. I find my host cousin Najat – who is often at our house helping to care for the ailing grandmother – particularly entertaining, as she and my (much younger) host siblings, talk relentlessly about the rich, French-Arab man she plans to marry. This time, however, talk turned to me and my prospects. It seems I am now fated to marry a Berber prince who lives in a cave (sorry guys – you know you can’t compete with that!). No doubt inspired by that conversation, on the morning of Lﻉid, my somewhat quiet host mother came running into my room after breakfast carrying a beautiful, deep orange caftan and traditional Berber headdress (like what a Berber bride would wear), saying that I needed to put them on and take a picture to send home! Given that I was still sporting a winter hat and several layers of sweaters and fleece underneath, the only remotely flattering (and not at all like the traditionally solemn Moroccan bride) photo also includes one of my host sisters, who joined us for the fun. Judge for yourself… should I throw away my American wardrobe?

Lastly, the holiday week ended on a rather strange note – a murder mystery in my tiny town. Obviously not a common occurrence around here, but the talk of the town on Saturday was the dead man found outside the Mosque. My host father told me about it at lunch (I had wondered why there were so many people still out on the street when I came back from my run after noon). Because all the women in town had gone to the hammam just before Lﻉid, I couldn’t resist going and taking advantage of its being completely empty that afternoon, and by the time I had emerged, the “local” gendarmes had arrived (they’re 100km away – making my regular visits to take care of my working papers a HUGE pain), and people were lining the main street just watching while nothing happened. It seems, however, not to have been much of a mystery after all -- the main suspect was caught within a day...

Berber Yoga

2006-01-17T13:41:00.000Z

The days here have been relatively pleasant, provided the sun is shining, but once the daylight is gone, especially when the afternoons have grown windy (which is most afternoons), the air becomes miserably cold. There is little reprieve indoors, unless you are willing and able to practically sit on top of a woodstove or gas heater all night. I don’t yet have the latter, and can only take so much from the former – particularly on nights when I want a little break from family time! So, I’ve had little trouble finding the motivation to do a lot more toning, stretching, and yoga exercises in my room just to stay warm.

My host families both in Ait Hamza and now here in Assoul, of course, have found this highly entertaining (see my posting from back in October for the scoop for my host parents’ acrobatics back in Ait Hamza!). My host siblings now often join me (at least for the things they like) in various yoga poses, or simply fooling around with my exercise bands. My host cousin Najat, who is actually much closer to my age, has on occasion come into my room hurling herself into somersaults or extremely precarious headstands in the middle of the floor. The kids love to get me to do various arm balances (which I’m not all that good at) and headstands on command. That command often comes dangerously soon after a meal or snack for some reason, so sooner or later I fear that’s going to end disastrously!

One of my colleagues – a health volunteer in a neighboring village about 10k down the main road – comes to my village sometimes for tutoring and meetings. On occasion, she’d give exercise classes to one of the groups of women at our local nedi. Unfortunately, she can’t always make it on a regular basis, and as I have already gotten a reputation in town for doing lots of rriyada (exercise), that group asked if I would also teach them yoga once a week (of course, I then also offered the other group of women, who alternate on other days of the week). My colleague had warned me that this wasn’t the most coordinated group of women, and I’d even participated in one of her lessons, so I was definitely prepared to take it slowly. Indeed, one can only go so fast when the only relevant vocabulary that comes to mind quickly tends to be “right,” “left,” “hand,” “leg,” and “look.” Thankfully, there are a few women who have the same limited French skills that I do and who are able to rescue me in moments of greater frustration. In both groups of women, our first class went slowly, with lots of stretching, basic exercises, and simple yoga poses. The group of women who’d already had a few classes with my colleague is a slightly younger group – eager to try things, but also somewhat giggly and ready to play, which I don’t mind, since I think part of the benefit of this is that they get a chance to relax and have fun a bit (that’s certainly one of the reasons I do it!). By our second session, a few of the boisterous ones had no trouble asking me to give them more challenging (and fun!) activities. For example, after trying to correct them two classes straight by showing them the wrong way to do push-ups (sticking my butt up in the air, or smacking down the rear ends of any offending women, brings nothing but laughter), they asked to go one at a time so they could correct each other – it was great (more butt-slapping and laughter)! Later, one woman began hopping around in a squat position, making me and my old woman knees cringe, although I joined her and the rest of the group bopping around the tiny, crowded space where we all try to cram in and minimize hitting or kicking each other. Then, after the same woman began flinging herself up against the wall in a headstand, we went ahead and began to work on how to do them a little more safely! One at a time, I showed them the correct arm position, lined them up by the wall, and helped them get up. Surprisingly, all of them gave it a try, and a few did an amazing job (including one who did one out in the middle of the floor while I was helping someone else!).

Never mind I am supposed to be helping them organize their group and market their products… As an out-of-town visitor to the nedi (who speaks fairly good English) observed, it seems to boost their morale, so for me I suppose it’s just one small thing at a time!

Happy Head of the Year

2006-01-01T11:33:00.000Z

... In the middle of a tutoring session a few weeks ago (where I still struggle to learn the difference between the questions "Where are you going to," and "Where are you coming from?" -- those prepositions being among the many radical differences between the language of Assoul and the one I learned during training!), my host father asked me, "What do you understand when I say 'iġf nu-assgwas'?" In one of my more mentally functional moments, I told him I thought he was saying "head of the year." "Right," he said, "iġf nu-assgwas ujdid." New Years. As if I need any strange idiomatic expressions! I get confused enough that sometimes reality messes with my brain even beyond my internal capacity for language dysfunction -- last week, relying on a dash of French and gestures to bolster my comprehension of her Tamazight, I am fairly certain that a woman asked me what medicine I used for my hair in America, because hers is falling out...!

