Something I have observed here in Morocco is how readily people ask for and give help. In America people pride themselves on being independent and doing things on their own. I have definitely found myself as a subscriber to this philosophy. For me, being in Peace Corps even represents that for me: "look at me! I'm here in a foreign country all by myself; living as one of the most isolated volunteers! I'm Alone!" Well the truth is that in Morocco it is impossible to exist "by oneself," independently. That is not the way this society works. Everyone needs help sometimes and it shows no weakness to openly ask for help and rely on the help of others to succeed.
For example, Peace Corps sent me a bag to be delivered by CTM bus. CTM is a passenger bus like a nice Greyhound but most of their money comes from the items that are in the cargo hold. So the bag arrived-- allegedly, but every time I went to the CTM office to pick up my bag it was closed and shuttered with no sign of life. I thought "this is ridiculous! I'm going to have to stalk this office and wait for a CTM bus to arrive and follow its cargo to the office!" CTMs do not even arrive every day in my town. There is no posted schedule of arrivals either. so I casually mentioned it to my host mother while in the company of one of her friends. Her friend, Wellid, said "oh, it's at the CTM station? Let's go!" When I told him it was closed he seemed unfazed and off we marched to the CTM. When we arrived, with it shuttered, complete with a metal grate, but we walked right past the CTM station and stopped at a metal door around the corner. Wellid, my new best friend, banged on this door yelling "EH! Azziz! Azziz! AZZIZ!" Eventually Azziz emerged looking like we'd woken him up. Wellid explained the situation with my bag. Azziz nodded, marched to the locked CTM station, opened the door and I had my bag -- easy as that.
This whole scenario would have been almost impossible or immeasurably more difficult had I not had Wellid's help. How would I have ever known that "Of course! Go to the CTM manager's home and yell up to his window!" Wellid's response to my million Thank Yous: "la shokran, ela wajib" or literally "No thank you, it is my duty." This really seems to be the truth. Help is readily given and received in a moment's notice.
Another small example of this ingrained hospitality: My host mother, her friend Fattiha, and my two younger host sisters went on a long walk that took us out of town. We'd walked probably about 4 kilometers and the girls got thirsty. So Fattiha saw somebody outside their home and said "hey you! Give us some water!" There was no "please" or "sorry to bother you but..." and the man nodded, went inside, and came back out with a glass of water.
A jogger in the states would have to be near death to ask for water from a stranger.
And if ever a "thank you" is even uttered, the response is inevitably "no thank you, it is my duty" -- although, "please" and "thank you" are seldom used. For example, my old host family would chuckle at me when I would say "Thank you" for pouring me tea, or handing me something. When I asked my language and culture facilitator about this he said that no thank you is required because maybe this time they're in a position to pour you tea, but next time, when you are in a position to pour tea, you will. That is a fair exchange and no pleases or thank yous are required. It's comforting to know that when I am (occasionally) a helpless American that there are many who have no qualms about helping me. It is understood that when I am in a position to help, that I will.
Table manners and what is acceptable/unacceptable in etiquette will be the topic of the next blog.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Tafaughalt farm
This past weekend was another new adventure. Sometime in the middle of last week, my host mother asked me if I wanted to go to Oujda with her this weekend to see her mother and some family. Oujda is between four and five hours north of my town, and the closest big city. It's kind of like the hub of Eastern Morocco. So I thought about it for a second, and (the lazy) half of me said "blah, wouldn't you rather be by yourself and clean your new apartment so it's ready when you move in?" and the other part of me said "two days with Rahma and extended family!? My Arabic will get so good!" So of course the second voice won and I decided to go.
So on Friday night my host sisters slept at their friend's house and Saturday morning Rahma and I caught the 5am Souk Bus to Oujda. [Aside:Why is it called a souk bus? Well, one PCV I talked to named Jason thinks it's because the souk comes to you. Souk means market. The buses stop at every little city along the way to rest for a bathroom break and people come on the bus and try to hawk their goods at you. "No, I don't want your gold chain, no I don't want a kilo of honey." The downside of souk buses, besides no air conditioning, is the fact that you could buy a ticket and potentially have to stand, being harassed by people trying to sell you stuff, and it stops constantly. I feel like they stop every fifteen minutes. What would be a two-and-a-half-hour taxi ride turns into a five-hour bus ride. But I guess you get what you pay for. They're pretty cheap. They are like ratty, dusty Greyhound buses. ] [Language note: What we English speakers refer to as the souk bus, is, in Moroccan Arabic, referred to as a "kar," in singular form, and "kiran" in plural.]
So, Saturday morning we took the 5am to Oujda and arrived between 9:30 and 10. I met Rahma's mother at her house in Oujda proper. She was a pleasant lady and we ate lunch there. After lunch Rahma informed me that we would be going to a little place called Tafaughalt (pronounced just like it looks...haha) So I said sure. We hopped in a petit taxi, which takes you within the city, and we went to the taxi stand for the grand taxis, which take you out of town. The thing about grand taxis is they don't leave until they're full -- meaning 4 in the back and three in the front of a Mercedes sedan. So sometimes you may wait quite a while until the right amount of people are going your direction. Lucky for me and Rahma, we filled the last two seats of our Tafaughalt taxi. So onward we went. Let me tell you, Moroccans know how to eat and these women do not have small behinds and fitting four of us in the back of a sedan was no fun. But after 45 minutes or so, Rahma told our driver to halt and she and I got out...and found ourselves in the middle of nowhere. I thought "where on earth has she taken me!?" And then we started walking through the woods. I had to just go with it because what else do you do? So after a few minutes, in the distance, I saw a small farm house. That was our destination. Up and down slopes and slants we trudged through thick fog and found our way to a house FILLED with people. There must have been fifty people in this one house.
The occasion was a sabu3, which is a baby-naming-party I may have mentioned in an earlier blog. [quick cultural reference: a sabu3 is held on the seventh day after the baby has been born and until then it is not named. Then there's a big party] It turns out Rahma's family is quite conservative as far as Morocco goes and the men and women were 100% separated the entire time. So when we arrived, I entered the women's room (not the bathroom) and greeted about 20 ladies, mostly elderly, who were sitting, dressed completely in jellabas and lizars (more than a head covering, it's like a bedsheet that's wrapped around you) so me and my jeans and definitely no lizar sat with these women on the floor. People sit on the floor a lot here, it's not big deal. But it is still weird to see such elderly ladies on the floor. They are sitting on ponges (like cushions) that are about 2 inches thick and pillows behind their backs against the wall. The funny thing was that these women were old and so conservatively dressed but when I looked down their socks made me chuckle. It's really important to take your shoes off on any carpeted service, so all these women were sitting there on the floor, legs outstretched, and all were wearing different mid-shin to knee high GOOFY socks. Socks with frogs, hearts, oblong shapes, English writing that made no sense... To make it better, these long socks had goofy pajama pants tucked into them, so their legs looked bumpy and strange. I kept thinking "why would you tuck your pants into your socks?" It's so funny how dressed up these women get on the outside when underneath they really just have on pajamas and goofy socks.
So I sat and was awkwardly silent for a while until some 14 year old cousins came and adopted me and took me on a stroll. We talked for a while. Nobody spoke any English, so I got a lot of good practice in. I was shocked at how little they knew about what I thought was common knowledge, but I guess it was good that they even asked. They asked me things like "who was the king of America?" and if and how Christians pray. We are taught by Peace Corps to avoid talking religion but there was no refusing to talk about it with these girls. The second they found out I was not Muslim, they began to try to get me to say the shehadda, which, apparently, if you say three times you become a Muslim (though this is not something all Muslims believe, so I'm told.) When I told them I didn't want to, they turned to the tactics that some Christians use in the U.S. "All your problems will go away" "you'll be so happy with life." "You can marry a nice Muslim man and your family would love it." (ok, so maybe that last one isn't used as much in the U.S.) So when I still refused, the girls ever so sweetly said that I should make the choice between roasting over a fiery hell like a ram shish-kabob (that's a quote) or go to heaven. They really emphasized the shish-kabob part. So of course I still refused. Telling them I had my own kind of Quran called the Bible and I prayed in my own way. Eventually, they let it go and still adored me anyway and we talked another two hours or so. The whole family and experience was thoroughly pleasant. These conversion attempts are fairly frequent, though this was, by far, the most intense thus far. Comes with the territory, I guess.
So the challenging thing about beautiful Tafaughalt is that there is no running water. Toilet-wise, this works fine because there is a big barrel of water in the bathroom and a little scooper so you can flush and what-not. But this was not what I would consider potable water. So my main predicament was how on earth was I supposed to brush my teeth? I would have asked the other 50 people who were spending the night at the house, or even the 20 or so women I was sharing sleeping quarters with, who were going to sleep on the floor next to me, but...alas....as I figured, nobody was brushing their teeth. Which, given my experience here so far, is not surprising. (I smell a youth development project...) So unfortunately, I went to bed with dirty teeth. When we awoke in the morning, nobody had yet gone down to the well to fetch more water and once again, nobody was attempting to brush their teeth. So there I stood with dirty teeth and dirty hands and dirty everything else. No running water has not been the norm for me here. I guess that's why Peace Corps Morocco is sometimes referred to as Posh Corps -- because I don't know how I would even get along without it. How high maintenance!
I know, I know, you're saying "Abby! You're an agent of development and change! Maybe if this family saw how you brushed your teeth twice in twelve hours, they would brush their teeth!" Yes, I thought about that, but I'm still too much in a guest mind-set, I guess. I should have insisted, I should have said, "I'm aware that you have to walk a kilometer or so in the fog and cold, but I really need to brush my teeth." "Drink it? No I'm not going to drink it, I'm just going to spit it out. Could you boil it first, too? Ten minutes -- rolling boil ONLY." Next time I will be more pushy.
This weekend at the farm was my first drinking unpasteurized dairy and I was not sick! l'Hamdullah!
So after breakfast I was able to reflect on what a great time I'd had with great people. Rahma decided it was time to be heading back to Oujda proper. So we tromped back through the woods and up to the main street. But wait...a taxi had dropped us off before when we asked to be let off in the middle of nowhere. How were we ever to find a taxi out here? So we started walking. Me, Rahma, our bags, and three liters of farm fresh olive oil. (heavy!) We walked for probably half an hour and I kept feeling like we were getting nowhere. Eventually we just stopped on a corner and waited. After a time, a taxi*** pulled up and we jumped in. We made it back to Oujda safe and sound.
My trip to the farm was beautiful and fun, but also it's exhausting to be with family, especially not your own. My Arabic definitely benefited a lot more than it would have if I'd stayed home and I'm glad I went. To see a few pictures of Tafaughalt, go to this link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2221957&id=18806879&l=f71089f6c3
Sorry I don't have pictures of the family, but being so conservative, they did not want to be photographed -- let alone attached to facebook!
This link is some photos of Bouarfa, the city where I will be living for two years, hopefully: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2221955&id=18806879&l=fb59c96379
***for the real foot note of this "taxi" you must ask in an email or facebook message.
So on Friday night my host sisters slept at their friend's house and Saturday morning Rahma and I caught the 5am Souk Bus to Oujda. [Aside:Why is it called a souk bus? Well, one PCV I talked to named Jason thinks it's because the souk comes to you. Souk means market. The buses stop at every little city along the way to rest for a bathroom break and people come on the bus and try to hawk their goods at you. "No, I don't want your gold chain, no I don't want a kilo of honey." The downside of souk buses, besides no air conditioning, is the fact that you could buy a ticket and potentially have to stand, being harassed by people trying to sell you stuff, and it stops constantly. I feel like they stop every fifteen minutes. What would be a two-and-a-half-hour taxi ride turns into a five-hour bus ride. But I guess you get what you pay for. They're pretty cheap. They are like ratty, dusty Greyhound buses. ] [Language note: What we English speakers refer to as the souk bus, is, in Moroccan Arabic, referred to as a "kar," in singular form, and "kiran" in plural.]
So, Saturday morning we took the 5am to Oujda and arrived between 9:30 and 10. I met Rahma's mother at her house in Oujda proper. She was a pleasant lady and we ate lunch there. After lunch Rahma informed me that we would be going to a little place called Tafaughalt (pronounced just like it looks...haha) So I said sure. We hopped in a petit taxi, which takes you within the city, and we went to the taxi stand for the grand taxis, which take you out of town. The thing about grand taxis is they don't leave until they're full -- meaning 4 in the back and three in the front of a Mercedes sedan. So sometimes you may wait quite a while until the right amount of people are going your direction. Lucky for me and Rahma, we filled the last two seats of our Tafaughalt taxi. So onward we went. Let me tell you, Moroccans know how to eat and these women do not have small behinds and fitting four of us in the back of a sedan was no fun. But after 45 minutes or so, Rahma told our driver to halt and she and I got out...and found ourselves in the middle of nowhere. I thought "where on earth has she taken me!?" And then we started walking through the woods. I had to just go with it because what else do you do? So after a few minutes, in the distance, I saw a small farm house. That was our destination. Up and down slopes and slants we trudged through thick fog and found our way to a house FILLED with people. There must have been fifty people in this one house.
