L'eid Kbir

December 21, 2007

Mbrook l’Eid!

Today is quite possibly one of the best days I’ve spent in Tamazitinu, and is if not the best day I’ve had so far in Morocco, it’s in the top three.

Today is l’Eid Kbir, one of the most important holidays in Islam. I’m not a Islamic scholar, so I can’t really tell you what it’s about, but I can certainly tell you what I’ve been doing for the last ten hours.

My next door neighbor told me to get up early so that I could watch people pray outside at 7:30. A few other people said that the prayer was at eight, so I figured if I got to the place by 7:45, I should be fine. I dressed in my kaftan and sparkly asinsi (square headscarf) with fringe, and left the house at 7:30. I hiked up the hill by my house, hoping to get a good view of the prayer courtyard on the other side.

It was quite anti-climactic. I reached the summit of the hill and the white courtyard came into view absolutely empty. Maybe I missed it, I thought. My heart fell. I should have gotten there at 7:30. I decided to walk to the public oven to buy some bread in case people came over, but it was closed. Some people were out but not many, and all the women were just wearing their normal clothes. I felt overdressed and like I didn’t really know what was going on.

I finally asked someone what time people prayed. “Eight-thirty.” A few other people said the same thing, so I started walking towards my house to get something to eat. On the way, I was stopped by a neighbor girl I really like who sews at the neddi who asked me if I wanted to walk with her to the prayer site. Happy for some company, I agreed, and we ended up stopping at six houses on the way to say, “Mbrook l’eid!” “Lla y bark fik!” “Happy holiday!” “Happy holiday to you too!” I enjoyed seeing the inside of houses I’d only seen from the outside and meeting everyone, kissing the women’s hands, and seeing everyone’s “ihrruyn ujdid,” or new clothes.

We got to the prayer place and I sat with a bunch of younger women and girls, as well as a few around my age or older and we watched the men, dressed mostly in white jellabas, file into the cement courtyard, and the women, mainly older and covered in the black taharuyt wraps, walk to the dirt courtyard behind the cement one. At this point in time, I’ll admit, I didn’t think it was the best day because the American feminist in me was livid about the situation. How dare people tell me that the culture here doesn’t discriminate against women when the men have a nice, cement courtyard while the women are not only separate, but not even equal? I had to step back. This is not a fight I have any business taking on or why I’m here. I certainly want to work with women and help them empower themselves, but today is not the day to fight these battles.

A man sitting in a wooden chair read some of the Hadiths and they prayed, white jellabas in front in unison, black taharuyts splashed with color in the back.

It was really nice to watch, but it wasn’t as powerful as I thought it would be. I did like sitting in the long line of girls and having other women walk by and greet all of us, kissing our hands, us kissing theirs, people commenting on henna or my kaftan.

When it was over, I found a friend and we were talking. One of my favorite people in town, an older woman who was my next-door neighbor in homestay, happened to be her sister, and another friend (also a sister) came up and dragged me with them to some of their families’ houses. Part of what people do in Tamazitinu for l’Eid Kbir is go from house to house, and that’s what the rest of my day looked like.

We went to their parents’ house and I had some Taam with Udi: a grain like large couscous with a type of melted bitter butter on top, eaten with spoons. At one point, everyone started crying. I felt almost pressured into crying myself, because I was the only one in the room not crying, but at the same time, it would have been very insincere because I didn’t know what people were crying for. I need to figure out this group crying business and see what the expectations are for it.

We left, after the first two of at least 17 glasses of tea I’ve had today, and headed for three more houses I’ve never been to before. Two looked really large from the outside and I’ve been dying to go in ever since coming to Tamazitinu but weren’t as impressive inside, and a smaller house was the opposite. After more tea and being pressed into eating the first of the probably 16 cookies I was pressured into eating today, I split off from the triumvirate of wonderful sisters to visit the mother of one of my closest “friends,” here.

However, nobody was home, so I decided to go visit some people I knew I should see. I went to said friend’s house and greeted some women in her husband’s family, but she was nowhere to be found. “Stay for lunch!” they told me, the first of probably fifteen lunch invitations (do you see a pattern here?).

I went to my host-mother’s extended family for tea and saw two of her sister-in-laws and two of her nieces: one is just over a month old, the other about six months. I really disliked going to their house during homestay, but now, they’re one of my favorite places to visit. The women are really friendly and laid back, and the kids are cute as a button.

At this point, they said that they were slaughtering the lamb, and I went outside to watch. It had already been slaughtered, and they were in the midst of butchering the meat. There was another family that was bringing their own sheep to be slaughtered and they asked if I wanted to take pictures. Of course I did, so I took some and videoed them slitting the sheep’s throat. It was rather graphic: I guess the knife wasn’t as sharp as it could have been, so it took longer than it usually does. It didn’t gross me out though.

After watching and taking a few pictures, (“God bless your parents!” I told them, for indulging my fascination), I headed towards Ihndar, my homestay neighborhood. There were quite a few people there I wanted to visit, so I started walking.

“Katy!” I heard called across the Ihndar “plaza.” It was one of my other favorite people in town (I have a few favorites, especially depending on the month). “Were you coming to see me?” I was indeed, but rather than go to her house, she took me with her on a whirlwind tour of Ihndar’s houses, most of which I’d never been to before. “This is my aunt’s house,” (stay for lunch!); “this is my uncle’s house” (it’s the foreigner that speaks Tashelheit!), “this is my friend’s house” (stay for tea!)… I think we went to four or five houses before settling outside where three families were slaughtering their sheep at the same time.