Anyway, Happy New Years to everyone! I'll spare you the indiscretion of my detailed list of resolutions, but you can guess, no doubt, that they include further enhancement of my communication skills (one of my new Moroccan friends actually thinks I am speaking English when I try to use my Tamazight with her), and once and for all purging the excess oil, fat, and sugar that has been surging through my body ever since Ramadan "fasting." My New Years Eve was an uneventful one with the family (my only ride out of town this morning left at 5:30am -- not much space for partying even if social norms would have allowed!). It was our first night with electricity in nearly two weeks, but they promptly shut off all the lights in the house so there would be enough power for the VCD (kind of like DVD, but different format, and unfortunately won't run on my computer without software upgrades) player. We first tried to watch some old Jackie Chan film in French, and then attempted Bollywood with Arabic subtitles after the first failed within minutes -- same result. Disappointed host siblings all around.

I have also discovered that "Père Noël" visits Morocco too (the big cities even have a little Christmas decor, although thankfully I've been spared that path to despairing homesickness!) ...just a week late. After numerous failed arguments (once I finally realized what exactly I was arguing about!), I was able to confirm officially that no one was going to believe that Père Noël visited me and my American friends and family on December 25, and not New Year's Eve. That said, my apologies (excuses?) for the lack of hard copy Christmas greetings to everyone at home -- my local sunflower seed/greeting card seller didn't have the goods to hook me up, surprisingly enough! But I did have a pleasant Christmas -- feasting twice over at a fellow volunteer's house elsewhere in the region (although given my cooking skills, I mainly stayed on decoration duty, even though the heavy lifting on that was also performed by one of my more artsy colleagues -- here's a picture of the tree pre-trim). My friend even surprised all of his guests with presents and (paper) stockings stuffed with candy, which of course I have already consumed so as to be prepared for the above-mentioned oil-fat-sugar resolution by the head of the year.

I did hear my sunflower seed guy blasting Céline Dion yesterday for the first time in several weeks. With one of the loitering gentlemen out front caterwauling "I'm your ladee... and you are my man..." So often I go down the street deflecting mundane but intrusive questions about where I am going, what am I doing, why did I only spend an hour at the hamman (nothing I do is private for long, although I've used that to turn into a one-woman physical fitness crusade for the village women -- even teaching yoga at the nedi now!), so it took all of my willpower to avoid bursting out laughing in the middle of the street! That was even better than the guy sitting next to me today at the cyber café singing "Barbie Girl" (also not a first). But my favorite pastime lately is tracking the number of little boys I've seen carrying backpacks that say "Rich Bitch." Wow, is my entertainment quotient low these days!

On a final note, one of my friends in the US recently asked me to explain the phrase "In sh'allah," which I know I've used a few times in this blog, so here's the answer I gave her: "In sh'allah" (or any number of spelling variations) means "God willing," and is apparently used by most Moroccans (generally speaking, a fatalistic culture) when referencing any future event, i.e. "I'll return from Morocco in two years, in sh'allah." It's like you don't want to challenge God by assuming anything you plan is actually going to happen. It is also a way people avoid making plans they don't want to make, i.e. someone says they want to go to the US with me, and I might answer "In sh'allah" if it's a situation where a more direct "Ha ha -- no way!" might not be appropriate. Figuring out exactly which meaning is in use (although the former is a safe bet) can be tricky when scheduling meetings, accepting dinner/tea invitations (likewise usually genuine, although -- as we often do in our own culture -- sometimes never followed up with specifics unless you go to someone's house on the spot!).

Anyway, until next time, in sh'allah.

Miles From Home… And Addicted to Nescafé!

2005-12-18T13:16:00.000Z

During the few weeks I have been in Assoul, I have managed to keep my days full, although not overscheduled as they were during training. Most mornings I wake up and have breakfast with my host family, pounding several small glasses of fresh heated cow’s milk with half a spoonful of Nescafé. To me, this treat is as decadent as anything I could enjoy at some swanky café at home – who’d have known?!? And I already realize how lucky I am that, as a woman, I also have access to this family sphere. The previous volunteer who lived here, a male, tells me that he’s barely interacted with the women in this house, and that he has never even entered the primary family room (that would be the room containing my new best friend, the woodstove, beside which I rarely miss an evening these days!).

After breakfast, I sit in the sun (my face is going to be leather by the time I leave Morocco!) behind the house, enjoying the spectacular view of the mountains surrounding the valley in which Assoul rests, as well as of the community’s fields, which have been plagued by drought during recent years. Sometimes, I’ll catch up on a little reading – either personal or professional, as I had so little free time for either during training – and of course I try to study the language for however long I can stand it! During that time, my presence alone seems sufficient to entertain the children in the house. Although they’re becoming less shy with me now, the girls in particular – Sana and Imane – seem able simply to stand around staring at me (occasionally giggling, of course) for long periods of time, whether I am reading, brushing my teeth, or most interesting of all, tearing through my luggage for the umpteenth time trying to find my stuff! Sometimes I just smile and giggle back. But they are also gradually becoming my teachers as well – speaking to me more slowly and clearly than many adults do, and sometimes pulling out their textbooks and telling me the words for various objects in the illustrations.

Throughout this time, I’ll also hear the family’s several cats (even by my family’s count, the number is not entirely certain) in the background. These are particularly vicious animals when they feel like it. One day I heard one thumping up the back stairs only to realize it was carrying a dead kitten (no doubt for a snack, as were two pigeons whose feathers I saw on the floor a couple of days ago, although in the case of the latter I was simply relieved that, after Imane and Sana had stood smiling as they held the struggling birds outside of the door to my room, at least I was not the one eating them for dinner. That would not have been an anomaly in this country, where some pigeon dishes are even considered delicacies, but I was not ready for it after having seen my potential dinner squawk and struggle to escape!). One of the cats also makes a noise that will often have me convinced there is a growling dog somewhere in the house. And then I have to be prepared at any time when I’ve left the door to my room open for two of the animals to come tumbling in, tearing at each other as though it will be a fight to the death. They already realize that I’m not too keen on physical abuse, so any efforts I make to get rid of them are usually in vain.

