"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."