One old blind woman wanted me to take a picture of her by her dead sheep so she could send it to her family in Spain. I better remember to get it printed. I spoke some with my hostmother’s husband’s sister, who is one of the friendliest people in town, and greeted a slew of other people. One thing I haven’t mentioned is that whenever I walk, anyone, and everyone was out and about today, greeted each other, kissed hands, said “Mbrook l’Eid…” I had to have kissed over 100 hands today and don’t even want to think of how sick I might become in the next few days.

After maybe an hour or two with said friend, I told her I really had to go to my host-family’s house. I did, and she invited me to go to the neighborhood of Bozit with her to greet her family. And thus commenced another whirlwind tea and cookies tour of that neighborhood: her brother’s family who I know, and three houses that were completely knew. I finally met her niece’s husband who is a guide in Agadir and speaks fluent English and got him to promise me a copy of his thesis: an English paper about local legends and stories. I hope he’s true to his word. I met his wife this past summer and immediately liked her and seeing her again, I remember why. Good people. The only downside is that while kissing some of the hands, I could smell the raw meat on them. Such is life.

After Bozit, I went around Ihndar with her and we went to another four or five houses, each of which included at least one cookie and a cup or two of tea, people asking about my henna and if I bought a sheep to slaughter.

The day slowed down a bit when I went to my host-mother’s house to eat lunch. I played with the girls some, and took pictures of the sheep head, which at first, just sat on a short stoop by the garden, but was moved to the ground-level branches of a date tree (palm tree) and just looked funny, growing from its’ shoots.

I made up my mind, as they started barbecuing the organ meat, that today begins my time to try to get over my fear of meat. The more I see how good the meat is here: fresh, organic, raised in relatively humane ways, the more I realize how stupid my fear of eating meat really is. In the U.S., sure, the meat is terrible: packed full of hormones, raised in atrocious conditions… but here, every part of the animal is used, from the organs to the skin, and the food is all natural. There’s no reason for me not to eat it or be open to eating meat in general or organ meat.

As they were cooking, organs floating in a small pool of blood in a big basin, my hostmother reached in and pulled out a small piece of raw stomach lining and ate it.

“You eat that? Raw?” I asked. She smiled and nodded. Her husband did the same thing a few minutes later. Well. There’s no better way to start “getting over” a fear of meat than to eat raw stomach lining, so I asked for a little piece.

It was disgusting, but edible. I’ve eaten worse. But now, since I ate raw stomach lining, I told myself that no matter what they ate today, I had to have at least one small piece. So I did: a piece of lung, cooked stomach lining, kidney, two pieces of fat-wrapped liver (actually kind of good), heart, and another unidentified organ. I won’t lie: it wasn’t pleasant, but once I forced myself to get over the initial gag-reflex and relaxed, it was all edible and I was happy to have been able to convince myself to try it. It’s all in my head, I know that, and it was a good challenge to overcome. The strangest part is that some of it’s good: liver, lung, and heart really don’t taste that bad at all. The worst is the stomach lining: not the honey-comb like texture, but some sort of bitter aftertaste it leaves in your mouth.

Lunch took a long time, and I promised the fun family in the nearest outer douar I’d visit them for l’Eid. Okay, maybe I was guilted into it. I went to their house about two weeks ago and my friend said, “If you don’t come to our house for l’Eid, we can’t be friends anymore.” I know she was kidding, but I took it as an invitation, so I walked 30 minutes over to their house.

They were surprised but happy to see me. I stayed for maybe 45 minutes and they insisted I spend the night. Obviously, I refused, but they did invite me for lunch tomorrow, which I’ll try my hardest to do. They were all dolled up with bright pink sparkly lipstick which I tried on but wiped off as I walked towards Tamazitinu center. I really like those women. They laugh all the time, which is so comforting and relaxing that it’s certainly worth the walk over.

I stopped at my young friend’s house on the way back: this is the friend who moved from her father’s house to her aunt’s house and for 4 months, lived with only her cousin and her cousin’s baby (so there was a 17-year old, a 18-year old, and a 1-year old) and who I blogged about coming over and praying in my house. However, it was only her cousin and her cousin’s son at home, so I stayed for a few minutes and continued on towards home.

There was one family in Ihndar in particular whose house I missed earlier in the day. I knew the family a bit during homestay: the woman would always haul heavy crops on her back through my homestay family’s alleyway and would have a big smile on her face and talk about how heavy it was, good-naturedly. Separately, I knew her young daughter as the friendly young girl who would often accompany me and one of the women next-door to homestay on walks and who wanted to entertain me even on her own. The father is as friendly in a harmless way as any man in Tamazitinu, and they live in one of the most humble but welcoming houses in town. While there, I met some of their extended family from my souk town and really liked one of their daughters.

And then, it was time to go home. I got home, after walking with the woman whose house was empty this morning, at 5:30, having left the house at 7:30 this morning. It was the best pick-me-up I could ask for. I’ve been feeling like I have no friends in town, which is my own fault for staying in my house, shy, playing on my computer or playing games. I realized that the people who I like are forgiving of my shyness and I can and need to go see them on a more regular basis. There are 8 houses that I feel comfortable that I can go to anytime, and another probably 8 or 10 that they’d welcome me genuinely but I’m not comfortable with. I need to do something to force myself to be more social, because today, I felt on top of the world, accepted, and a real part of the community. Maybe I’m just on a sugar and caffeine high (I most definitely am), but, all in all, it was a beautiful day. In fact, there are three houses that I meant to go to but didn’t get a chance.