So when all that household excitement gets to be a bit much for me, I may go for a walk, run some errands, or visit the office of the community association to whom I report (when I can find the president around). I have recently been reading Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle, Moritz Thomsen’s reflections on his experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador during the 1960s. Of course it is a different continent, and no doubt significant aspects of the generic “Peace Corps experience” (if such a thing ever existed) have changed since then, but one thing that he describes of his early days I can relate to quite well: sitting through meetings and social conversations in this language that I barely understand, and simply having my brain shut down. No matter who I am or what I have done in life, for all practical purposes, here, I am a moron! Nevertheless, I am lucky that enough people are patient with me and that, thankfully, this is a culture where greetings alone can go on for more than ten minutes it seems! Even though I’ve never been one for extraneous conversation, and I still struggle to accept the social value of such redundancy (intellectually and culturally, I get it, but it goes against every fiber of my personality!), at least I can hold my own for a few minutes of “Labas? Labas. Kulshi bixir? Labas... L’Hamdullah.” (And maybe a “Sinnag ras shwiya Tamazight!” for the benefit of those people who commend rather than criticize me for what little Tamazight I do know!).

During the afternoons I spend a few hours at the community nedi, the women’s educational and craft center that I have been charged with assisting. At this point, I am simply trying to get to know the women a little better, and increase my capacity for communicating with them. There are sixty-four members total, who alternate attendance days because the building in which they work is so small, and an additional waiting list of forty more. That’s a lot of names to learn when I can’t even remember the language (besides the fact that name recall is not one of my stronger skills even in English)! But they help me out a little, teaching me new words, often related to the various forms of tissage in which they work (mainly knitting and embroidery, although there is also some weaving and crochet), while I review some of my PC-issued manuals or, when my brain can’t take that anymore, work on my own cross-stitch project (no doubt at this point some women think I am only here to do that though!). But there are many possible organizational projects for this group, and I can’t wait until I am better able to get a start on all that!

I have tutoring sessions a few evenings a week with my host father, who is an excellent teacher with a healthy respect for my obsession for understanding grammatical structures. But every day when the sun sets, and the cold air immediately sets in, my host mother Fatima (a woman only two years my senior whose temperament reminds me a lot of my friend Val back in NC) treats me to another pot of warm milk with a jar of Nescafé sitting beside it, and to me, everything seems right with the world, whether the electricity Is going to come on that night or not!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2005-11-24T18:07:00.000Z

A quick hello to wish a happy, warm holiday to those of you with whom I haven't yet corresponded this week!

Last weekend, I said my final, sad goodbyes to my host family in Ait Hamza. A few days later, after a language test, more training sessions (as if I weren't scared enough of the buta gas tanks everyone cooks with here, they had to scare us more!), and a fun mock wedding ceremony with amazing live Berber musicians, my fellow small business trainees and I bade farewell to our little Auberge in Azrou, and headed to the town of Immouzer. This town, less than an hour away from Fez, feels quite suburban, and the vegetation and landscape here appear much like any US town in a slightly mountainous area. Here we joined our youth development colleagues at what first looked like a country club compared to our home in Azrou -- a compound with outdoor spaces, a basketball court, pool table... -- although now I think that impression was highly superficial. I especially miss the owner of our Auberge in Azrou, who was so kind to all of us (he even gave me a beautiful blanket for my birthday, back when he had barely gotten to know any of us)!

Today we officially completed our training, and I am eagerly awaiting a yummy Thanksgiving dinner this evening with 50+ of my newest friends! Tomorrow is our official swearing in ceremony in Fez (too bad they whisk us in and out before we really get to explore anything!), and in spite of my underachieving efforts to prepare for my oral language exam last Sunday (in order to avoid any additional work this week), it appears that I have been commissioned to deliver a speech in Tamazight tomorrow during the event, in front of the U.S. Ambassador, our host families, and everyone. That should be entertaining (and short), to say the least! But with my cape (a gift from my host mom), scarves, skirts with pants underneath, and fingerless gloves (it's gotten to be strictly utilitarian dress these days), I'm certainly getting crap from my colleagues that I'm turning into a Berber woman already!

That's it for now. I leave for my site (which will take two days) on Saturday, although much of the next week will be spent running errands in the cities of Errachidia and Goulmima. (Frankly, my primary anxiety is about the agony of moving all of my luggage around, since Peace Corps has given us so much additional gear and books that I now have another entire large souk bag full of stuff!). Anyway, it looks like I'll hardly be getting settled any time soon! But now it's time to go eat a little bibi!

My new home...

2005-11-16T18:48:00.000Z

Well, I finally learned where I'll be living the next 2 years, and spent the better part of last week exploring the area, getting to know my new host family, job, etc. -- how exciting!

I am going to be in the High Atlas village of Assoul. As usual -- not in the guidebook and only on a really big map. There is only one "transit" a day in via the closest town. The only other way in and out depends on when the road is passable (not last week, for example!). I have no cell phone service, which will make work a little challenging (we all already knew I'd have to travel out of town for Internet!), and perhaps sanity even more so as I now have to wean myself from my newly-acquired texting addiction. There is a PC health volunteer there working to bring latrines to the area, as only a fraction of houses have any sort of toilet, and the town operates on a generator from 6-10pm each night, with houses alternating 2 nights on, one night off!

Sounds like BFE? Yes, but so far I love it! The drive in is stunning -- perhaps even my new favorite! My host family seems wonderful -- they've hosted a volunteer before, so they seem far more willing to let me be myself than what a lot of volunteers face, and perhaps just as importantly, it doesn't look like I'll have so many dinner table power struggles as I do in Ait Hamza! My host father is fluent in English, as well as (of course) Tamazight, French, and Classical Arabic, so I'll have no trouble getting tutoring in whatever I want/need! I am working with a women's group called a nedi, which does various forms of "tissage," including weaving, embroidery, and knitting. I am glad for the variety, and there are also a lot of potential projects with the group, so I won't be lacking for ideas going in. The harder part at first I think will be simply prioritizing needs. And this is all happening under the oversight of a community association which is highly organized and dedicated to community development projects in education, environment, and health. It's a windy place, facing a bit of a drought -- plenty cold in the winter and hot in the summer, but none of the extremes possible in this country (Azrou, BTW, is f-ing freezing now, and I even had to drive through snow heading back!)