The occasion was a sabu3, which is a baby-naming-party I may have mentioned in an earlier blog. [quick cultural reference: a sabu3 is held on the seventh day after the baby has been born and until then it is not named. Then there's a big party] It turns out Rahma's family is quite conservative as far as Morocco goes and the men and women were 100% separated the entire time. So when we arrived, I entered the women's room (not the bathroom) and greeted about 20 ladies, mostly elderly, who were sitting, dressed completely in jellabas and lizars (more than a head covering, it's like a bedsheet that's wrapped around you) so me and my jeans and definitely no lizar sat with these women on the floor. People sit on the floor a lot here, it's not big deal. But it is still weird to see such elderly ladies on the floor. They are sitting on ponges (like cushions) that are about 2 inches thick and pillows behind their backs against the wall. The funny thing was that these women were old and so conservatively dressed but when I looked down their socks made me chuckle. It's really important to take your shoes off on any carpeted service, so all these women were sitting there on the floor, legs outstretched, and all were wearing different mid-shin to knee high GOOFY socks. Socks with frogs, hearts, oblong shapes, English writing that made no sense... To make it better, these long socks had goofy pajama pants tucked into them, so their legs looked bumpy and strange. I kept thinking "why would you tuck your pants into your socks?" It's so funny how dressed up these women get on the outside when underneath they really just have on pajamas and goofy socks.
So I sat and was awkwardly silent for a while until some 14 year old cousins came and adopted me and took me on a stroll. We talked for a while. Nobody spoke any English, so I got a lot of good practice in. I was shocked at how little they knew about what I thought was common knowledge, but I guess it was good that they even asked. They asked me things like "who was the king of America?" and if and how Christians pray. We are taught by Peace Corps to avoid talking religion but there was no refusing to talk about it with these girls. The second they found out I was not Muslim, they began to try to get me to say the shehadda, which, apparently, if you say three times you become a Muslim (though this is not something all Muslims believe, so I'm told.) When I told them I didn't want to, they turned to the tactics that some Christians use in the U.S. "All your problems will go away" "you'll be so happy with life." "You can marry a nice Muslim man and your family would love it." (ok, so maybe that last one isn't used as much in the U.S.) So when I still refused, the girls ever so sweetly said that I should make the choice between roasting over a fiery hell like a ram shish-kabob (that's a quote) or go to heaven. They really emphasized the shish-kabob part. So of course I still refused. Telling them I had my own kind of Quran called the Bible and I prayed in my own way. Eventually, they let it go and still adored me anyway and we talked another two hours or so. The whole family and experience was thoroughly pleasant. These conversion attempts are fairly frequent, though this was, by far, the most intense thus far. Comes with the territory, I guess.
So the challenging thing about beautiful Tafaughalt is that there is no running water. Toilet-wise, this works fine because there is a big barrel of water in the bathroom and a little scooper so you can flush and what-not. But this was not what I would consider potable water. So my main predicament was how on earth was I supposed to brush my teeth? I would have asked the other 50 people who were spending the night at the house, or even the 20 or so women I was sharing sleeping quarters with, who were going to sleep on the floor next to me, but...alas....as I figured, nobody was brushing their teeth. Which, given my experience here so far, is not surprising. (I smell a youth development project...) So unfortunately, I went to bed with dirty teeth. When we awoke in the morning, nobody had yet gone down to the well to fetch more water and once again, nobody was attempting to brush their teeth. So there I stood with dirty teeth and dirty hands and dirty everything else. No running water has not been the norm for me here. I guess that's why Peace Corps Morocco is sometimes referred to as Posh Corps -- because I don't know how I would even get along without it. How high maintenance!
I know, I know, you're saying "Abby! You're an agent of development and change! Maybe if this family saw how you brushed your teeth twice in twelve hours, they would brush their teeth!" Yes, I thought about that, but I'm still too much in a guest mind-set, I guess. I should have insisted, I should have said, "I'm aware that you have to walk a kilometer or so in the fog and cold, but I really need to brush my teeth." "Drink it? No I'm not going to drink it, I'm just going to spit it out. Could you boil it first, too? Ten minutes -- rolling boil ONLY." Next time I will be more pushy.
This weekend at the farm was my first drinking unpasteurized dairy and I was not sick! l'Hamdullah!
So after breakfast I was able to reflect on what a great time I'd had with great people. Rahma decided it was time to be heading back to Oujda proper. So we tromped back through the woods and up to the main street. But wait...a taxi had dropped us off before when we asked to be let off in the middle of nowhere. How were we ever to find a taxi out here? So we started walking. Me, Rahma, our bags, and three liters of farm fresh olive oil. (heavy!) We walked for probably half an hour and I kept feeling like we were getting nowhere. Eventually we just stopped on a corner and waited. After a time, a taxi*** pulled up and we jumped in. We made it back to Oujda safe and sound.
My trip to the farm was beautiful and fun, but also it's exhausting to be with family, especially not your own. My Arabic definitely benefited a lot more than it would have if I'd stayed home and I'm glad I went. To see a few pictures of Tafaughalt, go to this link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2221957&id=18806879&l=f71089f6c3
Sorry I don't have pictures of the family, but being so conservative, they did not want to be photographed -- let alone attached to facebook!
This link is some photos of Bouarfa, the city where I will be living for two years, hopefully: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2221955&id=18806879&l=fb59c96379
***for the real foot note of this "taxi" you must ask in an email or facebook message.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
S.E. Morocco
So today is the Muslim New Year. Today begins the year 1432. What is interesting is that nobody in town knew that today was the new year until last night. At about 9pm my host family and I were watching some TV when the show was cut short and a frozen image of a minaret came on the screen with a scrolling message. I couldn't read it but my family said "oh tomorrow is the new year! I guess that means no school tomorrow!" And that was it. Today I was supposed to start teaching English at the Dar Chebab too, but it's closed because of the holiday. I even saw the Moudir of the Dar Chebab yesterday and we had a long talk about my beginning today. I guess people really do fly by the seat of their pants here. I'm glad I didn't have anything really important planned. I wonder if transportation is affected....
So my host mother invited me to go to Oujda with her this weekend. That's the next closest full-fledged city. It's about 5 hours away. I'll be meeting my host mom's relatives and it should do wonders for my language.
My language is coming along well. I always understand worse in the mornings, but by mid day I'm doing fine. I feel like I can communicate without much trouble. I'm not doing anything like having philosophical discussions but maybe with some time. My newest language achievement is that I can now understand Moroccans when they are talking to each other! This means I'm understanding at full speed and not just at poor-American-can't-understand-me slow motion speed. Hopefully improvement continues. My weekend in Oujda where I'm not escaping to the solitude of my room will be great.
About Money:
So as PC Volunteers we're paid just a living stipend. I remember my mother referencing a college friend who joined the Peace Corps and was so not interested in material goods that he actually returned from Peace Corps WITH money. Well, I'm starting to think that I may be like that. In comparison to AmeriCorps I'm living the high life! That's not to say they're paying us too much, but that I have gotten so good at saving money that I just don't spend any of my PC money. Plus, everything is so cheap here. I may only be making equivalent to $250 a month but here're some examples of what things cost:
I could buy all the food I need for a week for about $6.
A cup of coffee costs $.50 at a restaurant. And I don't ever go.
This internet cafe is costing me about $.75 an hour.
My rent in a 2-bedroom apt I'll move into on Jan 1st. is $75 a month -- and that is money I'll be given in addition to my living stipend.
Yesterday I paid a man about $0.60 to cart a bookcase from one side of town to another in a wheelbarrow-like cart.
A night in a decent hotel in Errachidia (my stopping point for going anywhere) is about $8. I could go as cheap as $4 and still have a halfway decent hotel room.
So I'm feeling like I'm living the luxurious life (relative to Peace Corps). I'm sure I'll learn to spend money again as time goes on. I can't imagine how much I'd have if I lived in a smaller city where there wasn't even anywhere to spend your money.
So my host mother invited me to go to Oujda with her this weekend. That's the next closest full-fledged city. It's about 5 hours away. I'll be meeting my host mom's relatives and it should do wonders for my language.
My language is coming along well. I always understand worse in the mornings, but by mid day I'm doing fine. I feel like I can communicate without much trouble. I'm not doing anything like having philosophical discussions but maybe with some time. My newest language achievement is that I can now understand Moroccans when they are talking to each other! This means I'm understanding at full speed and not just at poor-American-can't-understand-me slow motion speed. Hopefully improvement continues. My weekend in Oujda where I'm not escaping to the solitude of my room will be great.
About Money:
So as PC Volunteers we're paid just a living stipend. I remember my mother referencing a college friend who joined the Peace Corps and was so not interested in material goods that he actually returned from Peace Corps WITH money. Well, I'm starting to think that I may be like that. In comparison to AmeriCorps I'm living the high life! That's not to say they're paying us too much, but that I have gotten so good at saving money that I just don't spend any of my PC money. Plus, everything is so cheap here. I may only be making equivalent to $250 a month but here're some examples of what things cost:
I could buy all the food I need for a week for about $6.
A cup of coffee costs $.50 at a restaurant. And I don't ever go.
This internet cafe is costing me about $.75 an hour.
My rent in a 2-bedroom apt I'll move into on Jan 1st. is $75 a month -- and that is money I'll be given in addition to my living stipend.
Yesterday I paid a man about $0.60 to cart a bookcase from one side of town to another in a wheelbarrow-like cart.
A night in a decent hotel in Errachidia (my stopping point for going anywhere) is about $8. I could go as cheap as $4 and still have a halfway decent hotel room.
So I'm feeling like I'm living the luxurious life (relative to Peace Corps). I'm sure I'll learn to spend money again as time goes on. I can't imagine how much I'd have if I lived in a smaller city where there wasn't even anywhere to spend your money.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Ram slaughter
Here is a public link to the facebook album of my photos from Eid Kbir. They are a little graphic. The captions tell a pretty good story though, so read them!
All is well.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2220557&id=18806879&l=898ed07e06
I don't think you need a facebook to view them.
All is well.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2220557&id=18806879&l=898ed07e06
I don't think you need a facebook to view them.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Eid Kbir
This is a quick blog
I want to write a really lengthy one on Ram Slaughter Day, but I haven't had the opportunity to do so yet.
I will say this:
- They didn't scream, like I thought they would
- they kicked LONG after their throat was slit. that was rough
- The first one had no idea what was coming, but the second one sure did and tried to escape. Didn't work though. It just prolonged it.
- It wasn't as bad as I thought it was, but maybe that was because I was tired of living in a barn and would rather live in a meat freezer.
- Yes, the streets ran red with blood. Thick blood. And no, they didn't hose it off or anything. It's probably all still there. That's a weird smell. There are a lot of weird smells here.
So the reason I haven't written a really good blog about the whole experience is because I was moving. I moved from my training town and now I'm on the coast near Rabat (the capital) because tomorrow, ::drum roll!:: I will be sworn in Officially as a Peace Corps Volunteer (and not a trainee) by the ambassador. And then Thursday morning, Thanksgiving day, I will be on my way to South Eastern Morocco to start my two years of service. There is almost no grace time in between, other than that it will take me two days to get there. (carting everything I own on public transportation!)
So since I am officially the most isolated volunteer in my training group-- by far-- I have been enjoying socializing with the other 60 or so volunteers with whom I'll be sworn in, since I won't be able to see people that often after Thursday. I'm five or six hours away from the closest volunteer I actually know. And I'm a two hour taxi ride away from the closest volunteer-- period.
So I'll catch up on my blog next week when I'm all alone in my new town.
By then the ram intestines that they have stuffed with other good stuff and made into sausage should be ready so I can write about all of it at once! Yay!!!
Lovin' every minute of it!
I want to write a really lengthy one on Ram Slaughter Day, but I haven't had the opportunity to do so yet.
I will say this:
- They didn't scream, like I thought they would
- they kicked LONG after their throat was slit. that was rough
- The first one had no idea what was coming, but the second one sure did and tried to escape. Didn't work though. It just prolonged it.
- It wasn't as bad as I thought it was, but maybe that was because I was tired of living in a barn and would rather live in a meat freezer.
- Yes, the streets ran red with blood. Thick blood. And no, they didn't hose it off or anything. It's probably all still there. That's a weird smell. There are a lot of weird smells here.
So the reason I haven't written a really good blog about the whole experience is because I was moving. I moved from my training town and now I'm on the coast near Rabat (the capital) because tomorrow, ::drum roll!:: I will be sworn in Officially as a Peace Corps Volunteer (and not a trainee) by the ambassador. And then Thursday morning, Thanksgiving day, I will be on my way to South Eastern Morocco to start my two years of service. There is almost no grace time in between, other than that it will take me two days to get there. (carting everything I own on public transportation!)
So since I am officially the most isolated volunteer in my training group-- by far-- I have been enjoying socializing with the other 60 or so volunteers with whom I'll be sworn in, since I won't be able to see people that often after Thursday. I'm five or six hours away from the closest volunteer I actually know. And I'm a two hour taxi ride away from the closest volunteer-- period.
So I'll catch up on my blog next week when I'm all alone in my new town.
By then the ram intestines that they have stuffed with other good stuff and made into sausage should be ready so I can write about all of it at once! Yay!!!
Lovin' every minute of it!
Sunday, November 14, 2010
It's Christmas in Morocco/Meat Hygiene
Well, not really Christmas, but it kind of feels like Christmas. On Wednesday is the biggest holiday of the year. It's called "L'Eid Kbir" which literally means "big feast." It reminds me so much of Christmas because everybody's family is in town, people are happy, there are bands playing in the gardens, and there are lights like Christmas lights everywhere, plus it's a little chilly. The big difference is that we're going to slaughter a couple of rams!