Tomorrow, I’ll go, enshallah. Tomorrow, there’s an aheyduss in each douar, and I think people still go around visiting. Two of my favorite people (okay, I’ll be more specific: two of my favorite five people in town) I haven’t even seen today. I won’t be as social or crazy as I was today, but I’m hoping it’ll be another amazing day.

Today in Numbers:

Sheep I’ve seen in the process of being slaughtered: 7

Glasses of tea: 17

Cookies: 16 (lHamdullah they’re small)

People who have grabbed me and taken me around with them: 4 individuals or groups

Bites of meat eaten: 10

Pieces of organ meat eaten: 8

Distinct parts of sheep eaten: 8

Houses entered: 31

Houses entered today for the first time: 16

Number of people greeted: At least 150 if not 200 or more.

Postscript: I’m updating twice today, so make sure to read the other entry too, if you are so inclined.

Invasion of the Tichiratin and Mice

December 14, 2007

Today has been a, well, rather interesting day.

This morning, as I was making grilled cheese with roasted red peppers (a splurge) for breakfast, my doorbell rang.

It was a few neighbor girls. It was 9 am; I had told them to come over at ten if they wanted. Word has gotten out around town that I have toothbrushes, so some of the kids in town want some. I’ve decided I have no problem giving more away if they can demonstrate that they can use it, learn how often, and do the “which foods are healthy for your teeth” activity.

As I didn’t have enough cheese or red peppers to go around, I told them to come back at ten. They came back at 9:20. Close enough.

We did the activity at my house and I gave them cut up green pepper, carrots, and Ranch dressing. They didn’t like it. After 40 minutes, they started to get annoying, so I told them to go, new toothbrushes in hand.

Peace and quiet. I settled down with my book, and started cooking some soup for lunch in a few hours.

COO COO COO COO COO COO! (Have I ever mentioned that my doorbell sounds like a cooing bird?)

Five more kids; these were some of my favorites. We had already done the toothbrushing activity, but I repeated it (and they got it all right!) and talked about henna and syringes from the clinic transmitting disease. We colored (which they love) and they stayed around for a few hours. I don’t mind. These girls are usually polite, well-behaved, and respectful but also fun to be with. They saw my Santa hat, and so I explained very briefly about Christmas and wore the hat the entire time they were over.

Eventually, I kicked them out. It was 2:00 and I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. I offered them some cabbage soup, and though they were intrigued by cabbage and ate as much of it as I’d give them raw, they were a bit disgusted with it in the soup.

After lunch, a big steaming pot of hot chocolate, and a few games of solitaire on the computer, I settled down with my book again, looking forward to a peaceful afternoon.

COO COO COO COO COO COO COO!

Four new girls. I’ve never seen them before. And now, they’re sitting in my salon, coloring. They’re a little more shy, and I’m exhausted, so we’re not having quite as much fun, but hopefully if they come back…and as soon as I stopped typing and started drawing with them, two more came over. It’s beginning to be ridiculous, but I’m happy nevertheless.

December 17, 2007

I’ve been lazy the last few days. It’s been a lot of me sitting on my ponjs, watching movies and TV shows on my laptop, though I’ve also done a load of laundry and started typing out lesson plans for my English class, whenever that gets off the ground. It’s an advanced class, and so far there are only three students: my nurse, and two men from the Commune (local government), so it’s not really a community-building, empowerment project the way I wanted it to be, but it is a way to get to know some local leaders who I may end up working with over the next year and a half.

I did, however, go to a friend’s house yesterday, which was fun. Even though I’ve been in my site six months now (I can’t believe it!), I’m still not sure how to handle some social situations here. For example, people say to just stop by at any time, it doesn’t matter when. I went in the mid-morning, and it seemed like I might have been interrupting chores. I only stayed for about an hour, and it wasn’t a big deal and, of course, she insisted it was fine and a good time, but I couldn’t help but notice that everyone else was busy doing something.

Today, I was out for awhile, and ran into a friend after going to two other houses. I asked her when a good time to come over to her house was and she finally said 3:00 pm was the best time.

I also never know when invitations are really genuine. Sometimes, I know they’re not, but sometimes I’m not sure. This evening, I was at said friend’s father’s house and they invited me to stay for dinner. The problem was that it was 5 pm and dinner, I know, wouldn’t be served until 8 at the earliest. I had already been at their house since 4, and even though it’s my friend’s father’s house, the rest of the family were complete strangers, and the idea of sitting in their house for four more hours was a bit, well, daunting, to say the least, so I made an excuse and didn’t stay. When I tried to leave, though, I realized by the way that it seemed that they really wanted me to stay, that the invitation was truly genuine. I could have stayed. Coming back to my empty house with hennaed hands made me realize it would have been an easier night if I had stayed.

Yes, my hands are hennaed for l’Eid Kbir (ikhatr). Last week, my hostmother invited me to come over today to get all hennaed up, so I came over after lunch, played with my host sister, and had the henna smear put on my hands. I may have mentioned the distinction this summer, but what most people in the U.S. think of as henna is what we call “zuaq” henna. The closest definition that I can come up with is “design;” it’s one of those words that I know how to use in different contexts but have never had translated. Zuaq is done using a syringe and finely ground henna and is usually done in some sort of floral design. There are special syringes sold in stores for this type of henna, but, as I know I’ve mentioned, girls do go to the burn pit behind the clinic to find used syringes for henna or squirt guns.