I wish I had time now to go into all of my little (mis)adventures during this trek, which included stops through the provincial capital of Errachidia to meet my government supervisor, and the town of Goulmima, where I'll be spending a bit of time during the next few months with gendarmes trying to finalize all of my working papers. And there was a transit breakdown in the middle of nowhere and a minor bus crash... but this is Morocco and I'm ok, so it's all good!

Just a week of training left. I'll be leaving tomorrow to say goodbye to my host family in Ait Hamza; language test on Sunday; next week off Immisour (I'm sure I'm spelling that wrong) to celebrate Thanksgiving and then to Fez to get sworn in!

Safi sHur

2005-11-06T15:58:00.000Z

Just got back from 2 more weeks with my host family in Ait Hamza – a place never wanting for adventure, as small as it may be. My host family remains wonderful, but I can see how, on some counts, my standards are quickly dropping. First, I have fleas. More fleas than last time, I mean. And I only had 2 “baths” in 2 weeks – but that’s more than a couple of my fellow trainees there enjoyed! I’m beginning to see additional benefits of head covering now! Oh – and the livestock! My “school” (part of a house our instructor rents out) has an outdoor Turkish toilet, which, while it continues to afford a slightly better sense of privacy than the toilet in my homestay, still has occasional visitors. Twice I had to chase out chickens during times of intestinal distress (and twice a little girl who seems to enjoy watching me in there)! One of the landlord’s chickens also seemed to have a favorite spot on a ponge in our classroom, where we found it (and of course its droppings) a couple of mornings… I can’t complain though – one of my friends had a donkey walk in on her in the toilet at her house in the middle of the night! As for the toilets, well, since the only way to get rid of paper waste is to burn it, I find that, provided there is some water available, more and more I’ve been doing things the Moroccan way (e-mail me if you require clarification – I’m trying to keep this clean!).

Ramadan actually ended this week with celebrations of Eid. I made it through with the fasting, apart from cheating a few sips of water a couple of times when I was sick (when, technically, you don’t have to fast anyway, nor while you’re having your period). But it wasn’t the fasting that ultimately was killing me, but rather the 3:30/4am meal of sHur. That was tough enough at the Aubèrge in Azrou, but at least there it was just a little bread, yogurt, and fruit. But – and even though I knew to expect this, it was still a bit overwhelming – many families here actually prepare full-on meals in the middle of the night. In Ait Hamza, that usually means bread and a greasy tajine full of lamb fat and Allah knows what other body parts. As much as I usually like a good piece of lamb, this was not it, and of course the general nutrition of this diet (coupled with all the sweets of lfdur, the meal you have to break the fast in the evening) is somewhat lacking. I tried to go along with it the first few nights, but couldn’t help but get sick from it, and finally had to start asking to eat mainly fruit, and occasionally just to sleep through the meal. Unfortunately, this is a culture that seems to think that if you are sick, you either need to eat more and/or wear more, so it was hard not to disappoint my host mother – who is definitely a strong willed woman – in explaining to her that I needed a break sometimes, or even simply that I preferred to sleep! I may just tell my next host family that I’m a vegetarian.

And I didn’t get much sleep. Most nights we had lfdur at the home of one of the trainee’s homestay families, which often extended into iminsi, the 10pm-ish dinner. And by about halfway through our stay in Ait Hamza, our late nights were getting pretty filled up as well… (and don’t forget we had classes every morning – even Saturday!). After we’d been there a week, a couple of us were begging to go to the hamman, the public bath (the lone guy in our group had been taken there by his family earlier in the week). Since Ait Hamza is pretty small, there is only one hamman that is scheduled for men or for women at different times of the day. Because women are usually allowed there in the morning, when we had our language lessons, plans were made to open the hamman especially for us Saturday night, after the men were scheduled to leave at 10pm. Of course all the other women in town decided to take advantage of this opportunity as well (and no doubt were a little curious to see the Americans), so the bathing turned into quite an ordeal! I got scrubbed down (to the point of losing skin, as is the norm) several times, and was still exhausted and ready to go after an hour or so. Especially in the innermost room, it’s VERY hot, and who wants to keep sweating when the point is to clean up! But, of course, the point is to socialize, so even when my friends and I had finished, we waited around for our families until around 1am. To me, the most irrational thing about the hamman is that even though you’re in this room full of women scrubbing each other down front and back (ok guys – whatever image you have here, you should trust me that most of these bodies are not ones you’d enjoy looking at), the one piece of clothing you keep on is our underpants. Which weren’t clean to begin with, and now you’re sweating in them more!

The next morning, I went to the souk at the nearby town of Guigou with my family. It was huge – big enough that people come all the way from Azrou (the much larger city that is my other home during training) – and had just about anything a Moroccan could want for his or her dinner, home, or farm. Peace Corps of course compensates our families for our meals, so I took advantage of that, as well as the fact that my host mother seemed to have it in her head that I hadn’t eaten all week (in spite of the fact that my stomach was exploding!) to beg for a couple of vegetables – cauliflower (yum, and they’re gigantic here) and tomatoes. And the souk is also a big social event, so we were there for several hours, in the dust and wind… So much for last night’s hamman!

That night marked the 27th day of Ramadan – when the Koran descended to the Prophet. It is a night when Muslims are supposed to pray all night, reciting the Koran in full, although the reality is that they come and go from the mosque when they need some rest. I was told that elsewhere in Morocco, people take breaks for meals while they are at home, but in Ait Hamza, the women actually bring food to the mosques (there are two) to feed their praying family members right there. In Ait Hamza, the women are also allowed in the mosques to pray – at least on special occasions like this – so even though I was with some trainees at someone’s house, enjoying couscous (which I learned a little more about how to prepare) for the holiday (it’s normally served only on Fridays or special occasions) and just hanging out, as it got later, no one could seem to find my host mother to escort me home, so that turned out to be a rather late night as well!