Here's the story:
You may or may not be familiar with the old testament story of Abraham and Isaac. But basically, the Kor'an has the same story but with Abraham and Ishmael, his other son. Abraham was told by God to offer his 'only' son as a sacrifice to God, and he was so obedient that he said he would, and he got ready to do it and then God sent a ram instead, and Ishmael wasn't slaughtered. So Muslims have l'Eid Kbir to represent Abraham (or Ibrahim)'s obedience to God and then the mercy that was given. I think I have that right.
The rule is that every household must slaughter a ram on the day that commemorates this.
We have my host family's oldest daughter in town now, with her husband and two kids, ages 8 and 3. So it's two households together, therefore two rams must be slaughtered.
Fast Forward to this morning: I hear some commotion outside my bedroom and so I get up and open my door and they are setting up a "stable" right outside my room! This is not a big house. It's MAYBE 700 square feet. When you walk in the front door there is a little entrance area, maybe 10 ft. by 5 ft. And off of that there are two rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom and that's it. So then I look toward the door and there are two large rams, alive and well, being led into the house and backed it to a corner! Then their "stable" was made by using a table and a couch turned on it's side to block the animals into the corner. They were pretty well mannered through this whole process, and treated fairly well. (the meat is only considered "halal", like Kosher, if the animal is treated well before it's death.)
So my 700 square foot house now has 6 adults (another one will arrive tomorrow), two kids, and two big rams.
The rams will be chilling outside my room until Wednesday, which is the actual day of L'Eid Kbir, when we will lead them, one at a time, onto the roof, and my host sisters husband will slaughter them. For the meat to be halal they cannot be slaughtered in front of another animal, and you have to use a big knife and slice the jugular with one clean, hard stroke after saying "bismillah" which means something along the lines of "God bless this." One stroke is ideal, two is acceptable. So then, apparently, it kicks around a little and all the blood gushes and squirts all over the place, and within a few minutes it stops squirming and is quite dead. Everyone tells me that is humane and it doesn't feel anything; that after the first stroke it just kicks around because of nerves. I definitely do not believe that at all, but I am comforted by the fact that it dies quickly. So then all this animal's blood is washed down the drain pipe and onto the 'street' (alley) below. All the neighbors will be doing this at more or less the same time. I wonder if the rams will scream? The streets turn red with blood, so they say, and I imagine they're right. After the first one, they'll take the other one to the roof and slaughter it. The stomach and liver are eaten first. Over a period of weeks the entire thing will be eaten, including the brains, and the fur will be turned into a rug.
So am I going to like this? Probably not. In fact I'm a little terrified that it will be traumatizing. Not to mention the fact that I may get sick. I've never seen anything get killed before! I gutted my first fish today while cooking lunch (Sundays are such hard work!) and then I gutted about twenty more, and then I cleaned a raw chicken for the first time in my life and felt squeamish doing that! (yes, I cleaned a chicken today!) So what is this ram slaughter going to be like???
Speaking of barn animals, lets talk a little about HYGIENE
We were told that if we plan on writing a blog, we should write it in a very culturally sensitive manner; as if our host families are going to read them. So I intend to do that, but I just have to share the fact that it is NOT hygienic, in my opinion, to keep barn animals in the house. Especially with the lax hand washing policies here.
FOR EXAMPLE! The two rams were butting heads a bit and so Hasna, my host sister, got involved to separate them. She had been in the kitchen slicing some potatoes and beets when the commotion started. So after separating these barn animals and then sweeping up their excrement, she went back into the kitchen and CONTINUED SLICING THE VEGETABLES without so much as rinsing off her hands. AH! I was SO grossed out. I mean, think of what is covering those animals that now is being mixed with the food we're eating for lunch!? How gross is our new "stable" going to be in 48 hours?!
Now you may be thinking "why don't you say something?!" But it's really not as easy as that. There is a fine line between sharing cultural points, and being insulting. Especially since nobody is sick. So what I did was volunteer to help her and washed my hands well with soap right in front of her. I was scrubbing like I was about to go into surgery. Luckily, this particular batch of potatoes and beets were to be boiled, and as our Peace Corps Medical Officer says repeatedly "heat kills all pathogens!" so I was able to relax a little.
Later on, we continued cooking lunch which involved raw fish and chicken and we cross contaminated like crazy; though not anything I was doing. Hasna went from touching raw chicken, to slicing cucumbers that we were going to eat raw. I kept hinting that we needed to wash our hands, and she picked up on my suggestions, but really didn't use soap, and did not change utensils.
This must be how it is done all the time, and yet, I'm not sick and have no parasites... yet. (Though one of the six of us in my training group does have parasites.) Have we just been overly cautious our whole lives? I feel like I've just been lucky so far. But I didn't eat the cucumbers at lunch. I guess all I can do is set a good example and volunteer to help in the kitchen as much as possible-- even if all I want to do is leave the kitchen because there are so many health violations in every direction I look.
Anyway, we'll see how the Eid Kbir goes and I'll give you my reaction to the slaughter when it's gone and done with.
I'm having a bunch of those "this is Peace Corps!" moments this weekend, and I guess that's why I'm here! So I'm happy with that. :) Welcome to Morocco.
Here's the story:
You may or may not be familiar with the old testament story of Abraham and Isaac. But basically, the Kor'an has the same story but with Abraham and Ishmael, his other son. Abraham was told by God to offer his 'only' son as a sacrifice to God, and he was so obedient that he said he would, and he got ready to do it and then God sent a ram instead, and Ishmael wasn't slaughtered. So Muslims have l'Eid Kbir to represent Abraham (or Ibrahim)'s obedience to God and then the mercy that was given. I think I have that right.
The rule is that every household must slaughter a ram on the day that commemorates this.
We have my host family's oldest daughter in town now, with her husband and two kids, ages 8 and 3. So it's two households together, therefore two rams must be slaughtered.
Fast Forward to this morning: I hear some commotion outside my bedroom and so I get up and open my door and they are setting up a "stable" right outside my room! This is not a big house. It's MAYBE 700 square feet. When you walk in the front door there is a little entrance area, maybe 10 ft. by 5 ft. And off of that there are two rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom and that's it. So then I look toward the door and there are two large rams, alive and well, being led into the house and backed it to a corner! Then their "stable" was made by using a table and a couch turned on it's side to block the animals into the corner. They were pretty well mannered through this whole process, and treated fairly well. (the meat is only considered "halal", like Kosher, if the animal is treated well before it's death.)
So my 700 square foot house now has 6 adults (another one will arrive tomorrow), two kids, and two big rams.
The rams will be chilling outside my room until Wednesday, which is the actual day of L'Eid Kbir, when we will lead them, one at a time, onto the roof, and my host sisters husband will slaughter them. For the meat to be halal they cannot be slaughtered in front of another animal, and you have to use a big knife and slice the jugular with one clean, hard stroke after saying "bismillah" which means something along the lines of "God bless this." One stroke is ideal, two is acceptable. So then, apparently, it kicks around a little and all the blood gushes and squirts all over the place, and within a few minutes it stops squirming and is quite dead. Everyone tells me that is humane and it doesn't feel anything; that after the first stroke it just kicks around because of nerves. I definitely do not believe that at all, but I am comforted by the fact that it dies quickly. So then all this animal's blood is washed down the drain pipe and onto the 'street' (alley) below. All the neighbors will be doing this at more or less the same time. I wonder if the rams will scream? The streets turn red with blood, so they say, and I imagine they're right. After the first one, they'll take the other one to the roof and slaughter it. The stomach and liver are eaten first. Over a period of weeks the entire thing will be eaten, including the brains, and the fur will be turned into a rug.
So am I going to like this? Probably not. In fact I'm a little terrified that it will be traumatizing. Not to mention the fact that I may get sick. I've never seen anything get killed before! I gutted my first fish today while cooking lunch (Sundays are such hard work!) and then I gutted about twenty more, and then I cleaned a raw chicken for the first time in my life and felt squeamish doing that! (yes, I cleaned a chicken today!) So what is this ram slaughter going to be like???
Speaking of barn animals, lets talk a little about HYGIENE
We were told that if we plan on writing a blog, we should write it in a very culturally sensitive manner; as if our host families are going to read them. So I intend to do that, but I just have to share the fact that it is NOT hygienic, in my opinion, to keep barn animals in the house. Especially with the lax hand washing policies here.
FOR EXAMPLE! The two rams were butting heads a bit and so Hasna, my host sister, got involved to separate them. She had been in the kitchen slicing some potatoes and beets when the commotion started. So after separating these barn animals and then sweeping up their excrement, she went back into the kitchen and CONTINUED SLICING THE VEGETABLES without so much as rinsing off her hands. AH! I was SO grossed out. I mean, think of what is covering those animals that now is being mixed with the food we're eating for lunch!? How gross is our new "stable" going to be in 48 hours?!
Now you may be thinking "why don't you say something?!" But it's really not as easy as that. There is a fine line between sharing cultural points, and being insulting. Especially since nobody is sick. So what I did was volunteer to help her and washed my hands well with soap right in front of her. I was scrubbing like I was about to go into surgery. Luckily, this particular batch of potatoes and beets were to be boiled, and as our Peace Corps Medical Officer says repeatedly "heat kills all pathogens!" so I was able to relax a little.
Later on, we continued cooking lunch which involved raw fish and chicken and we cross contaminated like crazy; though not anything I was doing. Hasna went from touching raw chicken, to slicing cucumbers that we were going to eat raw. I kept hinting that we needed to wash our hands, and she picked up on my suggestions, but really didn't use soap, and did not change utensils.
This must be how it is done all the time, and yet, I'm not sick and have no parasites... yet. (Though one of the six of us in my training group does have parasites.) Have we just been overly cautious our whole lives? I feel like I've just been lucky so far. But I didn't eat the cucumbers at lunch. I guess all I can do is set a good example and volunteer to help in the kitchen as much as possible-- even if all I want to do is leave the kitchen because there are so many health violations in every direction I look.
Anyway, we'll see how the Eid Kbir goes and I'll give you my reaction to the slaughter when it's gone and done with.
I'm having a bunch of those "this is Peace Corps!" moments this weekend, and I guess that's why I'm here! So I'm happy with that. :) Welcome to Morocco.
Friday, November 12, 2010
The King was here!
I was told by someone that my last blog showed signs I was becoming petulant. Well I assure you I am doing just fine and am in great spirits. I even got up this morning at 6:30 to run with two of my friends despite how freezing and muddy it is. (I can't wait to move to the Sahara! Two weeks!) Living with a family just gets old after a while. I'm sure it's like that with everyone.
The king came to our training city this week! This was a big deal for the town. Apparently, once a year, the king takes a month or two to travel around the country visiting different cities, and this year it was our turn. They were cleaning the city for probably a week prior-- cleaning all the litter up (or sweeping it over a ledge, out of site, in some places.) , painting the curbs, and hanging Moroccan flags on EVERYTHING. They even passed out pictures of his portrait. So this week we got a glimpse of the king! I saw the king! The first day he was here, we had Arabic school so we missed him. All the Moroccan schools here were closed and lots of stores and businesses so that everybody could watch and wave at the king. I was so sad because I thought we weren't going to get to see him. But the next day, yesterday, he was driving around town and I happened to be in the right crowded area at the right time and I saw him! It was mostly just his arm waving out the window of a car, but it was definitely him. So that was pretty cool!
A recourse of the king coming is that there are huge celebrations out on the street. It looks a lot like Christmas over here! They've hung lights on all buildings and the Moroccan flag is red and green so everything around us is red and green, plus everybody is walking around happily with their families. Tonight there was a concert in the garden full of Moroccan bands singing and playing traditional songs.
Because the king is here, security is very high, of course. Earlier today, Xavier, one of my Peace Corps training site mates, was wandering around and a plain-clothed security officer went by. He knew it was an undercover cop because he had a walkie-talkie under his clothes and the volume was up and it went off. Apparently he didn't know his walkie-talkie was live and he tried to muffle it right away. Real smooth. So I had this on my mind when I went to the gardens this evening with my sisters to enjoy the music. I wasn't consciously thinking of looking for secret police, but they were all over the place and nobody else seemed to notice! I'm already hypersensitive because I'm a foreigner, so I look different and I feel different and it is obvious that I AM different. So me being somebody "odd," I can spot other odd people in a crowd. And this includes secret police, apparently. Most people who walk by are with friends, walking with a purpose and looking straight ahead. The first undercover police officer I saw, I knew immediately because he was walking, seemingly with purpose, but very slowly and with shifty eyes. I took one look at his weird baggy turtle neck and jeans and I said to myself with certainty "that is a cop." and so as I followed him with my eyes and he passed me, I saw a black ear piece in his ear with a wire running into his shirt, so it was confirmed. I was watching him closely though and he definitely noticed and seemed bothered by my staring, and so when he passed us he stood about ten feet behind us. I know I should take it seriously because he has a serious job to do, but I was almost laughing because of how much he did not blend in. Our plain-clothed loss-prevention employees at the Gap did a better job blending in as customers than this guy did. So then my host sisters and I start wandering and this fellow starts following us from a distance. But again, it was very obvious he was following us. (Plus, I kept glancing back) So once we reached a certain part of the garden he stopped following us. Then we sat on a bench and within seconds another awkward guy with a low baseball cap (nobody is wearing baseball caps.) starts walking towards us slowly, and with shifty eyes. He passes us and then stops and stays a couple yards back. By this point, I decided that as amateur of an "undercover" operation this seemed to be, I should take them seriously, and I stopped staring. But still, one weirdo can always spot another weirdo in the crowd, I suppose.