However, it’s more Amazigh, or so I’ve been told, to do “taromidt” (spelling?) henna, or what I’ve termed “smear” henna. For this, the dried henna leaves aren’t ground as finely as for zuaq, and it’s spread solidly on the palm of the hand, either in a line just above the wrist, or down to the wrist, and wraps around the fingertips, including the fingernails. After application, hands (or feet) are wrapped in a plastic bag, and left for a few hours or overnight.

There is a third variation that is between smear and zuaq henna: “skotch” (coming for the generic word for tape, which, yes, comes from the brand name Scotch Tape). This is a type of tape with designs cut out that is sold in stores. It’s easy to use and you do end up with a design, but it’s apparent that the design isn’t from a syringe. The tape is placed on the hand or foot and henna is “smeared” over the tape. The henna dyes the skin wherever the holes are in the tape.

In any case, I’m not as much of a fan of the “skotch,” and “zuaq” takes time and it’s hard to find people who are really talented. I tend to stick to the “smear” henna, which is, from what I’ve observed, most common in my site.

With my hands swaddled in plastic bags, my hostmother and I set out for her next door neighbor’s house, one of my favorite families in town. The mother of the household’s husband had just come in from France. I’d never met him before. We didn’t talk more than “hello,” but I sat with the daughters, who are all about my age, and drank tea.

They all cried a little bit. Even my host-mother cried a little bit. It was surreal, because I didn’t know what to do: it reminded me of the funeral I went to a few months ago. People don’t cry openly here, at least not that I’ve seen, except in special circumstances, and I suppose the return of a family member after a certain period of time qualifies. The thing is that while they were crying, they weren’t surrounding him or hugging him or even talking to him. They just cried, silently, while sitting in the salon, and then carried on regular conversation. It was touching, and it made me miss my family, but it also made me uncomfortable. I’m not used to seeing people cry and not being able to try to comfort them or say something. I just sat there, silently, not knowing quite what to do, hands wrapped in black plastic bags.

I left when my host-mother left, despite the mother and a few sisters saying “Stay! Stay!” and started walking home. That’s when I saw my friend who was going to her father’s house and I went over there for a few hours.

The mice have gotten worse in my house. I think it’s because it’s getting cold and they want to be somewhere warm. I caught one today in a trap, and I hear another one in my kitchen pantry right now. I want to cook dinner, but I’m afraid to go in there because I don’t know how to deal with the mouse. I think I need to just bite the bullet and buy an inordinate amount of plastic containers, because it’s getting to the point where not only am I keeping all my fruits and vegetables in the fridge, but also sugar, flour, cornstarch, and even peanuts. Still, this isn’t helping. It makes me want to just say “forget this,” and move to a cement house, but the hassle of moving, getting Peace Corps to inspect a second house, and the things I’d need to buy (a bed, a table or two, a desk, lots of shelves, a kitchen counter possibly…) really make me question if it’s worthwhile. It’s just one thing after another and I don’t know which is worst: the scorpions in the summer, pinchy bugs in the fall, and now mice in the winter.

…

Wow. I feel like I’ve hit a new low. I finally ventured into the kitchen to get some food and decided to cook lentils, one of my favorites. It’s simple: sautee garlic, onion, tomato, and pepper in some olive oil, then add some rinsed lentils, water, a lamb knoor (bullion cube), cumin, ginger, salt, and pepper, then just simmer for about an hour.

I was in the middle of sautéing my vegetables when my butagaz ran out. This means nothing cooked or hot until tomorrow when I get up and go get my tank refilled. It also means, that when I scour my kitchen, I can have fruit, a rather pathetic salad, or nothing for dinner. I really should have stayed for couscous. My dinner now consists of lukewarm half-sautéed pepper, tomato, onion, and garlic doused in barbecue sauce and a cold protein powder drink. Delicious, let me tell you. (Yes. That was sarcastic).

And, to add injury to insult, as I was walking into the salon to eat and type this, I saw a mouse scurrying under my door to leave. It’s one thing to hear them, it’s a whole other thing to see them. They give me the creeps, they really do, and the fact that this is the third that I have physically seen today is really irksome.

My to-do list now has two rather urgent additions:

Buy Rat Poison
Buy Butagaz tank

At least now, I know that one large buta tank lasts me almost exactly 4.5 months. I almost feel like it’s a momentous occasion. I’ve lived here long enough to go through an entire tank. All in all, it’s pretty cheap, I suppose: about $11 US a refill, or just over $2 a month to power my stove, including boiling water for tea, all hot meals, and boiling water to bathe with. When you take into account that the most expensive my water bill has been is about $1.50 a month, it’s not that bad… until you get to the $10 or so a month for electricity in the winter (in the summer but before I got my fridge it was only $4).

Okay, enough whining for one night.

On a different note, yesterday, I was invited into one of the huge houses that I’ve never seen before. I think it has to be nicer than any other I’ve seen in Tamazitinu. Four showers with water heaters. Four! And black leather couches, four big-screen TVs, at least by standards here, and, no kidding, a bathroom with a western toilet, bidet, twin sinks, and a bathtub that’s about three times the size of a normal one. I get so shocked when I see these houses coupled with the fact that most everyone gives birth at home and the woman of the house, even in this case, is completely illiterate.

December 18, 2007

And today, life is back to normal. I dug up some mouse poison and woke up to another dead mouse, but haven’t heard anything since. I’m crossing my fingers on this one.

I also was able to get a butagaz tank quite easily: just asked neighbors if they had a wheelbarrow (birueda… the word for tire and wheel in Tashelheit is “rueda,” just like in Spanish), got the nice taHanut man to put the regulator on, which saved me needing to find a wrench that fit, and hauled it back to my house. It was lighter and much easier than I expected, and the same lentils I was trying to make last night are now bubbling on my stove.