The following night was the most exhausting of all. Although during my previous stay, I had been taken to pay respects to one new mother, the big celebrations of birth are actually on the day of the baby's birth, and the naming ceremony, the naming ceremony, or ssabia, held seven days later. For this, I was loaned a caftan to wear, and paraded to a house full of women singing, playing drums, and drinking tea. My instructor's landlord, Fatima, was the life of the party, drumming, singing, and dancing, and I continue to be amazed by the lungs on the women here. I'd been warned about all the activities by a fellow trainee, who was on her second ssabia in a week’s time, and sure enough, as soon as the dancing started, she and I – as part of the American circus – were the first people dragged in front of the group to try to shake our hips the way only Berber women can! While it was a lot of fun, I have to say this was also an extremely physically uncomfortable experience, as by then the group of 60+ women had moved into an even smaller room with no ventilation, and with a buta gas (big tank full of gas used for all cooking, etc. purposes – very scary) running to help heat up the drums. I was crouched in a corner with 3 other trainees sweating like crazy thanks to our polyester caftans, drinking hot tea, and the general body heat in the room. And then the food started coming. More sweets, as always, and after several more hours of dancing and snacking, the hard-core musicians left the room while the rest of us were served tajines of lamb that had been slaughtered for the event, and then couscous (approximately 1am). I really admired Kenza – one of the women I’ve gotten to know through the weaving cooperative – who sat next to me and rolled perfect balls of couscous with one hand. I still drop it everywhere, and take full advantage of spoons when they’re made available for the couscous. Everything else – tajines etc. – I’ve gotten used to eating with my hands out of a communal dish, as I did in people’s homes in Ghana. And anyone who visits me ought to be warned – I find this a fantastic way of minimizing dishwashing!

Like the beginning of Ramadan, the exact date of Eid, which lasts for 2 days, is unknown until the moon marking the end of the month of Ramadan is observed. The night before, many women have henna done on their hands and/or feet – and mine was beautifully done by one of our 15 year old neighbors! Like last time, I was then expected to eat and sleep with all that stuff on my hands, but the result is worth it if you don’t screw it up before it dries. Some people continue to fast for those two days, although others return to a “normal” eating schedule on the first day of Eid. Like the rest of the month, there is a festive air that reminds me a bit of Christmas (during Ramadan afternoons, my family played holiday music and baked), and as we sat down to our first daytime breakfast (also called lfdur), children kept coming into the house and kissing me and my family in exchange for a handful of cookies or cake (which reminds me – in spite of all the sugar I’ve been consuming, I really missed the candy corn this Halloween, if anyone wants ideas for care packages after I get a mailbox!). I spent much of the day paying visits to neighbors, and also observed a little holiday spat between my host sister and her parents – so I guess some things about holidays are universal… The following day, we had practice interviews with our language instructor (we all get tested before Peace Corps swears us in), and burned trash for the second time during our stay, but the holiday continued back at home, where I had couscous for lunch, and met even more of my extended host family, many of whom are also named Itto, like my mother, and including two of my mother’s aunts (one with awesome Coke bottle glasses who showed off her full set of gold teeth!) who were the cutest little old ladies ever! We’ve also spent a lot of time with a neighbor named Rahkia, an old woman with only two teeth whose greeting of “labas?” sounds more like “labath,” so I’m never going to understand her… but she loves me (not as much as she loves one of my blonde colleagues though!), and just stares into my face smiling and saying “labath, labath” over and over again because I don’t know what else she’s saying.

So that’s the overview of my last two weeks – even with a journal and a notebook, I bet I am forgetting a lot (as well as censoring a few interesting points with which I’ll tease you into staying in touch!). For example, one person in my group swore her family gave her gunpowder to eat when she had diarrhea, although I think we figured out later what really happened there…

My family has been wonderful in helping me learn the language, and between them and classes, this has been an incredibly intense experience (although as much as we’ve learned, I remain barely functional in real life, and I have to remind myself that I’ve only been studying Tamazight for a month!). Dad is still most likely to give up and use French, although I like that practice too, and having that in common certainly has been useful in getting him to run interference for me at the dinner table. My host mom is a unique woman, but I know she is trying hard to make me happy, and I can pick up enough language to know that she’s been proud to take me to visit other people and tell them how much she’s helped teach me. My host sister is the best though. She speaks fairly decent French (definitely better grammar than mine these days) and is just starting to learn English, so she is definitely the most empathetic and patient when it comes to saying things slowly for me and trying to understand my accent. I’ll be interested to see what happens to her in life. At 14, she’s already traveling to Guigou for school, and I can see that, although the family makes her work very hard around the house as well, my host father places a lot of importance on her education, as does she. She already travels to Guigou for school every day, and to me she stands out, even among her friends and other girls about her age, as being a little less “Berber” in her dress and demeanor. Generally, she’s more outgoing, even with guys, and I’ve never seen her walk around in pajamas or bedsheets, as is the fashion for most of the Berber women and girls I’ve met both in Ait Hamza and in Imilchil. I’ve enjoyed helping her a little with her English (and of course that’s a mental reprieve for me as well), and she’s much more willing than my mother to let me actually participate in the kitchen (probably because it’s helping out with her work) rather than having me sit on a stool and watch.