All the weirdos came out last night Some strange lady approached me and started grilling me about where I was from. She started friendly enough and told me that she worked for a while picking strawberries in Spain. Then she started telling me I should have my head covered because it's cold...then that leapt to Haram in America. (Haram is like "sinful" according to the Koran) She said things like that America is nothing but Haram and that I like to drink and smoke and wear short sleeves and so does everybody else. None of it was in question form- it was all statement after statement of what many haram things I do. (I do enjoy short sleeves...) Eventually I just tuned out and stopped understanding, mostly on purpose, but my sisters stepped in and did a good job of defending me.
I guess you meet crazies everywhere you go!
All is well. About one week until L'Eid Kbir, the biggest holiday in Morocco (like Christmas for us!) and that should be really fun, and then in two weeks I'll be done with training and officially become sworn in by the ambassador as a Peace Corps Volunteer! Yay! That's on Nov. 24th, and should be awesome.
The king came to our training city this week! This was a big deal for the town. Apparently, once a year, the king takes a month or two to travel around the country visiting different cities, and this year it was our turn. They were cleaning the city for probably a week prior-- cleaning all the litter up (or sweeping it over a ledge, out of site, in some places.) , painting the curbs, and hanging Moroccan flags on EVERYTHING. They even passed out pictures of his portrait. So this week we got a glimpse of the king! I saw the king! The first day he was here, we had Arabic school so we missed him. All the Moroccan schools here were closed and lots of stores and businesses so that everybody could watch and wave at the king. I was so sad because I thought we weren't going to get to see him. But the next day, yesterday, he was driving around town and I happened to be in the right crowded area at the right time and I saw him! It was mostly just his arm waving out the window of a car, but it was definitely him. So that was pretty cool!
A recourse of the king coming is that there are huge celebrations out on the street. It looks a lot like Christmas over here! They've hung lights on all buildings and the Moroccan flag is red and green so everything around us is red and green, plus everybody is walking around happily with their families. Tonight there was a concert in the garden full of Moroccan bands singing and playing traditional songs.
Because the king is here, security is very high, of course. Earlier today, Xavier, one of my Peace Corps training site mates, was wandering around and a plain-clothed security officer went by. He knew it was an undercover cop because he had a walkie-talkie under his clothes and the volume was up and it went off. Apparently he didn't know his walkie-talkie was live and he tried to muffle it right away. Real smooth. So I had this on my mind when I went to the gardens this evening with my sisters to enjoy the music. I wasn't consciously thinking of looking for secret police, but they were all over the place and nobody else seemed to notice! I'm already hypersensitive because I'm a foreigner, so I look different and I feel different and it is obvious that I AM different. So me being somebody "odd," I can spot other odd people in a crowd. And this includes secret police, apparently. Most people who walk by are with friends, walking with a purpose and looking straight ahead. The first undercover police officer I saw, I knew immediately because he was walking, seemingly with purpose, but very slowly and with shifty eyes. I took one look at his weird baggy turtle neck and jeans and I said to myself with certainty "that is a cop." and so as I followed him with my eyes and he passed me, I saw a black ear piece in his ear with a wire running into his shirt, so it was confirmed. I was watching him closely though and he definitely noticed and seemed bothered by my staring, and so when he passed us he stood about ten feet behind us. I know I should take it seriously because he has a serious job to do, but I was almost laughing because of how much he did not blend in. Our plain-clothed loss-prevention employees at the Gap did a better job blending in as customers than this guy did. So then my host sisters and I start wandering and this fellow starts following us from a distance. But again, it was very obvious he was following us. (Plus, I kept glancing back) So once we reached a certain part of the garden he stopped following us. Then we sat on a bench and within seconds another awkward guy with a low baseball cap (nobody is wearing baseball caps.) starts walking towards us slowly, and with shifty eyes. He passes us and then stops and stays a couple yards back. By this point, I decided that as amateur of an "undercover" operation this seemed to be, I should take them seriously, and I stopped staring. But still, one weirdo can always spot another weirdo in the crowd, I suppose.
All the weirdos came out last night Some strange lady approached me and started grilling me about where I was from. She started friendly enough and told me that she worked for a while picking strawberries in Spain. Then she started telling me I should have my head covered because it's cold...then that leapt to Haram in America. (Haram is like "sinful" according to the Koran) She said things like that America is nothing but Haram and that I like to drink and smoke and wear short sleeves and so does everybody else. None of it was in question form- it was all statement after statement of what many haram things I do. (I do enjoy short sleeves...) Eventually I just tuned out and stopped understanding, mostly on purpose, but my sisters stepped in and did a good job of defending me.
I guess you meet crazies everywhere you go!
All is well. About one week until L'Eid Kbir, the biggest holiday in Morocco (like Christmas for us!) and that should be really fun, and then in two weeks I'll be done with training and officially become sworn in by the ambassador as a Peace Corps Volunteer! Yay! That's on Nov. 24th, and should be awesome.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Just another lazy Sunday
This is the second blog that I'm posting in a row, so make sure you scroll down and read my previous entry about traveling!
Just Another Lazy Sunday
Hardly.
So Sunday in a household of women is the hardest day of the week. As a lazy American, I would rather have 7 days of work than the one day of the housework they do here.
Today was pretty typical: They woke me up at 9 to eat breakfast. So my sisters Hasna and Oumayma had already made french toast and coffee. So by 9:20 I had my dirty clothes out of my room and was going to town on my laundry. Hand washing laundry is HARD WORK. A few pieces wouldn't be so hard, but having just gotten back from being gone 8 days at my permanent site and having not done laundry before leaving, I had a ton to catch up on. Usually we use one hand as a scrubber against the other hand, but because I had so much laundry today, they broke out the washboard. I personally felt like the washboard was much harsher on the clothes than just using your hands, but it probably does a better job. The hardest part about hand washing, in my opinion, is wringing out the clothes. It gets so tiring and I try to squeeze every drop out, since it takes so long to dry as it is. So in about 2 and a half hours, I was TIRED but I had finished the laundry and hung it on the clothes line on the roof to dry.
This is a normal routine for Sundays, though usually without the washboard. After that, usually one of my sisters has been working on making lunch since finishing breakfast. (Meals are cooked from scratch daily. It usually takes one sister all day to make all three meals. It's like it's always Thanksgiving. And nobody complains!) When I'm finished with laundry, I usually help get lunch ready. At about 1 we eat a big lunch. Immediately after lunch we finish cleaning the rest of the house, which usually involves changing the covers on the couches and mopping all the floors.
Today, lhamdullah (Thank God), the water is out again and so we can't mop the floors. (The water went out almost the minute I finished all my laundry. Again, lhamdullah! My clothes were FILTHY.) Instead we are cooking a ton. My family decided to invite the other five people from my training group over for Cascarot. Cascarot is supposedly a "snack" between lunch and dinner, but it's usually enough food to count as a whole meal.
So now my two sisters and my mom are busy kneading bread and baking. This will probably last until late afternoon when my friends will hopefully come over and eat Cascarot with us.
So why am I in my room typing this and not out there kneading bread with them? For a couple of reasons. The first is that kneading bread is really difficult and my arms are tired from wringing out my laundry (I have license to be tired though because I'd been traveling for two days). But the second, and most important, reason that I'm not out there working with them is because every Sunday, by the time it is mid-afternoon, I am always ready to pull my hair out because my family is DRIVING ME CRAZY. (Not to mention that I'm FREEZING and all my warm clothes are drying on the roof!)
I really like them a lot and they're great, but there comes a point when one is sick of being made a spectacle. From the second I wake up on Sundays I feel like I'm constantly being scrutinized because I don't do things quite the way they would like me to. Like, when washing my laundry, which I've done every week since I've been here, the three of them just stand behind me watching me! And then often they break in to show me how to do it -- again -- and then watch and make comments like "look at you washing your own clothes! We should take a photo and send it to your mom!" And that was funny the first couple of weeks (and we did take photos) but it's not funny anymore, and I don't appreciate them breathing down my neck. Then I move into the kitchen to help prepare lunch, and I can just do no right in the kitchen. I'm slow at peeling the cucumbers with a knife (which they always point out), I don't know how to peel tomatoes (which they always point out), they show me how to slice cucumbers EVERY SINGLE TIME even when I say I know how, and then they just sit there and watch me do it. There's only so much "constructive" criticism I can take. For the first few weeks it didn't bother me because they were right, I couldn't do anything. But now I can, and it's become like an extended joke that I really don't find funny. So it's now 3 pm and I have told them I have homework and barricaded myself in my room. I do feel a little guilty though because they're preparing Cascarot for MY friends, but I think I'd go crazy if they watched me whisk anything else today. I'm probably especially on edge because I'm so tired from traveling. I wanted to go to sleep early last night but we didn't eat dinner until 11 pm (it'll probably be the same tonight).
LHamdullah, I have school tomorrow.
P.S. After writing this I did go back out to the main room and help bake some msmmin... the whole family watched me -- and a neighbor. The party was a grand success despite my lack of enthusiasm. Cascarot with my five classmates turned into a Hefla (party) of about 14 people. The men left early and it became a dance party once they were gone.
Just Another Lazy Sunday
Hardly.
So Sunday in a household of women is the hardest day of the week. As a lazy American, I would rather have 7 days of work than the one day of the housework they do here.
Today was pretty typical: They woke me up at 9 to eat breakfast. So my sisters Hasna and Oumayma had already made french toast and coffee. So by 9:20 I had my dirty clothes out of my room and was going to town on my laundry. Hand washing laundry is HARD WORK. A few pieces wouldn't be so hard, but having just gotten back from being gone 8 days at my permanent site and having not done laundry before leaving, I had a ton to catch up on. Usually we use one hand as a scrubber against the other hand, but because I had so much laundry today, they broke out the washboard. I personally felt like the washboard was much harsher on the clothes than just using your hands, but it probably does a better job. The hardest part about hand washing, in my opinion, is wringing out the clothes. It gets so tiring and I try to squeeze every drop out, since it takes so long to dry as it is. So in about 2 and a half hours, I was TIRED but I had finished the laundry and hung it on the clothes line on the roof to dry.
This is a normal routine for Sundays, though usually without the washboard. After that, usually one of my sisters has been working on making lunch since finishing breakfast. (Meals are cooked from scratch daily. It usually takes one sister all day to make all three meals. It's like it's always Thanksgiving. And nobody complains!) When I'm finished with laundry, I usually help get lunch ready. At about 1 we eat a big lunch. Immediately after lunch we finish cleaning the rest of the house, which usually involves changing the covers on the couches and mopping all the floors.
Today, lhamdullah (Thank God), the water is out again and so we can't mop the floors. (The water went out almost the minute I finished all my laundry. Again, lhamdullah! My clothes were FILTHY.) Instead we are cooking a ton. My family decided to invite the other five people from my training group over for Cascarot. Cascarot is supposedly a "snack" between lunch and dinner, but it's usually enough food to count as a whole meal.
So now my two sisters and my mom are busy kneading bread and baking. This will probably last until late afternoon when my friends will hopefully come over and eat Cascarot with us.
So why am I in my room typing this and not out there kneading bread with them? For a couple of reasons. The first is that kneading bread is really difficult and my arms are tired from wringing out my laundry (I have license to be tired though because I'd been traveling for two days). But the second, and most important, reason that I'm not out there working with them is because every Sunday, by the time it is mid-afternoon, I am always ready to pull my hair out because my family is DRIVING ME CRAZY. (Not to mention that I'm FREEZING and all my warm clothes are drying on the roof!)
I really like them a lot and they're great, but there comes a point when one is sick of being made a spectacle. From the second I wake up on Sundays I feel like I'm constantly being scrutinized because I don't do things quite the way they would like me to. Like, when washing my laundry, which I've done every week since I've been here, the three of them just stand behind me watching me! And then often they break in to show me how to do it -- again -- and then watch and make comments like "look at you washing your own clothes! We should take a photo and send it to your mom!" And that was funny the first couple of weeks (and we did take photos) but it's not funny anymore, and I don't appreciate them breathing down my neck. Then I move into the kitchen to help prepare lunch, and I can just do no right in the kitchen. I'm slow at peeling the cucumbers with a knife (which they always point out), I don't know how to peel tomatoes (which they always point out), they show me how to slice cucumbers EVERY SINGLE TIME even when I say I know how, and then they just sit there and watch me do it. There's only so much "constructive" criticism I can take. For the first few weeks it didn't bother me because they were right, I couldn't do anything. But now I can, and it's become like an extended joke that I really don't find funny. So it's now 3 pm and I have told them I have homework and barricaded myself in my room. I do feel a little guilty though because they're preparing Cascarot for MY friends, but I think I'd go crazy if they watched me whisk anything else today. I'm probably especially on edge because I'm so tired from traveling. I wanted to go to sleep early last night but we didn't eat dinner until 11 pm (it'll probably be the same tonight).
LHamdullah, I have school tomorrow.
P.S. After writing this I did go back out to the main room and help bake some msmmin... the whole family watched me -- and a neighbor. The party was a grand success despite my lack of enthusiasm. Cascarot with my five classmates turned into a Hefla (party) of about 14 people. The men left early and it became a dance party once they were gone.
traveling to the boonies
Traveling.