My hands are now a pleasant shade of brown-red, and I think if I use duct-tape to keep the edges straight, I can do my feet tonight or tomorrow night.

And if I’m updating today, which is the plan, it means I’ve run into my souk town to check mail and email and buy a couple vegetables. I am absolutely obsessed with eating cabbage, and if I remember to buy the right groceries, my dinner plans include a grilled cheese and roasted red pepper sandwich and homemade tomato soup: a delightful splurge for a moderately cold winter night.

Though it’s gotten warmer. I’m not wearing long underwear today and seem to be doing just fine.

And l’Eid kbir (ixatr) is Friday. L’Eid and Ramadan are the two biggest Muslim holidays and I’ve been hearing the “Big Eid” since I’ve gotten to Morocco. Everyone here in Tamazitinu tells me the same things when I ask about it: every family kills a sheep and eats it for a solid week. Every part. At eight in the morning, everyone goes and prays outside and they want me to take pictures,which is strange because photographs are so sensitive here that you’d think with something like prayer, it’d be even more forbidden. Women put henna on their hands, people buy new clothes (iheruyn ujdid), and people wear kaftans and tqshetas (a two-layered kaftan) and go to other people’s houses to say “Mbrook l’eid!”

It’s an oversimplified version of events, I’m sure, but that’s the same speech I get, no matter who I ask.

And, of course, the Equippe-Mobile run that was supposed to happen last week but was rescheduled for this week is rescheduled again for “After l’Eid.”

December 19, 2007

I went into town yesterday, but didn’t upload my blog. I was literally in town just enough time to grab some vegetables and groceries, check my email, and check my post office box: about an hour and fifteen minutes. Because none of the transportation to or from my site runs tomorrow (Thursday) through Sunday or Monday for l’Eid, it was a nightmare. I had to have seen at least 40 or 50 people from my site bustling about, and even though I didn’t have a seat saved on the bus, a nice man insisted I take his seat. I tried to say no, that I’d have no problem standing, but he ended up squeezing in next to someone else and I was pretty comfortable. There goes that “chivalry” again. I’m still trying to figure it out: why, on one hand, it’s expected to give up a seat for a woman on some forms of transportation, but men still eat before the women in many homes.

I’ve spent part of the afternoon putting zuaq henna on my hands. I did my right hand left-handed and I think I’ve smeared some of it, but it’s a design I’ve wanted to do for ages, and I think it’d be hard to find someone here to do it for me because it’s not exactly traditional.

December 20, 2007

Happy Eid Eve! I woke up and decided to take a walk to see if I could find a sheep being slaughtered. I know, sort of masochistic for this pseudo-vegetarian, but I didn’t think I could say I celebrated l’Eid without seeing this phenomenon.

I didn’t have far to go. Right outside my salon window, my next door neighbors were in the midst of it as soon as I stepped outside. I walked over and saw the animal, still moving on the ground, throat slit, blood pouring from the cut. At this point, my neighbor slit a hole in the leg and blew up the sheep like a balloon. Kids started beating on the stomach like a drum. It was fascinating to watch.

They proceeded to skin the sheep’s legs, then tie them to a beam sticking out of my courtyard wall so that it was hanging upside down. They skinned it from legs down to the head and it came off neatly and cleanly. The head came off and was carried inside, then the white carcass was split open and the organs removed. About this time, they said “If you want to take pictures, you should go get your camera,” so I have a few pictures of him pulling out the small intestines, pouring water into the large intestines and blowing them up, and squeezing unmentionables out of the intestines.

For some reason, none of this even came close to grossing me out. I wonder if this means I could actually eat organ meat.

The best part was that it started snowing, small flurries. Nothing stuck, the sun was shining, and the weather was pleasant, but the little snowflakes were almost magical.

Reflections on Prayer, Equippe-Mobile Round Two: Bigger and Better

December 10, 2007

There’s a girl in my bathroom, doing the ritual cleansing to get ready to pray.

I came home, and she had walked 45 minutes to see me, so I let her in my pretty messy house. She told me since we were like sisters, not to be embarrassed, so I tried not to be. At least it was all work-related things: books, cut-outs of food, and cut cardboard to paste on the back of my drawings.

She’s praying right now, about three feet away from me, on a blanket I’ve laid on the agrtil. I’ve never had anyone do one of the traditional Islamic prayers in my house with me right there before, and I have to say, it’s comforting.

Watching people pray is certainly interesting to me. I assumed, like I’m sure many Americans would, that at the call to prayer, life stopped in Morocco, and people all rushed to the mosque or threw out their prayer rugs on the street and life was put on pause as people prayed.

Of course, anyone who’s been to Morocco can tell you that’s not the case. Some people go to the mosque, especially on Fridays, but life pretty much carries on as normal, and people pray, mainly in private, at the five prescribed times, but it’s not always exactly the same time as when the call to prayer echoes from the loudspeakers from the mosque.

In fact, I wondered if people prayed at all the first week and a half I was in Morocco. We were constantly in contact with Moroccan staff, but none of them prayed in front of us. It came up in a tea talk; I think I was the one who asked the question about the logistics of prayer in Morocco and I was shocked to find out that most of our staff did pray five times a day, they just did it in the privacy of their hotel rooms. They warned us, that as foreigners, we might be here two years and never see anyone pray in front of us.