Speaking of watching, Desperate Housewives was on the other night. Even with a little editing, I was still quite surprised to see that in the midst of all the Ramadan specials (short-run soap operas and comedies; the religious programming was on another channel, which I think some families watch more diligently than others). Some of the non-holiday programming was in French (usually dubbed), but all of this is in Darija (Arabic), so it’s not helpful for me to practice either French or Tamazight. Personally, even if I understood Arabic, it drives me crazy to sit staring in front of the TV for too long, so I’d often make an escape to read, nap, or study in the evenings when the TV got to be a bit much. And rude as it seems, I finally started carrying something to read on visits, in case I got stuck in front of the TV there (because if it’s not the TV, of course it’s people quizzing me on the language or each other’s names, which I’m not even good at in English!!!). There is a Moroccan newscast in French around 9pm, which I can understand reasonably well when there’s minimal background noise, but my main sources of American news are week-old Newsweeks, courtesy of the Peace Corps, and text messages from trainees in other sites that have Internet access…

And in the midst of all this, we did spend more time talking shop with the local weaving cooperative, and have made progress on some of the things they can do to improve their situation. Compared to other things I’ve seen in Morocco, their products are very high quality, as they’ve already benefited from other outside assistance and training. The primary problem right now seems to be their general fear of competitive markets, even while they’re hoping to find a market outside of Morocco. But the bottom like is that they need to get more consistent experience here too! In any event, to be just over two years old, this cooperative is amazingly organized, and the volunteer who is ultimately assigned here will have a lot to work with!

Tomorrow I’ll find out my final site assignment – could be Ait Hamza or could be something new. And the very next day I’m off on my own for a week to scope it out!

Field trip to Imilchil

2005-10-23T14:38:00.000Z

Greetings from (my brief moment in) civilization! I returned from the Berber village of Imilchil on Thursday. Located farther south in the Atlas Mountains, Imilchil is fours hour transit from the nearest town of note – a stunning drive (particularly by sunrise, as I enjoyed during my return trip) on a crowded van through arid valleys. Although it is an extremely small town, with no electricity (there used to be a generator, but it broke some time ago) and running water only for two hours each morning (lots of fun filling bottles!), it actually has more traces of civilization than my homestay site in Ait Hamza – including several small hotels and a souk (market) on Fridays and Saturdays. This is because Imilchil is a bit of a tourist draw, due both to its mountain location and its annual marriage festival.

Legend has it that long ago, a young man and a young woman from two warring Berber tribes fell in love, but their families would not let them be together (a little Shakespeare, anyone?). Because they could not be married, each wept so hard that two separate lakes were formed from their tears – Lake Isli and Lake Tislit, the latter of which I visited during my stay. Each year in commemoration, near the end of summer, there is a large festival where, traditionally, various tribes come together for women and men to choose their spouses. More recently, of course, this festival has become more of a tourist attraction, with engagements being established, but also enjoying a range of cultural events, including a craft fair.

The primary local craft is weaving in the traditional tribal pattern of Ait Haddidou – simple colored stripes in black, white, and a deep red. The women of the village have recently formed a weaving cooperative with the help of a local Peace Corps volunteer, although they continue to work only out of their homes at this stage of their organization. I met with a couple of women in the cooperative while I was there, and viewed a range of products from traditional winter capes for men and women, to more experimental efforts at designing purses.

While in Imilchil, we were invited to lfdur – the 6pm breaking of the Ramadan fast – at a couple of homes. This is always an elaborate spread, taken as soon as the dusk call to prayer is heard, consisting primarily of dates, various sweets, breads, soup, and either tea or coffee. It’s a dangerous thing for those of us who work hard to stifle our sweet tooths, as it includes local specialties such as a fried honey pastry called shebbakiya – one of those things that is simultaneously disgusting and addictive. I can feel my teeth rotting!

We also hosted a group of teachers for lfdur one evening (cooking by candlelight and unpredictable gas ovens is quite a skill in itself, I am learning!). The teachers here are assigned by the government, not surprisingly according to seniority, so that many of the youngest – however cosmopolitan their backgrounds – end up in rural areas. Interestingly, none of the teachers we met spoke any Tamazight, yet that was the only language of many of the students they taught! It made me think of the bilingual education debate at home, although here the situation is faced not by immigrants, but by local children. Also, because the country uses a standardized curriculum, these children who have lived their whole lives in a remote mountain village with no electricity are often reading books with foreign references to things like beaches or the Internet! All the same, I was amazed by the level of education of some of the young people I met, and it made me wonder at the disconnect it must create – particularly in villages, unlike Imilchil, where there is no exposure to foreigners and tourists.

My own language skills continue to be a mess! Two weeks in Azrou – where the fasting for Ramadan had become my excuse to nap at any given opportunity – had rendered me a bit lazy on the studying front. When I got to Imilchil, of course the dialect, and some of the vocabulary, varies a bit both from the dialect spoken by my trainer and from the one my host family in Ait Hamza speaks. The upshot is that now I know that no matter how much progress I make in the next month, I’ll still have to relearn everything when I get to my final site! I pick up bits and pieces of what’s said to me, but still feel like I have no capacity to respond (not to mention my pronunciation is still all over the place!). I know it will come – I am amazed to hear other volunteers who have only been here a year – but for now I think that remains a source of anxiety for myself and for many of my other fellow trainees!

Generally, all is well, and I am preparing myself for the likelihood of a rather rural placement, given my recent assignments, but I’ll find out about that in about two weeks! While the amenities may be lacking, I think there is a bit more security in a rural site, although the attention is simply different (from people yelling out your name – everyone here calls me Najia, the name given to me by my host family – to little girls wanting kisses or tearing hairpins out of my hair, to little boys who alternatively test their Western language skills on you or simply throw rocks…). I’m also getting more used to navigating the Turkish toilets and infrequent bathing, although at least there seems to be a hamman (public bath) most everywhere! Things have been a fun so far, but I really am feeling ready to get settled somewhere (hopefully a little warmer than Imilchil!) not too long from now…

Ait Hamza

2005-10-09T14:47:00.000Z

Mbruk Ramadan!

I have recently returned from my first week of community based training in the village of Ait Hamza, which was quite a change from our training activities in Azrou. Ait Hamza is located less than an hour away from Azrou, but it is an entirely different universe, as we quickly discovered after checking in with the Caid and gendarmes at the slightly larger nearby town of Guigou.

In many ways, Ait Hamza remains quite primitive – its population is approximately 2,000, although I’d have guessed about half of that… Apart from the weaving cooperative with whom our group is working, the town’s primary source of income is agriculture – wheat, barley, lentils, onions, or potatoes, depending upon the season. The women in particular lead hard lives, working in the fields, taking care of their families, and weaving (many of the village men are military or retired military; if they work locally at all, it is in one of the village’s few shops). The cooperative has a membership of about 75 women, 3-4 of whom are literate. They are currently working in a building that is not large enough to accommodate the entire group, so many only work from home.

