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.
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