That, as I found out just a few days later, was not to be the case. During Field Trip, which was our second week of training after the first few days in Rabat, I had a one-night homestay, which was one of the highlights of the week. They offered me my own room to sleep in, or sleep in a room with one of them, so I slept in a room with a woman about my age, on piled blankets on the floor. Right before bed, she started to pray.

“Oh! Maybe I should leave!” I thought, so I started to get up and in sign language ask if I should go.

“Qim!” she said, pointing to the edge of the pallet of blankets. “Qim” was one of the words I learned that day. “Sit!” or “Stay!” I wasn’t quite sure which one at the time (it can mean both), but, no matter the case, her smile and insistence on my “qim-ing” made it obvious that she wanted me to stay and watch.

She murmured the words of the prayer and stood, bowed, prostrated, knelt, and repeated the cycle and I watched, feeling privileged to be able to glimpse this private moment.

The only other time I saw anyone pray during training was in my homestay family; occasionally, I’d see the mother sneak into the “clothes room” to pray. I saw hints that other people were doing it; for example, my LCF (language and culture teacher) carrying a bucket of hot water from the showers to perform the pre-prayer ablutions, but it remained behind closed doors.

However, it was when I came to Tamazitinu that I became so accustomed seeing people pray that I hardly give it a second thought now. It doesn’t seem like anyone has a problem praying in front of me here. In homestay, I saw it all the time, sometimes inside the tea room, sometimes outside in the courtyard. It was especially peaceful to see at night, under the stars. Sometimes my little one-year old host-sister would run into her mother’s arms during the prayer, and my hostmother would either set her aside or hold her while finishing. Even today, when I ate lunch with one of my favorite families in town, the mother prayed in the room we ate lunch in, with the equivalent of MTV blaring in the background.

And it’s not only in my small town. On the roof of my favorite café in my souk town, one day, I walked up and the owner of the restaurant was praying on the roof, facing East. When I went to an association president in my souk town’s house for lunch, we had to wait for them to all pray before we could go back to the town center, and they got me a little bucket of warm water in case I wanted to pray too.

Even on Equippe-Mobile, when I’d be out with doctors and nurses and technicians, all male, for 12 or 13 hours at a time, they would pray when we stopped at people’s houses for tea, right in front of me. The naturalness of a regional hospital director kneeling on the ground and touching his head to the floor in a mud house really was moving for me to see. How many regional hospital directors in the United States do you see on their knees in submission to God in a way that’s natural and unabashed?

It’s really interesting to see the five pillars of Islam played out in daily life here. I’m not an expert on Islam, so please forgive my brief explanation, but the five pillars are proclaiming that there is One God (statement of faith), prayer, giving charity to the poor, fasting for the month of Ramadan, and making the Hajj if you are physically and financially able (pilgrimage to Mecca and the Ka’bah in Saudi Arabia).

There are not many people I know who have gone on Hajj, mainly because of finances, but the rest of these are visible to me, so visible I almost don’t even think about them. Ramadan was apparent to me and made an impact on my life for the entire month, even though I only fasted 12 days. Prayer, as I have mentioned, is visible on almost a daily basis when I go to people’s houses during those times of the day. Many people give beggars money, and I’ve gotten in the habit of giving the ones who really can’t work food when I have some. My first month in site, an old man took myself and a beggar woman out for tea, and he acted so kindly and respectfully towards her that for the first half of the conversation, I thought she was in his family. And at least once a week, somebody tries to convert me by having me say the proclamation of faith.

Of course, it’s not utopia; I still see beer cans on the ground in Tamazitinu, STDs are quite prevalent at our clinic, and though this will be a controversial statement… let’s just say that the treatment of women that I’ve seen doesn’t quite match up with the parts of the Qu’ran I’ve read (in translation) about women. It’s unrealistic to think that any person or society could be a “perfect” anything. But it is affirming and beautiful to see the people in the town that I have come to care about and who take such good care of me live, to the best of their abilities, what they believe in. The results are also beautiful: a place where 70 families have welcomed me in their homes for a meal or tea, where a young, bright woman says that I’m like her sister and is patient with my messy house and messier language skills, where a complete stranger hands me a handful of dates, and where, rather than judge me for not wearing a headscarf, instead, they shower me with complements when I do don one or any element of their traditional clothing.


December 12, 2007

Today has been an absolutely fantastic day.

I went on Equippe-Mobile to two of my closer outer douars. I’ll call them Tourdouar, and Itsybitsy, just because I can’t write down what they’re really called on my blog for security reasons. Itsybitsy really is quite small (and it sounds like the real name), and Tourdouar sounds a tiny bit like the name and it embodies what was the most striking about the landscape: beautiful desert trees that don’t exist 16 kilometers north in Tamazitinu.

The day started off a little rocky: I was told we were packing up at 7:30 and leaving at 8, but we didn’t pull out of Tamazitinu until 10:30. However, the morning itself was worth the wait. I watched my nurse burn the medical waste in a huge pit behind the sbitar. He threw in a cardboard box of empty vaccine beakers, used syringes, gauze, and medicine boxes, lit a piece of paper on fire, threw it in, and then walked, rather quickly, a good 50 or 100 feet away. After a few minutes, the fire was roaring and the old vaccine flacon were exploding.

Who walks out of the doctor’s house at that moment but two of the men from the commune. They are friendly people, and want me to teach them English. I’ve agreed and we’re finding a place soon. They watched and had a discussion about this waste disposal not being ideal, but being the best with the means that are available.