Throughout the week, I was able to observe the women working at the looms and performing the difficult process of beating and washing out wool in the river. We also spent a bit of time speaking with them and learning about their work. There were many fine meals and snacks, and exposure to local culture which included hearing some traditional Berber musicians perform at the house of one local family following a henna party and dinner (which was hard to eat – done by hand from shared dishes – with all of that stuff on my hands!). Some members of the community are better educated, and these were often my window to understanding what was going on around me, although in most cases I knew that, as the American, I was the main event during social visits, when accompanying my family to the local tahanut, or simply walking down the street.

I am staying with a family that is small by any standard, especially Moroccan – with mma Itto, baba (Mohamed), and their 14-year old daughter Fatima, who goes by Mouna. Their house is modest, with only 3 rooms, and I felt a little uncomfortable that I was given their salon – by far the nicest room in the house – to stay in. While they do have basic infrastructure – electricity and running water – managing simple daily activities such as washing in the one sink in the house (in the kitchen area), or using the WC (or bit lma – a Turkish toilet located in a barely private walled off area) took a bit of strategic planning! As for Ait Hamza in general, there’s not a trash can to be found (that I know of), and my fellow trainees and I decided simply to burn our rubbish a couple of times during the week! Bathing involved an elaborate affair (only once) of setting up a hammam in the bit lma using tarps and buckets of hot and cold water…

Mma Itto is a weaver by trade, currently vice-president of the local cooperative. She keeps one loom at home where she is currently working on a vibrant piece incorporating the Tamazight alphabet (which to me looks almost hieroglyphic, and not at all like the Arabic script), and she also works over in the cooperative at various times during the day. Like many of the older women in the community, she maintains a more traditional Berber identity, speaking only the local dialect, and sporting tribal tattoos on her face. The day we met, I believe she was genuinely shocked that I really did not speak her language at all (those few words of Tamazight greetings I learned beforehand didn’t go too far, especially with my accent!). So we took a long walk which consisted of my asking the names of various natural and agricultural products. Mercifully, baba and Mouna speak a little French, so we were able to bridge any critical communication gaps by fumbling through that, and of course Itto seemed ready to grant unconditional love to her new daughter in spite of the fact that our conversations – especially during the beginning of the week – consisted of little more than my attempting to repeat everything she said to me until she was convinced I truly had no idea what she was saying! Thankfully, by the end of the week, I’d picked up enough basic phrases and grammar to get some sense of things contextually, and of course our intense language study has continued now that we are back in Azrou.

Itto, baba, and Mouna are a unique family. Baba is actually the security guard at the women’s cooperative, but when he is at home, he helps out with minor household tasks far more than I would have expected, and indeed far more than I have observed of men in other homes. My family also keeps a pet cat which, contrary to what I had read about the relationships between Moroccans and their pets, they – especially baba – treat like another member of the family. (The downside is that the cat loved getting into my bedding and clothes, so I am not exactly sure what sort of infestation I have brought back to Azrou with me, although that does not seem to be an uncommon affliction among my fellow trainees!).

In many ways, I feel like I might as well be sitting in a home in middle America, with only the environment itself being different. We sit around a table, on the floor, in the cramped family area, where there is a TV and where Itto keeps her loom. During our evening “snack” and dinner, we watch TV, including Egyptian soap operas, local news in Arabic and French, what looks like an Arabic version of the “People’s Court,” and a French-dubbed “Married With Children” (with a startling break in the middle while the evening call to prayer is broadcast). Manu comes and goes with her friends, getting help from them and baba with her homework. I’ve tried to convince her that my French isn’t so good that she should be asking for my help with that, but she is also just starting to learn English, so I’ve given her a little help with that, in exchange for her fairly intense efforts to improve my Tamazight pronunciation. She is quite happy to get in my face and yell until I get it right, which actually does help!

Ait Hamza is so small that it’s hardly a 10 minute walk between the most distant buildings in the village, but I did try to get in a little exercise there, much to the amusement of my family and myself. One evening Itto walked into the salon to find me using some exercise bands. Lacking the facility to explain what I was doing, I did a couple of simple curls with my band and then handed it to Itto, who began pulling and curling until, suddenly, she threw her arms into the air and dropped into a split! Then she went out into the family room and apparently told baba what I was doing. When I came out, he told me he has also practiced some yoga, demonstrated a nice standing forward bend, and then also dropped down into a side split! Needless to say I hoped I’d found some new way of communicating, and invited Itto to join me for some yoga again the following night. Unfortunately, we didn’t get too far, as she began giggling uncontrollably about two steps into our sun salutations! At least now I know that when I need a little alone time, I can point at my room and say “yoga,” and I think the family understands…

In spite of my efforts, this is generally not an active lifestyle, apart from the women who endure more difficult labor in the fields, cleaning wool, etc. In fact, there is a lot of sitting around, socializing, and eating. The first night, I wasn’t sure if the 6pm meal of eggs, bread, cake, tea, and zmmita (a delicious crumbly paste of flour, nuts, and spices) was a light Moroccan dinner, until I was lead to someone else’s house to be fed a rather large dinner of tajine and couscous around 11pm (the women are often fed last). That in fact turned out to be one of my lighter eating days – most of the time the evening snack consisted of far more sweets, and usually was taken at multiple houses as visits were paid (I actually experienced some nasty caffeine and sugar withdrawal headaches upon my return to Azrou). All meals become a challenge of finding the right way of convincing your host that you really can’t eat anymore – using a succession of phrases ranging from more mundane statements that you are full to thanking Allah for his blessings as an indication that, as good as the food may be, you’ve had enough. Unfortunately, it appears that I haven’t yet learned to say those with sufficient authority, although I think some of my colleagues had even more problems with being overfed than I did!