So I've already blogged about my new town, but I haven't yet blogged about the travel experience. From Fes, it is two days out and two days back. All together it's about 15 hours away but you have to work around transportation schedules and abide by a world-wide Peace Corps policy that forbids traveling at night. So the way south was pretty easy. My bus ticket from Fes to Errachidia was 80 dirhams ($10) and that takes about 8 hours. As you drive south from Fes, you cross through the Atlas mountains. They are gorgeous and huge and the narrow roads wind around past huge cliffs. It's a site to see though it doesn't feel very safe. Apparently the buses are the safest though because they don't go too fast and rarely go over the edge... I slept most of that way. Once you start heading east though (after spending the night in Errachidia) you begin to see the Sahara Desert you always imagined. It's kilometer after kilometer of orange sand and small orange hills that rise out of nowhere. Then every so often you see date palms and greenery spring up. A true oasis. In these oases you can usually spot a small town, marked by a number of mud structures and winding alleys. After a few hours of driving east though, the oases stop coming and the sand dunes become more prominent. The skies have no clouds and become the purest shade of blue you've ever seen against the almost-fluorescent orange sand. There's some scrub that grows and you can see nomads herding some sheep, but the further east you go, the less sheep you can spot and then you begin to see nomads herding camels. Yes, camels. These are not camels that are being herded for tourists to ride. There are NO tourists out here. (You can imagine the stares I got on that bus. "What on earth is that blonde women doing on this bus to nowhere, unaccompanied?!" ) I don't have any idea what the berbers are doing with the camels but I felt like I was on a movie set. So after five or six hours of seeing nothing but sand and sky and camels you arrive at my city.
The bus rides TO my new city were not anything to write home about. They were standard. But the way back -- terrible. The first leg, back to Errachidia, was fine. But yesterday, when getting from Errachidia to Fes, we ran into obstacle after obstacle. For this portion I was not alone. Errachidia is a big hub for a lot of PCVs who want to get up to Fes. (This city has about 100,000 people) So we got on a 9 am bus that should have been in Fes in about 7 or 8 hours. But we broke down... many times.... It kept stalling and stalling and stalling. I'm sorry I don't know more about cars to explain it. Every time we'd break down, the women would stay on the bus and the men would get out and stretch. Then the driver and the driver's helper would open up the back and tinker with it until it was going again. One particular time we were stopped for more than an hour.
As we got closer and closer to our destination we broke down more and more often. One time, frustratingly, the driver pulled over to stop and pick some apples. Yes, he stopped to pick some apples.
So FINALLY after being in the bus for ten hours we arrived in Fes. We were on the edge of town when the bus broke down. AGAIN. We figured that it was time to abandon this bus and catch a taxi back to the meeting place where we were all supposed to rendezvous. There were 8 of us, and only petit taxis can be hailed. Petit taxis take a max of three passengers, so we needed three. The first two petit taxis whizzed by in seconds to pick up 5 of us. But I was in the group of three that was to be in the last taxi. Well, that last petit taxi we needed never came. We wandered around and tried to hail many taxis that passed that already had clients, with no luck.
Eventually some kids spotted us and they were wondering who these kooky tourists were roaming their neighborhood. We told him our plight and as soon as these kids got involved, things started happening. They were running in the middle of the street trying to flag down anyone. Soon their parents came out with all the commotion we were causing and they got involved. In about 10 minutes the parents had convinced a grand taxi to stop. Grand taxis are usually sedan-sized Mercedes Benz and legally can only be picked up at a taxi stand but this one "did us a favor." We thanked the neighbors profusely and hopped in.
There was already a couple in there and the driver told us he'd drop them off first and then us. They didn't look to pleased to see us, but we chatted them up in their native language, and explained what we were doing in Morocco. I also dropped the line about us working with the Ministry of Youth and Sports (true!) because we were told that could persuade someone not to cheat us....
So to make a long story short, we make it to where we wanted to go and we ask how much and the guy tells us 120 dirhams!! 30 DH would have been sufficient, if not generous. This was outrageous! The three of us responded shocked: "WHAT? THAT'S TOO EXPENSIVE" in Arabic. But his response was that he was coming from the airport and it is a flat rate. (lie). So we said we were not going to pay him 120 DH. Unfortunately though, even after that, we made two mistakes: 1) we should have gotten our luggage out of the trunk before paying him so that we could just walk away and he would have to chase us to get anything and undoubtedly he would accept something more realistic; and 2) we should have had bills smaller than 100 DH. It wasn't like he was going to give us change. So what choice did we have? He did us a "favor" and offered us 100 DH, which was the smallest bill we had. He accepted it of course, but it was still dumb. Fortunately, in our travel budget for our site visit they had worked in 120 DHs per person labeled as "in case you get overcharged for travel." So we were reimbursed. It was still annoying though.
Obviously in retrospect there are things I would have done differently in that cab ride, such as write down his license plate/car number. Taxis have gotten in big trouble for cheating PC volunteers.
By the time we got back to the PC hub we had been traveling for over 12 hours for a ride that should have taken 8. I'm still tired.
So I've already blogged about my new town, but I haven't yet blogged about the travel experience. From Fes, it is two days out and two days back. All together it's about 15 hours away but you have to work around transportation schedules and abide by a world-wide Peace Corps policy that forbids traveling at night. So the way south was pretty easy. My bus ticket from Fes to Errachidia was 80 dirhams ($10) and that takes about 8 hours. As you drive south from Fes, you cross through the Atlas mountains. They are gorgeous and huge and the narrow roads wind around past huge cliffs. It's a site to see though it doesn't feel very safe. Apparently the buses are the safest though because they don't go too fast and rarely go over the edge... I slept most of that way. Once you start heading east though (after spending the night in Errachidia) you begin to see the Sahara Desert you always imagined. It's kilometer after kilometer of orange sand and small orange hills that rise out of nowhere. Then every so often you see date palms and greenery spring up. A true oasis. In these oases you can usually spot a small town, marked by a number of mud structures and winding alleys. After a few hours of driving east though, the oases stop coming and the sand dunes become more prominent. The skies have no clouds and become the purest shade of blue you've ever seen against the almost-fluorescent orange sand. There's some scrub that grows and you can see nomads herding some sheep, but the further east you go, the less sheep you can spot and then you begin to see nomads herding camels. Yes, camels. These are not camels that are being herded for tourists to ride. There are NO tourists out here. (You can imagine the stares I got on that bus. "What on earth is that blonde women doing on this bus to nowhere, unaccompanied?!" ) I don't have any idea what the berbers are doing with the camels but I felt like I was on a movie set. So after five or six hours of seeing nothing but sand and sky and camels you arrive at my city.
The bus rides TO my new city were not anything to write home about. They were standard. But the way back -- terrible. The first leg, back to Errachidia, was fine. But yesterday, when getting from Errachidia to Fes, we ran into obstacle after obstacle. For this portion I was not alone. Errachidia is a big hub for a lot of PCVs who want to get up to Fes. (This city has about 100,000 people) So we got on a 9 am bus that should have been in Fes in about 7 or 8 hours. But we broke down... many times.... It kept stalling and stalling and stalling. I'm sorry I don't know more about cars to explain it. Every time we'd break down, the women would stay on the bus and the men would get out and stretch. Then the driver and the driver's helper would open up the back and tinker with it until it was going again. One particular time we were stopped for more than an hour.
As we got closer and closer to our destination we broke down more and more often. One time, frustratingly, the driver pulled over to stop and pick some apples. Yes, he stopped to pick some apples.
So FINALLY after being in the bus for ten hours we arrived in Fes. We were on the edge of town when the bus broke down. AGAIN. We figured that it was time to abandon this bus and catch a taxi back to the meeting place where we were all supposed to rendezvous. There were 8 of us, and only petit taxis can be hailed. Petit taxis take a max of three passengers, so we needed three. The first two petit taxis whizzed by in seconds to pick up 5 of us. But I was in the group of three that was to be in the last taxi. Well, that last petit taxi we needed never came. We wandered around and tried to hail many taxis that passed that already had clients, with no luck.
Eventually some kids spotted us and they were wondering who these kooky tourists were roaming their neighborhood. We told him our plight and as soon as these kids got involved, things started happening. They were running in the middle of the street trying to flag down anyone. Soon their parents came out with all the commotion we were causing and they got involved. In about 10 minutes the parents had convinced a grand taxi to stop. Grand taxis are usually sedan-sized Mercedes Benz and legally can only be picked up at a taxi stand but this one "did us a favor." We thanked the neighbors profusely and hopped in.
There was already a couple in there and the driver told us he'd drop them off first and then us. They didn't look to pleased to see us, but we chatted them up in their native language, and explained what we were doing in Morocco. I also dropped the line about us working with the Ministry of Youth and Sports (true!) because we were told that could persuade someone not to cheat us....
So to make a long story short, we make it to where we wanted to go and we ask how much and the guy tells us 120 dirhams!! 30 DH would have been sufficient, if not generous. This was outrageous! The three of us responded shocked: "WHAT? THAT'S TOO EXPENSIVE" in Arabic. But his response was that he was coming from the airport and it is a flat rate. (lie). So we said we were not going to pay him 120 DH. Unfortunately though, even after that, we made two mistakes: 1) we should have gotten our luggage out of the trunk before paying him so that we could just walk away and he would have to chase us to get anything and undoubtedly he would accept something more realistic; and 2) we should have had bills smaller than 100 DH. It wasn't like he was going to give us change. So what choice did we have? He did us a "favor" and offered us 100 DH, which was the smallest bill we had. He accepted it of course, but it was still dumb. Fortunately, in our travel budget for our site visit they had worked in 120 DHs per person labeled as "in case you get overcharged for travel." So we were reimbursed. It was still annoying though.
Obviously in retrospect there are things I would have done differently in that cab ride, such as write down his license plate/car number. Taxis have gotten in big trouble for cheating PC volunteers.
By the time we got back to the PC hub we had been traveling for over 12 hours for a ride that should have taken 8. I'm still tired.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
New Site!!
New town versus old town
I am currently experiencing my "site visit" for Peace Corps. For one week, towards the end of training, Peace Corps gives us our permanent assignment and then has us go and get to know our new 'city' a little bit. So I'm here for a week, living with a new host family and figuring out logistics with the volunteer who I'm replacing. Then, I'll return to my training city for another couple weeks of language learning. Then I'll be officially Sworn In as a Peace Corps Volunteer on November 24th, and on the 25th, Thanksgiving Day, I'll begin my trek back to my permanent site for two years. I will live with this same new host family until January 1st, when I will move into an apartment here.
So, where am I? Well, the exact location I'm not allowed to reveal on a blog for safety purposes. But, I can tell you this: 1) I'm in the desert 2) I'm in the south east 3) I'm closer to Algeria than the next closest Moroccan city... by far! I'm so close to Algeria that they I'm going to have to learn different vocabulary so I can speak Algerian Arabic. Basically I am in the middle of NOWHERE. I took a couple of buses to get here from Fes, and as we were driving east from Errachidia, it was kilometer after kilometer of NOTHING. Occasionally we saw a few dyors (houses) out in the middle of nowhere, but I'm talking sandstorm-sanddune-camel middle-of-nowhere. I'm five hours from the next "big" city. (In Morocco, anyway. But we are NOT allowed to go to Algeria....)
So now I can compare:
My training city is an hour and a half north of Fes, which means in the north of Morocco. We are training further north than any volunteers. They can't put volunteers that far north because after my city it's all towns funded by hashish. And that could get messy. Even some of the youth of my training city who have finished school and are now unemployed can go on the weekends to harvest hash and take home a sizeable wad of dirhams. (This is very common, and it provokes me to wonder what the real unemployment number is, since so many who are "unemployed" in the region are employed by the hashish business.) So, in comparison to my permanent site, my training city is fairly snazzy. It's hilly, at the edge of the riff mountains, and relatively unpolluted by litter. My host family has what I thought were very small and simple accomodations-- and they are. But in comparison to my new host family in my Morocco-Algerian (haha!) permanent site, my training host family has some nice stuff.
Training Host Family's House: only two rooms, mine and a main room where all the sleeping and living is done. Floors are tile and covered with nice, thick carpet.
Permanent site's host family house: Larger, three rooms plus an inner courtyard, you could call it. One room is my bedroom, one room is for the TV/Eating/Living, and one room is for sleeping. The "courtyard" is in the center. It's a cement floor with an open ceiling (i.e. no ceiling) and I think this is more typical to the Arab design style. (The Arabs in this city are proud and claim they have no Shilha (berber) in them....) In this center courtyard you could look up and see the clouds pass by, and hang your laundry on the clothes line, all without leaving the house... It could rain, but no worries, there is a big drain in the middle. No plants or anything, but I can't come up with a better word.
While my new digs might sound nicer, in terms of luxury items, they aren't. I thought my old host family was semi-roughing it by not having beds. We all sleep on "ponges" (like sponges) and they are like narrow, backless couches that line the walls of the living room. They don't put sheets on them, and they just lie down when they're tired and cover themselves with a big blanket. My new host family doesn't even have ponges. We all sleep in the floor. They made up my room, which, when I first got here, just has a small table in it. By the afternoon, it had a rug on the floor and then two thin mats, about the thickness of an aerobics mat, a pillow and two blankets. And they whole family sleeps in one room on these thin mats, on the floor. The family, by the way, consists of a mom, who is 34 and recently divorced, and an 11 year old daughter named Oumayma (yes, my first host family also has a daughter named Oumayma), and a six year old daughter named Iness.