This, of course, meant that it was the perfect, absolute perfect time for me to bring up an incinerator project. I think that it may be a possibility for Tamazitinu, and my nurse looked at me and said, “you aren’t going to pay for it yourself, are you?” in a very concerned tone. It was touching that he was worried about that, and he seemed relieved at my answer.

We’ve talked about medical waste before, and he’s told me, and told me again, that I’ve made him think about it and what happens with syringes. Consequently, when I asked him what we were doing with the syringes this Equippe-Mobile run, he said he had already decided to bring the plastic garbage bin because of my energy and passion and insistence. “We get complacent about it, and don’t think about it. You care about it and it makes me want to care about it.” I almost wanted to cry. My nurse is fantastic. He’s teaching women in town French: illiterate, mono-lingual Tashelheit speakers, but when I asked him about it he said “I’m doing it as a way to get the women together, and I’m going to use it as a venue for health education.” Sneaky, but effective and not altogether bad. He does education in the schools, and he really is a fantastic nurse who the entire community adores. For him to say that I’ve helped him increase awareness is a very high complement indeed coming from someone who is such a community leader and gives so much of his own time and energy to help the health and awareness of people here. In fact, last week, he showed me a PowerPoint presentation that he is making to show the community: STD awareness with very, VERY graphic pictures. I was shocked, and have no idea how the community will react.

Anyway, we finally got on the road, and the trip that took over an hour on the unpaved road took about 25 or 30 minutes (from Tamazitinu to Tourdouar is about 16 k; I clocked it on the little ambulance from the 1980s that we took. When I walked with the women to the place where we had the day-long picnic party in late October, we walked along this road 6 k each way (plus another 3-4 k to get to the road from the picnic spot and to get to the road from my house)).

There was a little bit of an issue with the ambulance. It sounds like a minute detail, but it was important to me for several reasons. The ambulance is really one of the “stubby cars” I talk about. There are two seats up front and then the back is barely big enough for someone to lay down in. It fits maybe three people, but quite uncomfortably, and there’s not enough room to stand. In this particular ambulance, there was a bench, a chair, and a “table” for the patient to lie on, but it was squished in and not very comfortable at all.

My nurse didn’t want me to have to sit in the back. “I wouldn’t want my sister to sit in the back of the ambulance because it’s not good, so I don’t want you to either.” There was debate about whether or not I could go because the ambulance was so small, though I protested vehemently and said I didn’t mind. I wouldn’t have minded at all, honestly. But there seems to be with some Moroccan men, a lot of them actually, some sort of chivalry that’s virtually unknown in the US. I can’t decide whether it’s unfeminist and insulting or very sweet. It’s definitely in opposition to the experiences I have where men and women eat separately and the men eat first.

But, no matter the origins or intentions behind this, for lack of a better word, chivalry, the doctor ended up sitting in the back and I was up front. I had no choice in the matter, but to me it was a big deal because it meant that they wanted me to be there, and that the doctor, who I don’t even know that well, was willing to sit in the back so I could have the front.

We got to Tourdouar and headed to the Madrasa. There, we waited for the women in the teachers’ house. I met two of the teachers who were fantastic. I was the only woman in the group of two, then three, then four teachers, my nurse, and my doctor, but my presence didn’t keep them all from joking around in a physical, laid back, casual way. It’s still shocking to me every time I see it: physical horseplay among grown men, them touching each others arms or heads or faces, leaning up against each other. It’s nice, really nice to see it, but it still shocks me, especially amongst grown men with respected positions in the community.

Two of the teachers in particular were incredible: I felt comfortable around them at once, and we talked most of the day in my mix of French and Tashelheit, though one of them spoke really reasonable English. One of the men in the group remarked about my wearing a headscarf.

It was interesting. People in town, men and women alike, all love it when I wear it. They know I’m not Muslim, but it’s traditional here and they thank me and shower me with praise to encourage me to keep wearing it. I’m still not sure if it’s okay, and I asked my nurse this morning. He echoed my thoughts and the thoughts of my townspeople. “It’s traditional, and a sign of respect that you wear it sometimes.” He encouraged it.

However, one of the other men in the group didn’t agree. I point-blank asked him if it offended him, and he said no, but I could tell he didn’t understand why I wore it. I think it might have offended him. “It’s a religious symbol.” “No, it’s a traditional symbol.” All of the men got into it and it was a fascinating debate. One of them said since I wore it the Amazigh way (like a very large do-rag; not covering my ears and neck), it was okay. Another said that there was no difference. Everyone ended up saying it was okay and not offensive that I wore it, but it was fascinating and good if not hard to see that sometimes my concerns are shared. I stress out about things being offensive, and sometimes it’s good that I do, and even better if I spark a debate, as long as it’s done in a non-confrontational way.

Later, I got in a conversation that was similar about what is “hshuma,” or shameful. It was an interesting group: everyone was an outsider, from out-of-town. Teachers, doctors, and nurses are all assigned where they work, so none of these men were from either Tamazitinu or Tourdouar originally. One of them said that although he was from Casablanca and had only been in Tamazitinu for 8 or 9 months, he didn’t consider himself an outsider. Everyone else did consider themselves outsiders, but said that the community didn’t see them that way. They said the same for me. “You are the only one who thinks that you are so different. Everyone else sees you as the same as them.” I don’t know if I believe it, but it was mindboggling for me to hear. On one level, of course I’m the same. We have the same heart, the same human experience. But on another level, of course I’m different from all the women in Tamazitinu: religiously, with our life goals and aspirations (for the most part), life experience, and our frame of referencing the world. To deny that would be lying. It’s just strange, this duality of sameness and difference.
This led to a discussion about “hshuma.” I said that one of my biggest fears is doing something hshuma and not knowing it. I know I’ve done that before. I did it just the other day with the word “welda” and “wlda.” One means “uterus,” the other is a slang term for a male body part. Of course, it was okay, but if I had been with a different group of women, it could have been problematic.