The contrast between that and being back in Azrou, where my food intake is not so closely monitored, is even more overwhelming as Ramadan began on Wednesday of this week. I decided to see if I could fast for the month, in an effort to better appreciate and respect the local culture, as well as simply to enjoy more fully the evening lftur, or breaking of the fast (talk about lots of sweets!). The first day or so was not so easy, but even here at the Aubèrge there are other trainees giving it a try, and of course the staff has altered the meal schedule accordingly. So especially during those 4am eating sessions, it does feel like there is some support from the group. After the first day, it hasn’t been as hard as I expected (in the end, we still eat plenty – it’s just that the schedule is backwards), although I am well aware that a month is a long time, so hopefully I can see it through! Frankly, one of the hardest things was simply the anticipation the night or two before. While I knew that the holiday is based on the lunar calendar, thereby causing the dates to shift every year, I hadn’t realized that we wouldn’t know in advance exactly which day the holiday starts until someone in the Moroccan desert sees the new moon and notifies the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. As such, I had a day or so where I wasn’t sure exactly when I was going to have to stop eating. But of course the announcement was made the night before, and that first morning we were woken up to eat at about 3:30am by a trumpeter on the street. We have until the call to prayer between roughly 4:30 and 5am to eat one last time. It works fine at the Aubèrge, where we’re fed another dinner around 10-11pm, but it will be interesting when we return to our homestays later in the month. Some Moroccan families stay up the night eating and celebrating until the morning call to prayer – how exhausting! (Of course people here tend to take a lot more time resting during the day during Ramadan, but I still have language classes, etc. to synthesize, which is hard enough when you’re not loopy from hunger!)

All in all, I am looking forward to my return trip to Ait Hamza later in the month, when I can celebrate Ramadan with my family and have a little more to say to them in their own language, in sh’allah. But for now I have a few more days to enjoy the comforts of Azrou (they even have Peanut M&Ms here!!!) before I leave to spend a week with a volunteer in the even smaller and more remote village of Imilchil…

2 weeks...

2005-09-25T16:35:00.000Z

Greetings from Morocco!

So far, my days have been filled with learning and excitement over what the next two years will bring! (Ironically, this has at least started out as the most sheltered of all of my travel experiences, although of course that has already begun to change!). I am currently in the middle of a training process that will continue until I am sworn in the day after Thanksgiving, in sh’allah!

With a group of 52 other small business and youth development trainees, I arrived in Casablanca on the morning of September 13, and from there took a bus to Rabat, where we were more or less under lockdown (from what little exploring l managed, it had the feel of most other big cities I’ve ever visited). After a few days of preliminary training information, about half of us (the small business development trainees) traveled to the Middle Atlas town of Azrou. This is a large town of about 50,000 – a pleasure to be in with a little more “personality,” but retaining all the conveniences. We still don’t have a lot of free time, but manage to venture out periodically. One walks the streets to see numerous vendors, the occasional bakery or cyber-café, and hoards of men sitting at cafés everywhere surveying the passers-by. Of course the women are conspicuously absent from the café scene – and indeed my only attempted venture to a “women’s” café with a few other women landed us at the Café Afrique, which turned out to be at a gas station (albeit one with a lovely view!) on the extreme north end of town, far away from all the city bustle or even the more “suburban” homes! In any case, the men at the cafés in the city all look bored silly, so I don’t think we’re missing out on much (this has actually been confirmed by a couple of my male colleagues). I’ve already had a chance to visit the local artisans cooperative, to begin to get a sense of the type of crafts I might ultimately be involved with, but probably the most interesting thing I’ve stumbled into so far has been a circumcision celebration on the street as I was returning home with some friends a few evenings ago. Because we are now in the mountains, the weather is dry, and often rather cool at night – which has made for some pleasant sessions of rooftop yoga and Pilates at the Auberge which is our on-again, off-again residence of the next couple of months.

Our days are quite full, with 4 hours daily of language training and Arabic script (which is pretty cool, even though I still feel like a 5-year-old who shows up at kindergarten being asked to write in cursive right away!). I spent about a week learning Darija, the local Arabic dialect, but have now switched to Tamazight, one of the three Berber dialects spoken in the country. That will be my primary working language once I receive my final site assignment, and so far it appears to be even more of a throat workout than the Arabic was! The rest of our training is a combination of job skills, safety, and other cross-cultural and development-related tools. All of our trainers are Moroccan, and the one with whom I’m working most closely, Malika, is an absolute riot! She fools you with her glasses, veil, and generally demure look, but it turns out she speaks American slang (fo shizzle!) far more convincingly than I do!

I’ve already been able to meet a number of current Peace Corps Volunteers in the artisan sector, who all seem to have had unique and rewarding experiences (and they give me some hope that the language skills will eventually come!), and I’m now about to leave for what Peace Corps calls Community-Based Training. For that, I will travel with a group of five other trainees to a village called Ait Hamza (way too small for you to locate on a map), where we will do some preliminary technical evaluations with local artisans (one of us will end up staying at Ait Hamza for the next two years), and of course, experience a little more immersion in the local language. And the most exciting part is that I’ll begin staying with my first host family there! Like everyone here, I’ve really been looking forward to this, although no doubt it will present many challenges as well, especially during these early weeks where it’s so difficult to maintain even the most basic conversations! (We’re not really supposed to use any other languages we might have in common…)

For the remainder of our training period, I’ll be moving back and forth between Ait Hamza and Azrou, with an additional “field trip” mid-October to visit a currently serving volunteer in the small business sector. By early November, I’ll learn my final site placement (which could be either in the Middle Atlas or more towards southeastern Morocco, as Tamazight is somewhat widespread), and I’ll be visiting my final site in early November to begin to get a sense of things. I do have to say that while I didn’t have strong feelings about where I’d be placed or which language I’d be learning, somehow I did have a stronger sense that I’d end up in a Berber community (I believe Imazighn or Amazigh is the politically correct term, but…). This will probably translate into a slightly more relaxed, liberal environment for me, so on the whole I am very pleased with how things are going so far!