Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Site Mate/Laarobiya

The bad news: Hubbell has left me. Yes, my dearly beloved site mate that I had hoped would come and work with the Moroccan male youth, a population I have all but given up on, has left. He has moved to greener pastures- namely Ourzazate- a city with supermarkets, cheese, wine, an international airport, and (perhaps most importantly) other volunteers. So I am now back to being the only volunteer for 250km. So lame. He is a black belt in Kung Fu and the Ministry of Youth and Sports just opened a new sports center and they wanted someone with some real sports skills to come and teach there. So he got a site change. They figured this was easiest since he'd just moved here and hadn't gotten too attached yet.

The Good news: While Hubbell was still here, we got to check something off my Moroccan Bucket list! A visit to Laarobiya!! (pronounced Lah-roh-BI-ya- with the Lah, being how your Brooklyn, Jewish grandmother might yell to someone named "Larry" down the hall- nasally) Laarobiya means "countryside" so they say. How I would explain it would be the desert where the nomads live.

In the photos you may recognize these characters from my Eid Kbir photos, the Kaddouri family. Mrs. Kaddouri's sister married a nomad and adopted their lifestyle, so that was who we were supposed to go visit. When we got there though, Mrs. Kaddouri's sister and her husband had gone into Bouarfa for the day to go shopping. We were instead hosted by Mrs. Kaddouri's brother-in-law's other wife.


This is the typical tent of the nomad of the Beni Guil tribe. The Beni Guils are the Arab pastoralists in this region. They also live in western Algeria. They herd goats and sheep mostly. They don't move too frequently. The tent is made of woven wool. I would estimate it to be 30ftx15ft.

Don't think that they are living in tents because they are poor- oh no- many of these nomads have houses in Bouarfa and Oujda, and almost all have land rovers, trucks, and donkey drawn carriages. Some even have enough money that they feel comfortable keeping it in a bank. (Most people here do not have bank accounts.) I noted to my dad how interesting it was how these nomads will drive into Bouarfa and go to the bank and unload stacks and stacks of cash. "My, how lucrative is the shepherding business!" To which he suggested that they might be dealing in other industries, along the closed Moroccan/Algerian border, than just herding. Whatever is the case, these people have no desire to live a settled life in a house. They are nomads. This is their life. And they are happy to be living this way.


This shows the inside of the tent. Youssef is stooping, but down the center at its tallest point, it is tall enough for me to stand up, though maybe not someone who clears 6ft. Above this fire is a hole in the tent to let the smoke out. Their fuel is tumbleweed. What a staged photo this is though! I told the madam of the tent that I wanted to take a photo of her preparing tea for us, as we'd just arrived, but she said "no way can you photograph me!" so the boys immediately cozied up by the fire and posed.


Ok, Ok, so I accidentally photographed her just a bit. Here is Mr. Kaddouri "tending" the fire and Mrs. Kaddouri sitting in the foreground. In he background you can see our hostess. She's got a pink hijab on, covered by a black hijab on top of that.

After having some tea, some fresh goat's milk, fresh butter on fresh bread, and some Moroccan dates. We "kids" were sent outside to wander around the desert and climb a mountain while the ladies started cooking lunch. The men, after that, were not allowed in the tent at all. We ate lunch separately and the men even ate outside in some other structure.


Riding a donkey up semi-rocky terrain is a lot like riding a bumpy theme park ride; you can't stop laughing because you feel like you're going to fall off and you're being jostled around, but at the same time you're only about four feet off the ground so you can't allow yourself to be too terrified. This is my favorite of our donkey photos. Alae, who is four, was being really selfish with the donkey and didn't want to share, thus throwing a temper tantrum. Sanae was trying to secure him saying it was going to be alright. Hubbell is just laughing and wielding the go-faster-donkey! stick, Loubna, Alae's mother, is looking on, laughing. And Mostapha, another Kaddouri sibling, is probably yelling at Hubbell to use his go-faster-donkey! stick to make the donkey go faster and make Alae scream even more.


Alae and I look very calm here but there was still a lot of yelping and laughing on my part. Alae adjusted pretty quickly to the donkey and rode it all the way up the mountain. Youssef was an expert at that other donkey and the third was not in the mood for passengers at all, so we all took turns riding the other two.


This is a photo of me and Hicham, who was the son of the "other wife". He was the one guiding us up the mountain, which you can see behind us. I would say it was about 60F. A little chilly but sunny.


Just look at that view. It was incredible how far we were able to see. That is a dry river running through the middle.

It is days like this one that make me remember how lucky I am to be where I am. I have days where we might say "Bouarfa won today!" meaning I end the day feeling defeated. This is mostly due to the male youth in this country. (I've rehearsed a new response to "why don't you marry a Moroccan boy?" "Because 99% make lewd comments to me from the second I step out my door!") But there are days, like this one, where I can say that I won. Where I finish the day just over the moon to be exactly where I am. These are days where I've had particularly moving hours at the Dar Chebab, where I've really connected to the kids there. This also happens on days where I get entrenched in the culture: cultural festivities like weddings or baby-naming-parties**, or even seeing how people live out their daily lives. This nomad day is a good example.

I am to the point where I can't imagine never having come here. I can't imagine not knowing what I didn't know a year and a half ago. Today I went and ate lunch at a friend's house and after we women ate couscous on the floor of their house and then gazed at turkish soap operas, I thought to myself "How odd this would have been to me just two years ago... and now it seems totally normal." All in all, I'll take the bad with the good any day, to be able to experience everything that I have here- and will continue to experience over my next 8 months in Morocco.


**A baby-naming-party as I call it is called a "sabou3" (the 3 being a really really nasally A). In our American culture, the parents generally pick a name for the baby before its born and then have a "baby shower" to help prepare. In a culture where until very recently many, many babies died shortly after birth, or many mothers miscarried, a baby was not planned for until after it was already born. This is still followed today. I before-birth baby shower would be the ultimate jinxing of the pregnancy. So a baby has no name for its first week. The baby also has no clothes or anything else for the first week either- until the baby-naming-party where the baby gets its names and gifts. The infant mortality rate is still VERY high in Rural Morocco and most children are still born at home. I met one mother who has given birth to 8 live children and only 2 have lived past the 1-year mark. She's currently pregnant. Prenatal health is still virtually non-existent here and pregnant women will even fast during Ramadan up until the time of the baby's birth. This wikipedia page has infant mortality at "only" about 30 for every 1000 live births. But keep in mind that this figure also includes the modern cities.
(Note: the Beni Guil, for some reason, do a "tleta yam" or baby naming party on the third day, not the seventh. Not sure why. Maybe their survival rates are traditionally higher?)

4 comments:

  1. wonderful post. who are th folks in the last photo

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  2. Abby, I read your Dad's reference to your blog on Facebook. You've expressed so well why experiences away from the US are SO important in learning tolerance, appreciation of other cultures, habits, beliefs, etc. Keep it up!

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    1. Thank you very much for this! Today I got into a discussion with kids today who are studying "the brain drain" in school. This prompted them to ask me why I would ever leave to America to come to Morocco, and we got to discuss the values or learning about other cultures. They weren't totally convinced, but they appreciated that my family and friends are now much more versed in Morocco than ever before!

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