I hope this doesn't sound ungrateful. I am incredibly happy and lucky to have not just one, but TWO, wonderful families who are willing to take in a young foreigner who speaks like a three year old. Both families have made me as comfortable as possible and are completely giving of themselves and whatever resources they have. I'm merely making a comparison in a blog to show how every new experience like this that I have I am finding out more and more about how people here live and how much "stuff" (or lack thereof) we really need to be happy. I slept 11 and a half hours on the floor last night in my new Maroc/Algerian homestay after traveling for two days to get here and am happy to sleep here again tonight.
I am also lucky because Melanie, the volunteer that I'm replacing, is still here this week, and she doesn't go back to the U.S. until next week. More on how I'm preparing to pick up where she's left off next time.
I am currently experiencing my "site visit" for Peace Corps. For one week, towards the end of training, Peace Corps gives us our permanent assignment and then has us go and get to know our new 'city' a little bit. So I'm here for a week, living with a new host family and figuring out logistics with the volunteer who I'm replacing. Then, I'll return to my training city for another couple weeks of language learning. Then I'll be officially Sworn In as a Peace Corps Volunteer on November 24th, and on the 25th, Thanksgiving Day, I'll begin my trek back to my permanent site for two years. I will live with this same new host family until January 1st, when I will move into an apartment here.
So, where am I? Well, the exact location I'm not allowed to reveal on a blog for safety purposes. But, I can tell you this: 1) I'm in the desert 2) I'm in the south east 3) I'm closer to Algeria than the next closest Moroccan city... by far! I'm so close to Algeria that they I'm going to have to learn different vocabulary so I can speak Algerian Arabic. Basically I am in the middle of NOWHERE. I took a couple of buses to get here from Fes, and as we were driving east from Errachidia, it was kilometer after kilometer of NOTHING. Occasionally we saw a few dyors (houses) out in the middle of nowhere, but I'm talking sandstorm-sanddune-camel middle-of-nowhere. I'm five hours from the next "big" city. (In Morocco, anyway. But we are NOT allowed to go to Algeria....)
So now I can compare:
My training city is an hour and a half north of Fes, which means in the north of Morocco. We are training further north than any volunteers. They can't put volunteers that far north because after my city it's all towns funded by hashish. And that could get messy. Even some of the youth of my training city who have finished school and are now unemployed can go on the weekends to harvest hash and take home a sizeable wad of dirhams. (This is very common, and it provokes me to wonder what the real unemployment number is, since so many who are "unemployed" in the region are employed by the hashish business.) So, in comparison to my permanent site, my training city is fairly snazzy. It's hilly, at the edge of the riff mountains, and relatively unpolluted by litter. My host family has what I thought were very small and simple accomodations-- and they are. But in comparison to my new host family in my Morocco-Algerian (haha!) permanent site, my training host family has some nice stuff.
Training Host Family's House: only two rooms, mine and a main room where all the sleeping and living is done. Floors are tile and covered with nice, thick carpet.
Permanent site's host family house: Larger, three rooms plus an inner courtyard, you could call it. One room is my bedroom, one room is for the TV/Eating/Living, and one room is for sleeping. The "courtyard" is in the center. It's a cement floor with an open ceiling (i.e. no ceiling) and I think this is more typical to the Arab design style. (The Arabs in this city are proud and claim they have no Shilha (berber) in them....) In this center courtyard you could look up and see the clouds pass by, and hang your laundry on the clothes line, all without leaving the house... It could rain, but no worries, there is a big drain in the middle. No plants or anything, but I can't come up with a better word.
While my new digs might sound nicer, in terms of luxury items, they aren't. I thought my old host family was semi-roughing it by not having beds. We all sleep on "ponges" (like sponges) and they are like narrow, backless couches that line the walls of the living room. They don't put sheets on them, and they just lie down when they're tired and cover themselves with a big blanket. My new host family doesn't even have ponges. We all sleep in the floor. They made up my room, which, when I first got here, just has a small table in it. By the afternoon, it had a rug on the floor and then two thin mats, about the thickness of an aerobics mat, a pillow and two blankets. And they whole family sleeps in one room on these thin mats, on the floor. The family, by the way, consists of a mom, who is 34 and recently divorced, and an 11 year old daughter named Oumayma (yes, my first host family also has a daughter named Oumayma), and a six year old daughter named Iness.
I hope this doesn't sound ungrateful. I am incredibly happy and lucky to have not just one, but TWO, wonderful families who are willing to take in a young foreigner who speaks like a three year old. Both families have made me as comfortable as possible and are completely giving of themselves and whatever resources they have. I'm merely making a comparison in a blog to show how every new experience like this that I have I am finding out more and more about how people here live and how much "stuff" (or lack thereof) we really need to be happy. I slept 11 and a half hours on the floor last night in my new Maroc/Algerian homestay after traveling for two days to get here and am happy to sleep here again tonight.
I am also lucky because Melanie, the volunteer that I'm replacing, is still here this week, and she doesn't go back to the U.S. until next week. More on how I'm preparing to pick up where she's left off next time.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Odds and Ends
I haven't blogged in a while. For over a week we had no internet, and then after that I typed one blog about learning the language but somewhere in between my computer and the world wide web, the contents were lost in cyber space, probably due to a bad internet connection. So I gritted (grit?) my teeth and wrote it again only to have my computer decide to do something to the file so it's not able to be opened. So I haven't written a language blog again yet because it doesn't seem like it's meant to be.
I'll say this about Arabic: I've had 4 full weeks of learning Arabic and am doing very well. I can say very simple paragraphs and convey ideas to my family without too much effort. More importantly, I am understanding more and more of what they say and using fewer and fewer hand gestures. This is great. I think of vocabulary like an arsenal. Every time I speak and am able to pull a word from my head it's like one bullet. The smaller my vocabulary, the sooner I run out of bullets and have to use miming or just forget about it. So now I'm getting the grammar, but more more importantly, I'm building my vocabulary. I have another few weeks of language training before they send me into the unknown.
Speaking of my permanent site: The way Peace Corps works is that you spend the first two or three months training in one city and go through a series of interviews with Moroccan staff and they choose to place you in a different part of the country after training, where you live for two years, serving the people of those town. I have now had two interviews with the PC Youth Development Moroccan staff about where I might be placed for my permanent site and I have a feeling I have secured myself a spot in the desert. I don't know for sure but they asked me what my preferences were and I told them Preference #1 was I wanted to be in an Arabic speaking region. I had joked with my family before I got here about the Berber languages but that is actually a real possibility. But I would really rather stick to Arabic, and not Tashelgheit or Tamazhit. So I told PC that I would go anywhere, as long as I could continue learning Arabic. They seemed fine with that, because most Youth Development sites are Arabic. It's more the health and agriculture sectors that learn Tash or Tam. Then I said my #2 preference after Arabic was that I didn't want to be cold. I told them that I would rather have heat any day than cold. And they said "So what about the Sahara?" and I said "fine with me." So then I talked around with other trainees and most of them had preferenced NOT being in the heat. They even had a section of a questionnaire that said "what's one thing you can't live without" and one of my training site mates wrote "mountains." So I really hope that I do get a southern province like Zagora. The YD volunteers there are learning Arabic and it can get to 140 degrees in the summer outside during the day, and doesn't drop below 50 or 60 in the winter. I'd take 120 degrees over 20 degrees any day. On October 29th I'll find out my permanent site for the next two years
Talk of Taxis:
Last weekend I went to Fes just for fun, but the harrowing 90 minute taxi ride leaves much to comment on. The taxi ride to Fes is the scariest thing I ever do. I should probably not even tell you about it. It's always an old-ish (1990s) mercedes benz sedan. And a full car, according to Moroccan law, is 4 in the back and 2 passengers in the front, plus the driver. And no it's not a bench seat. So that makes 7 per sedan. What's a seat belt?? A taxi driver will not leave unless it has six passengers, unless you want to pay for an extra seat. Tight squeeze to say the least. The roads, at least, are in good condition, but most of the way it's two lanes and they, of course, pass people.(Though most taxi drivers do a good job of making sure they can see when they pass.) But what stresses me is that they'll pass somebody but just chill out in the left lane for a good while until they see that there's on-coming traffic. I don't know why they don't just get back over right away. And sometimes they just cruise into the left lane for sport. And in the case that there are three lanes- the middle one seems to go both ways, though I think it does have an assigned direction. Red lights are a good suggestion, but they function more like stop signs. I can never sleep in these taxi rides. I keep my eyes wide open and say "mashi doble, aafak" which means "do not even think about passing while we're on this curve!" (ok, it doesn't really say that, I can only say "no pass, please. But my intonation gets the point across.) My comrades always sleep through it. I'm just too much of a control freak for that.
Fes was very fun. We roughed it a little. It was a fine hotel. It was only 50 d's a person (about $6). There was no shower, but there was a toilet and sink at the end of the hall. Also I have about a billion ant bites in various clusters now. My blanket? Maybe. I didn't feel them biting me so they are not fire ants or anything but I'm definitely going to check my bed next time I stay in such a "budget friendly" hotel.
We spent hours wandering the twists and turns of the old medina and visited the tanneries where leather is dyed and stretched. I bought some earrings since I left all mine in the states. I am not so good at bargaining but I'm getting there. It's incredible what a difference speaking Moroccan Arabic makes in the prices we're offered. For example, Hannah, another PC Trainee whom we met up with in Fes, wanted to buy a leather purse outside the tannery. We talked to the shopkeeper in a little Darija (Moroccan Arabic). She asked how much the purse cost and he said 500 Ds. (or $63) And Hannah was like "no way, jose" And started bargaining. And after walking away a few times and always being called back by the shop keeper, she got him down to 350D ($44). Still expensive for a PC volunteer but it's a nice quality leather bag that she'll have forever. So she said "ok that's fine." So then we were talking with the shopkeeper, completely in Arabic, about how we're working in Morocco, about Peace Corps and that we make Dirhams, not dollars. and when Hannah got to the register and paid, the shopkeeper gave her back 50 D, and said 300 was fine. So he pulled his own price down! I'm sure that's unheard of, and I think it's because we were speaking his language-- not even modern standard Arabic.
As soon as I find an internet connection fast enough to upload photos in under a few hours, I will post photos to my facebook of all this and then post an open link here.
I'll say this about Arabic: I've had 4 full weeks of learning Arabic and am doing very well. I can say very simple paragraphs and convey ideas to my family without too much effort. More importantly, I am understanding more and more of what they say and using fewer and fewer hand gestures. This is great. I think of vocabulary like an arsenal. Every time I speak and am able to pull a word from my head it's like one bullet. The smaller my vocabulary, the sooner I run out of bullets and have to use miming or just forget about it. So now I'm getting the grammar, but more more importantly, I'm building my vocabulary. I have another few weeks of language training before they send me into the unknown.
Speaking of my permanent site: The way Peace Corps works is that you spend the first two or three months training in one city and go through a series of interviews with Moroccan staff and they choose to place you in a different part of the country after training, where you live for two years, serving the people of those town. I have now had two interviews with the PC Youth Development Moroccan staff about where I might be placed for my permanent site and I have a feeling I have secured myself a spot in the desert. I don't know for sure but they asked me what my preferences were and I told them Preference #1 was I wanted to be in an Arabic speaking region. I had joked with my family before I got here about the Berber languages but that is actually a real possibility. But I would really rather stick to Arabic, and not Tashelgheit or Tamazhit. So I told PC that I would go anywhere, as long as I could continue learning Arabic. They seemed fine with that, because most Youth Development sites are Arabic. It's more the health and agriculture sectors that learn Tash or Tam. Then I said my #2 preference after Arabic was that I didn't want to be cold. I told them that I would rather have heat any day than cold. And they said "So what about the Sahara?" and I said "fine with me." So then I talked around with other trainees and most of them had preferenced NOT being in the heat. They even had a section of a questionnaire that said "what's one thing you can't live without" and one of my training site mates wrote "mountains." So I really hope that I do get a southern province like Zagora. The YD volunteers there are learning Arabic and it can get to 140 degrees in the summer outside during the day, and doesn't drop below 50 or 60 in the winter. I'd take 120 degrees over 20 degrees any day. On October 29th I'll find out my permanent site for the next two years
Talk of Taxis:
Last weekend I went to Fes just for fun, but the harrowing 90 minute taxi ride leaves much to comment on. The taxi ride to Fes is the scariest thing I ever do. I should probably not even tell you about it. It's always an old-ish (1990s) mercedes benz sedan. And a full car, according to Moroccan law, is 4 in the back and 2 passengers in the front, plus the driver. And no it's not a bench seat. So that makes 7 per sedan. What's a seat belt?? A taxi driver will not leave unless it has six passengers, unless you want to pay for an extra seat. Tight squeeze to say the least. The roads, at least, are in good condition, but most of the way it's two lanes and they, of course, pass people.(Though most taxi drivers do a good job of making sure they can see when they pass.) But what stresses me is that they'll pass somebody but just chill out in the left lane for a good while until they see that there's on-coming traffic. I don't know why they don't just get back over right away. And sometimes they just cruise into the left lane for sport. And in the case that there are three lanes- the middle one seems to go both ways, though I think it does have an assigned direction. Red lights are a good suggestion, but they function more like stop signs. I can never sleep in these taxi rides. I keep my eyes wide open and say "mashi doble, aafak" which means "do not even think about passing while we're on this curve!" (ok, it doesn't really say that, I can only say "no pass, please. But my intonation gets the point across.) My comrades always sleep through it. I'm just too much of a control freak for that.
Fes was very fun. We roughed it a little. It was a fine hotel. It was only 50 d's a person (about $6). There was no shower, but there was a toilet and sink at the end of the hall. Also I have about a billion ant bites in various clusters now. My blanket? Maybe. I didn't feel them biting me so they are not fire ants or anything but I'm definitely going to check my bed next time I stay in such a "budget friendly" hotel.
We spent hours wandering the twists and turns of the old medina and visited the tanneries where leather is dyed and stretched. I bought some earrings since I left all mine in the states. I am not so good at bargaining but I'm getting there. It's incredible what a difference speaking Moroccan Arabic makes in the prices we're offered. For example, Hannah, another PC Trainee whom we met up with in Fes, wanted to buy a leather purse outside the tannery. We talked to the shopkeeper in a little Darija (Moroccan Arabic). She asked how much the purse cost and he said 500 Ds. (or $63) And Hannah was like "no way, jose" And started bargaining. And after walking away a few times and always being called back by the shop keeper, she got him down to 350D ($44). Still expensive for a PC volunteer but it's a nice quality leather bag that she'll have forever. So she said "ok that's fine." So then we were talking with the shopkeeper, completely in Arabic, about how we're working in Morocco, about Peace Corps and that we make Dirhams, not dollars. and when Hannah got to the register and paid, the shopkeeper gave her back 50 D, and said 300 was fine. So he pulled his own price down! I'm sure that's unheard of, and I think it's because we were speaking his language-- not even modern standard Arabic.
As soon as I find an internet connection fast enough to upload photos in under a few hours, I will post photos to my facebook of all this and then post an open link here.
Monday, October 4, 2010
This was my first full weekend in my village and it was full of interesting bits.
MAKING BREAD
Saturday morning we had school (we have school every day but Sunday). Luckily, Saturdays are half days, so we were only there 8:30 - 2:00 or so, and that includes our 1.5hr lunch break. So after class I went home and hung with my host family. This was exciting because for the first time in my life I hand made bread!! The dough was made like typical bread, I think, and I mushed it around in a big heavy, authentically ethnic bowl. I was mashing and punching and kneading for probably half an hour! And my host sisters would laugh from time to time and grab the dough from me, mush it around correctly, and then give it back. They truly must wonder how I survived in the U.S. Either they think it's a miracle or they believed I pay somebody to make meals and do my laundry for me. So anyway, I mixed tons of flour, water, and another flour-like powder together, and then when the dough was ready we made little dough balls, which, according to my sisters, were all subpar, but they showed me how to do it and I improved. Then I took a dough ball and made it into a big round circle that looked like it could become a really thin pizza. Then I spread some kind of wheaty looking, granulated substance on it (yeast?) and folded my circle into a square. Then Hasna, my host sister, used a TON of oil to fry the dough and instead of bake it, it becomes fried bread called "bsmn." (no, I didn't forget the vowels; they are not there.) Making bread by hand made me appreciate how much work goes into it. It made me feel like a more worthwhile humanbeing.
KARATE CLASS
After that eventful afternoon I went to Karate class. All of us except one have decided to enroll in a Karate class together. I would say it's less karate and more a kickboxing aerobic class. I'm getting exercise AND three hot showers a week. Though the studio only has 1 locker room so the girls go first and we have about five minutes to get in and out. But I'm much cleaner than I was the first two weeks. They say gaining weight during training is inevitable just because of the amazing amounts of food we eat. But I would say we are fighting it!
SUNDAY
THE HAMMAM
So Sunday I had my first hmmam experience! The Hmmam is the public bathhouse in Morocco. They seem to exist in every muslim country. Women and men both go. (though on separate sides, of course) and you pay a little to get in and then it's like a hot steam room and you stay for sometimes 2 hours (!) and bathe. So we go, it's 9DH per person, which is about $1.10. It's exactly what you'd picture a bathhouse to look like. There are three rooms. One that is kind of steamy, one that is very steamy, and one that is not steamy at all. The middle room, the steamy one, has two wells of water that are constantly flowing. One well has extremely hot water, and one has luke warm water. There were women there of all shapes and sizes. And everyone wears underwear, but just the bottoms. Being completely naked is "shooma" (shameful). So nobody bathes at the hmmam completely naked. So from what I gather, you sit there and scrub and wash and splash around in really hot water for a few hours. You use this sandpaper-like glove to scrub yourself and if you're doing it right you watch your skin slough off all around you. So I'm just splashing around and then the woman who works there comes up to me and offers to scrub me down. This is what she's paid to do. It costs extra, like 15 DH ($2.00) but she lays you down on a ledge and gives you a full scrub and massage. It felt really good and she sure got all my dead skin off, but it was really uncomfortable because throughout the whole process she was talking to me about becoming a Muslim. They warned us that people would try to convert us as soon as we began to gather the vocabulary to converse and so I guess that has begun. This woman at the hmmam is probably between 18 and 20 and very friendly but she just kept trying to get me to say the Shahadda, which is something along the lines of "Allah is the only God and Muhammad is his prophet" and apparently that's the beginning of the conversion process and we're not supposed to say it. I get that she loves her faith and is trying to share it with me but it was just uncomfortable because I don't have the language to say "no thanks, I'm not interested" without sounding rude.
MORE CONVERSION TALKS/WEDDINGS
So during my hmmam experience, the woman who works there was also telling me that she has two brothers that she would really like me to marry, and that my brother should marry her. She was completely serious too. It's a tough situation to be in when you don't have much vocabulary. Marriage is CONSTANTLY a topic here. Not a meal goes by that my host mother doesn't mention me marrying a Moroccan, most favorably, her son Hosin, who is 26 and still not married. He lives in Rabat. She is constantly talking about how fun a wedding would be and we'd slaughter a couple cows and it would be great. I try to take it as a compliment and not let it get to me. She knows that I think it's funny and not gonna happen, so we laugh about it together, but I really don't think she's kidding. So today when we were hanging outside with some neighbors, the women across the street told me I needed to marry a Muslim while I'm in Morocco so that I can become a Muslim. And then this neighbor ran inside her house and came out with a Ko'ran and gave it to me! I didn't know what to say! I took it of course because she really wanted me to have it, but I really hope this doesn't lead to more conversion talks. I realize that it probably will but soon I'll have the language to say something other than "Inshallah." I completely understand that they are well-intentioned but it is still very strange.
THE WATER
Last thing-- during the middle of the day today we suddenly had no running water. Nobody on our street had water either. So Hasna (my sister), and I walked with buckets to a well and fetched our water. I wanted to know WHY we didn't have any water. And I know the words for "there is no water. why?" and the response always seemed inconclusive. Eventually I figured out that they were basically saying "well, you know, sometimes the water goes out and there is no 'why'." And nobody panicked or called the city. They just went to the well. And then in the afternoon the water was back on and all was running smoothly again and I got to handwash some of my laundry.
MAKING BREAD
Saturday morning we had school (we have school every day but Sunday). Luckily, Saturdays are half days, so we were only there 8:30 - 2:00 or so, and that includes our 1.5hr lunch break. So after class I went home and hung with my host family. This was exciting because for the first time in my life I hand made bread!! The dough was made like typical bread, I think, and I mushed it around in a big heavy, authentically ethnic bowl. I was mashing and punching and kneading for probably half an hour! And my host sisters would laugh from time to time and grab the dough from me, mush it around correctly, and then give it back. They truly must wonder how I survived in the U.S. Either they think it's a miracle or they believed I pay somebody to make meals and do my laundry for me. So anyway, I mixed tons of flour, water, and another flour-like powder together, and then when the dough was ready we made little dough balls, which, according to my sisters, were all subpar, but they showed me how to do it and I improved. Then I took a dough ball and made it into a big round circle that looked like it could become a really thin pizza. Then I spread some kind of wheaty looking, granulated substance on it (yeast?) and folded my circle into a square. Then Hasna, my host sister, used a TON of oil to fry the dough and instead of bake it, it becomes fried bread called "bsmn." (no, I didn't forget the vowels; they are not there.) Making bread by hand made me appreciate how much work goes into it. It made me feel like a more worthwhile humanbeing.
KARATE CLASS
After that eventful afternoon I went to Karate class. All of us except one have decided to enroll in a Karate class together. I would say it's less karate and more a kickboxing aerobic class. I'm getting exercise AND three hot showers a week. Though the studio only has 1 locker room so the girls go first and we have about five minutes to get in and out. But I'm much cleaner than I was the first two weeks. They say gaining weight during training is inevitable just because of the amazing amounts of food we eat. But I would say we are fighting it!
SUNDAY
THE HAMMAM
So Sunday I had my first hmmam experience! The Hmmam is the public bathhouse in Morocco. They seem to exist in every muslim country. Women and men both go. (though on separate sides, of course) and you pay a little to get in and then it's like a hot steam room and you stay for sometimes 2 hours (!) and bathe. So we go, it's 9DH per person, which is about $1.10. It's exactly what you'd picture a bathhouse to look like. There are three rooms. One that is kind of steamy, one that is very steamy, and one that is not steamy at all. The middle room, the steamy one, has two wells of water that are constantly flowing. One well has extremely hot water, and one has luke warm water. There were women there of all shapes and sizes. And everyone wears underwear, but just the bottoms. Being completely naked is "shooma" (shameful). So nobody bathes at the hmmam completely naked. So from what I gather, you sit there and scrub and wash and splash around in really hot water for a few hours. You use this sandpaper-like glove to scrub yourself and if you're doing it right you watch your skin slough off all around you. So I'm just splashing around and then the woman who works there comes up to me and offers to scrub me down. This is what she's paid to do. It costs extra, like 15 DH ($2.00) but she lays you down on a ledge and gives you a full scrub and massage. It felt really good and she sure got all my dead skin off, but it was really uncomfortable because throughout the whole process she was talking to me about becoming a Muslim. They warned us that people would try to convert us as soon as we began to gather the vocabulary to converse and so I guess that has begun. This woman at the hmmam is probably between 18 and 20 and very friendly but she just kept trying to get me to say the Shahadda, which is something along the lines of "Allah is the only God and Muhammad is his prophet" and apparently that's the beginning of the conversion process and we're not supposed to say it. I get that she loves her faith and is trying to share it with me but it was just uncomfortable because I don't have the language to say "no thanks, I'm not interested" without sounding rude.
MORE CONVERSION TALKS/WEDDINGS
So during my hmmam experience, the woman who works there was also telling me that she has two brothers that she would really like me to marry, and that my brother should marry her. She was completely serious too. It's a tough situation to be in when you don't have much vocabulary. Marriage is CONSTANTLY a topic here. Not a meal goes by that my host mother doesn't mention me marrying a Moroccan, most favorably, her son Hosin, who is 26 and still not married. He lives in Rabat. She is constantly talking about how fun a wedding would be and we'd slaughter a couple cows and it would be great. I try to take it as a compliment and not let it get to me. She knows that I think it's funny and not gonna happen, so we laugh about it together, but I really don't think she's kidding. So today when we were hanging outside with some neighbors, the women across the street told me I needed to marry a Muslim while I'm in Morocco so that I can become a Muslim. And then this neighbor ran inside her house and came out with a Ko'ran and gave it to me! I didn't know what to say! I took it of course because she really wanted me to have it, but I really hope this doesn't lead to more conversion talks. I realize that it probably will but soon I'll have the language to say something other than "Inshallah." I completely understand that they are well-intentioned but it is still very strange.
THE WATER
Last thing-- during the middle of the day today we suddenly had no running water. Nobody on our street had water either. So Hasna (my sister), and I walked with buckets to a well and fetched our water. I wanted to know WHY we didn't have any water. And I know the words for "there is no water. why?" and the response always seemed inconclusive. Eventually I figured out that they were basically saying "well, you know, sometimes the water goes out and there is no 'why'." And nobody panicked or called the city. They just went to the well. And then in the afternoon the water was back on and all was running smoothly again and I got to handwash some of my laundry.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Would you rather be poor in Morocco or in the U.S.?
I have only been in Morocco about two weeks but I have started thinking about poverty and luxury in different ways. In Dallas, during AmeriCorps, I got to go on "home visits" to some of the families of the kids in my program. And these were some of the poorest people in America. (Average household income of $9,000 annually). And yet, they had showers, hot water, unit a/c, bedrooms, closets, and a place to do the laundry-- even if that was a laundromat quite a walk away. The poor in America even have cars, albeit, unreliable cars.
So then you think about the family I'm living with here in Morocco, who are poor, though not nearly as poor as some. We don't have a shower (because it's too expensive when all you really need to shower is 1/2 a bucket's worth of water.) , no hot water, we don't have any kind of A/C other than the "skylight" (re: open hole) in the ceiling, no way to do laundry but by hand, no stove, just a butane tank with a grill held over it, no trash pick up, no closets or wardrobes, just a cabinet with everything they own held within it, and definitely no car. They don't have much "stuff" at all.
So I can understand the moderate poor of the world wanting to go to the U.S. in search of ways to make life a little easier. (I don't think this entry applies to the absolutely and completely impoverished.) Why wouldn't you go if you had the opportunity? But here is where the decision is tricky: would you rather be poor in a country where everyone is poor, or poor in a country where you are obviously "without" and being poor is stigmatized and something to be ashamed of? In Morocco, more than 50% of the population is considered to be living below poverty. So my family, who is poor, is happy being is just a regular part of society-- there is no stigma attached to their style of living because that's how everyone is. Sure, they know they are without things like washing machines and showers, but so is almost everyone, so it's no big deal. That's life. I'm not sure which I'd choose.
[obviously this doesn't include any aspects of choosing to immigrate like health care, education, employment, etc. because I've only been here two weeks and don't know anything about that yet.]
So then you think about the family I'm living with here in Morocco, who are poor, though not nearly as poor as some. We don't have a shower (because it's too expensive when all you really need to shower is 1/2 a bucket's worth of water.) , no hot water, we don't have any kind of A/C other than the "skylight" (re: open hole) in the ceiling, no way to do laundry but by hand, no stove, just a butane tank with a grill held over it, no trash pick up, no closets or wardrobes, just a cabinet with everything they own held within it, and definitely no car. They don't have much "stuff" at all.
So I can understand the moderate poor of the world wanting to go to the U.S. in search of ways to make life a little easier. (I don't think this entry applies to the absolutely and completely impoverished.) Why wouldn't you go if you had the opportunity? But here is where the decision is tricky: would you rather be poor in a country where everyone is poor, or poor in a country where you are obviously "without" and being poor is stigmatized and something to be ashamed of? In Morocco, more than 50% of the population is considered to be living below poverty. So my family, who is poor, is happy being is just a regular part of society-- there is no stigma attached to their style of living because that's how everyone is. Sure, they know they are without things like washing machines and showers, but so is almost everyone, so it's no big deal. That's life. I'm not sure which I'd choose.
[obviously this doesn't include any aspects of choosing to immigrate like health care, education, employment, etc. because I've only been here two weeks and don't know anything about that yet.]
Friday, September 24, 2010
"Birthdays" or lack thereof
Before moving in with our host families, we got a little sheet of paper with the stats of our family, amenities in the household, and those kinds of things. Mine told me I had two host sisters, single, ages 20 and 17. So yesterday during Arabic lessons we learned how to say "how old are you" and "I am ____ years old." So I decied to practice this with my host sisters. I asked the younger one how old she was and she said "18." So that seemed normal, and I figured she was 17 when the mom filled it out. When I asked the older sister she said "23 or 24..." and I kept asking if it was 23 or 24 and I realized that she did not know! My reaction was "how can you not know how old you are!" But of course I didn't show this reaction. It was clear that this was not something they think about often because it obviously piqued the interest of the younger sister and she pulled out a birth record of sorts. It was handwritten, not in Arabic, in french (a language they don't speak, which is a point of contempt for me....save that for another blog) And the older sister was 26!! She had no idea! She sat there and did the math. So my impression from that was that age is obviously not something to be pinpointed and both the sisters birthdays passed this week and they didn't even know their birthdays. I guess it was naive of me to think that birthdays are so important everywhere. I knew birthdays or age were no big deal among peoples that don't keep written record, but this is a normal, low-income family, with jobs, and a little schooling, and in a large town.
So later on that night we were talking about how I don't like it cold and I was trying to say the months and I realized that they also didn't know the order of the months. They knew the seasons very well of course but aside from the month we're in, they couldn't name them. So then at our lessons earlier I asked if this was normal or exceptional for my family and my Language and Culture Faciilitator (LCF) who is Moroccan, said that it was totally normal and unless you have a job that deals with fiscal years or something and if you're lower class, you just forget about those things like birthdays and months because they are not important.
So, lesson is that you don't have to go TOO far from home (relatively) so get such a different take on what is "basic knowledge" and "important."
So later on that night we were talking about how I don't like it cold and I was trying to say the months and I realized that they also didn't know the order of the months. They knew the seasons very well of course but aside from the month we're in, they couldn't name them. So then at our lessons earlier I asked if this was normal or exceptional for my family and my Language and Culture Faciilitator (LCF) who is Moroccan, said that it was totally normal and unless you have a job that deals with fiscal years or something and if you're lower class, you just forget about those things like birthdays and months because they are not important.
So, lesson is that you don't have to go TOO far from home (relatively) so get such a different take on what is "basic knowledge" and "important."
Thursday, September 23, 2010
learning Arabic, homestay, etc.
Monday: September 20th
I have decided to blog via microsoft office, and then when I get to the Cyber cafe, I can just copy and paste my entries. So these entries begin today.
Today, Monday, was my first day of Arabic classes. Arabic is a very challenging language. Mostly because it lacks a whole lot of vowels. There are five of us students in our teacher's "stagette" as we call it. We are all having trouble with pronunciation and memorizing the words and I think it's because in romance languages the vowels provide some sort of cadence. And without the vowels it's just a group of harsh sounds that you have to remember. Well, little by little, I guess. I would say I currently have a vocabulary of about 30 words consistently. That includes knowing numbers 1 - 10. Yesterday was when I arrived at my host family in a province outside of Fes (can't say exactly where). Yesterday was just a lot of empty, meaningless words and pantomime. Today was also a lot of meaningless words and pantomime BUT also some real language happening too! This is VERY exciting. It's amazing what you are able to convey with just a few words. I am in no way functional in the language and my host family is incredibly gracious, but little by little. After all, it has only been one day.
So now that I have moved in with a host family we can talk about some of the "cultural stretches" I have been partaking in. First let me start out by saying that I have been in Morocco 6 days and am not sick! Yay!
Cultural Adjustments
So the biggest adjustment is, of course, using a Turkish Toilet (TT). The TT is a squat toilet. It is also made of porcelain. You might call it a kneeler instead of a throne though. You can google image search it but basically, it's two raised parts for your feet and then everything else is on a downward slope with the hole. So, on your left side, about a foot and a half off the ground is always a faucet. Below the faucet is a bucket. So while you are doing your business you turn the faucet on to a trickle. when you are finished, we westerns use toilet paper, but a true Moroccan uses the water from the bucket to clean themselves. Then, if that's the method you choose, you pat yourself dry. And then "flush" the toilet with the water from the bucket. The water pushes everything down. There is no mechanics involved. All of this is done with flip flops. Flip flops that are not worn anywhere else in the house.
Today I had the pleasure of taking my first bucket bath. it actually was pleasant. I hadn't bathed in three days and this worked just fine. The bucket "bath" is done over the toilet. You are still wearing your toilet shoes only this time you may balance a stool over the toilet and sit while you bathe. So, before you shower you heat up hot water in a kettle. Then you mix that water with water from the toilet tap. You are not using the same bucket as the toilet bucket. This is a bigger, cleaner, shower bucket. Then you sit on your stool, with your flip flops on, over the toilet, and kind of take a sponge bath. It wasn't difficult at all. I even washed my hair. For that there is a cup or something so you can scoop water to pour over your head. Conditioner is kind of a pain in the butt for this reason, because it'd hard to rinse out when you don't have any kind of stream of water running on it. So in Morocco, at least in the poorer parts where I am, people may shower twice a week. It is expensive to have the butane to heat up the water so people take baths about twice a week at home and once a week they go to a place called Hammam, which is a bath house that women go to for a real scrub down. It costs a few Moroccan dirhams to get in, but then people stay for hours and use all these tools to exfoliate every inch of their body. You can even pay to have other people scrub you down. The hammams are, of course, seperated men/women. I haven't been yet, but apparently it's nice. Especially in the winter when it's cold.
More on the differences next time I'm at the cyber cafe. I have a running list of things to talk about.
I have decided to blog via microsoft office, and then when I get to the Cyber cafe, I can just copy and paste my entries. So these entries begin today.
Today, Monday, was my first day of Arabic classes. Arabic is a very challenging language. Mostly because it lacks a whole lot of vowels. There are five of us students in our teacher's "stagette" as we call it. We are all having trouble with pronunciation and memorizing the words and I think it's because in romance languages the vowels provide some sort of cadence. And without the vowels it's just a group of harsh sounds that you have to remember. Well, little by little, I guess. I would say I currently have a vocabulary of about 30 words consistently. That includes knowing numbers 1 - 10. Yesterday was when I arrived at my host family in a province outside of Fes (can't say exactly where). Yesterday was just a lot of empty, meaningless words and pantomime. Today was also a lot of meaningless words and pantomime BUT also some real language happening too! This is VERY exciting. It's amazing what you are able to convey with just a few words. I am in no way functional in the language and my host family is incredibly gracious, but little by little. After all, it has only been one day.
So now that I have moved in with a host family we can talk about some of the "cultural stretches" I have been partaking in. First let me start out by saying that I have been in Morocco 6 days and am not sick! Yay!
Cultural Adjustments
So the biggest adjustment is, of course, using a Turkish Toilet (TT). The TT is a squat toilet. It is also made of porcelain. You might call it a kneeler instead of a throne though. You can google image search it but basically, it's two raised parts for your feet and then everything else is on a downward slope with the hole. So, on your left side, about a foot and a half off the ground is always a faucet. Below the faucet is a bucket. So while you are doing your business you turn the faucet on to a trickle. when you are finished, we westerns use toilet paper, but a true Moroccan uses the water from the bucket to clean themselves. Then, if that's the method you choose, you pat yourself dry. And then "flush" the toilet with the water from the bucket. The water pushes everything down. There is no mechanics involved. All of this is done with flip flops. Flip flops that are not worn anywhere else in the house.
Today I had the pleasure of taking my first bucket bath. it actually was pleasant. I hadn't bathed in three days and this worked just fine. The bucket "bath" is done over the toilet. You are still wearing your toilet shoes only this time you may balance a stool over the toilet and sit while you bathe. So, before you shower you heat up hot water in a kettle. Then you mix that water with water from the toilet tap. You are not using the same bucket as the toilet bucket. This is a bigger, cleaner, shower bucket. Then you sit on your stool, with your flip flops on, over the toilet, and kind of take a sponge bath. It wasn't difficult at all. I even washed my hair. For that there is a cup or something so you can scoop water to pour over your head. Conditioner is kind of a pain in the butt for this reason, because it'd hard to rinse out when you don't have any kind of stream of water running on it. So in Morocco, at least in the poorer parts where I am, people may shower twice a week. It is expensive to have the butane to heat up the water so people take baths about twice a week at home and once a week they go to a place called Hammam, which is a bath house that women go to for a real scrub down. It costs a few Moroccan dirhams to get in, but then people stay for hours and use all these tools to exfoliate every inch of their body. You can even pay to have other people scrub you down. The hammams are, of course, seperated men/women. I haven't been yet, but apparently it's nice. Especially in the winter when it's cold.
More on the differences next time I'm at the cyber cafe. I have a running list of things to talk about.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Staging
I have arrived at staging! That is kind of like the orientation portion of the trip. It is in Philadelphia. And we are just here for one day of orientation, one night in a hotel (where I am now) and then tomorrow we go to the airport and board for Morocco!
What's fun about staging is that this is where you kind of get to check everybody out that you'll be traveling with and training with for the first three months in the country. Here are some estimated stats, from my opinion
There are 68 of us total, split between youth development volunteers (which is what I am) and small business development volunteers.
It's probably 60% women, 40% men. Maybe even more women than that.
I would guess the average age is about 28-30 years old. There are a number who are much older, like fifties and sixties, and a lot who are younger too. We were split up into two training classes so I would say that in my class of 35, about 10 have just graduated from college and are about 22 years old. So I'm a year older-- not the youngest but far from the average!
The amounts people packed vary greatly! Many people just brought one small suitcase but many also brought as much luggage as I did, which means a maxing out of our weight limit. It's quite diverse. And the things people chose as important are just as diverse. Some brought a TON of clothes and nothing else. I brought mostly toiletries and things like toothpaste, deodorant, and underwear. Some brought only Western clothes and some brought only Morocco-appropriate clothes (which is what I did)
In terms of readiness-- we were all in the same boat with atrocious Arabic with just a few exceptions of people who had taken a class or two before. No native speakers, to my knowledge. Many had decent French
Tomorrow I will get a better feel and finally get on that plane!
The excitement is only just beginning!!
What's fun about staging is that this is where you kind of get to check everybody out that you'll be traveling with and training with for the first three months in the country. Here are some estimated stats, from my opinion
There are 68 of us total, split between youth development volunteers (which is what I am) and small business development volunteers.
It's probably 60% women, 40% men. Maybe even more women than that.
I would guess the average age is about 28-30 years old. There are a number who are much older, like fifties and sixties, and a lot who are younger too. We were split up into two training classes so I would say that in my class of 35, about 10 have just graduated from college and are about 22 years old. So I'm a year older-- not the youngest but far from the average!
The amounts people packed vary greatly! Many people just brought one small suitcase but many also brought as much luggage as I did, which means a maxing out of our weight limit. It's quite diverse. And the things people chose as important are just as diverse. Some brought a TON of clothes and nothing else. I brought mostly toiletries and things like toothpaste, deodorant, and underwear. Some brought only Western clothes and some brought only Morocco-appropriate clothes (which is what I did)
In terms of readiness-- we were all in the same boat with atrocious Arabic with just a few exceptions of people who had taken a class or two before. No native speakers, to my knowledge. Many had decent French
Tomorrow I will get a better feel and finally get on that plane!
The excitement is only just beginning!!
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