One of the teachers, a man who I was instantly attracted to, on an emotional level, defined “hshuma” in another way. “Hshuma is relative,” he said. (I’m paraphrasing) “You are only hshuma when you are different from the rest of a group or society. There is no action that in itself is hshuma, it is only in relation to what the people around you are doing.” Truth. Painfully obvious truth, but I had never thought of it in these terms before. When combined with the duality of being like and different from the women here, it makes things even more complicated. As an outsider, does that mean everything I do is hshuma? Am I immune? Or does it mean I have to be doubly careful because, being like people here, I’m held to those standards?

(And can I mention that I am ecstatic that I speak enough French to have conversations like these? It’s made life so much… not easier here, but more enriching, to say the least.)

I’m not living my life by these conversations or anything, but I love being challenged and being able to have these debates and stretch my mind. It happens so rarely when I can’t articulate myself well in Tashelheit that I really relish these opportunities.

Well, we had been in Tourdouar about an hour and nobody had shown up yet for vaccinations, so, half-joking, I brought up doing a lesson for the kids in the Madrasa. “You can do it,” one of the teachers said. “Why not?” I thought they had forgotten and it was said with a sort of “enshallah” tone, so I didn’t know if he was serious, until later, one of the teachers pointed to a classroom. “That’s my class. Do you want to go do a lesson?”

Did I want to do a lesson? Of course! I went armed with my dental hygiene lesson, the same one I did at the preschool, and walked in the classroom (The teacher stayed with the other teachers in their house). As soon as I walked in, all the students stood. “SALAAM U ALEIKUM!” they chanted in unison.

“Wa aleikum s-salam.” I did the lesson and about halfway through, the doctor and the teacher of the class came in and sat down. It only took about 15 or 20 minutes, but the kids, after an initial shyness were talking and pointing and seemed to catch on and understand. My doctor said it was a good lesson, and the teacher said, “Okay, want to go to the next class?”

All in all, one right after another, I went into 7 classes and did the lesson for 120 kids. The older kids were a little difficult and laughed at my Tashelheit, but all in all I think it went pretty well. Everyone I talked to (maybe 10 or 15 kids) afterwards individually was able to name how many times to brush teeth each day, and which foods were good and bad for your teeth. I was just excited to be able to do it, and the teachers, I think, were entertained by the whole situation. My favorite was the youngest group. The teacher that introduced me said, “They are all afraid of you. They don’t know any foreigners, and they know that when the ambulance comes, it means they’re going to get stuck with a needle, so they think that’s why you’re here.” Great.

The first 3 or 4 minutes, nobody spoke. I’d ask a kid their name. Silence. Nothing. I’d ask a question. Nothing. Eventually, though, they were up out of their seats, pointing, answering questions, and participating. I really miss being up in front of little kids. I forgot how much I liked it until now. As a child and young teenager, my sister and I performed magic, and often, we’d do shows for kids around this age. This felt like the same thing: trying to get them to participate, trying to get them to laugh.

In any case, after the lessons, women started coming it for vaccines and medical consultations. We had been in Tourdouar for three or four hours at this point. I was already tired after entertaining (teaching, I mean) seven classes in Tashelheit (though I did it in French some with two groups). But I did the toothbrushing lesson for some of the women, and talked informally with the others most of the time: don’t drink water in the irrigation ditches! Wash your hands with soap! Make your own toothbrush if you can’t afford one!

One woman started asking me about birth control pills! All the other women crowded around. “Katy, I have 4 kids and my husband doesn’t want anymore, and I don’t want anymore. Four is enough! But the pills make me sick!” We talked about Depo and IUDs, and the other women were all asking questions and interested. I finally felt like I was able to talk about things I really know something about, and it was great to see her relief that there were other options. I brought up condoms, and the woman leaned in.

“Are you a woman or a girl?” This question has a double meaning. Technically speaking, a “tarbet,” (girl; plural: tichiratin), means someone who is not married. A “tamtut,” (woman; plural: tieutmin), means someone who is married. However, the connotation is a question that is much more taboo to ask someone you don’t know very well in the States, but a lot more appropriate here, because it is assumed that women don’t have sexual relations until you’re married.

“I’m a girl,” I said.

“Well! You wouldn’t know then, but, neither me NOR my husband likes to wear a condom. It’s not… well. You don’t know yet. You’ll see.” This was said rather endearingly, as if she were conferring a huge secret to me. Some of the other women giggled.

I also talked to the women about spacing out births and waiting until you’re at least 20 to have your first child. In Tamazitinu center, this isn’t as big of a deal, but in douars like Tourdouar and Itsybitsy, people are still wanting to have 10 or more children and getting married at thirteen.

We ate lunch at the teachers’ house, where everyone had a very animated debate in Arabic that I didn’t understand, with one man taking a knife and stabbing orange peels and cutting them, decisively into thin slices on the bare table to emphasize his points. It was difficult for me not to laugh out loud, not because I understood, but just with the energy that was all-consuming, and, yes, the orange-peel massacre.

After getting about a half-dozen invites to stay the night at various peoples’ houses, we finally headed over to Itsybitsy. It was 4:30. We had gotten there at about 11. After a quick stop at one man’s house, where I sat with his wife and was barely able to drink half a cup of tea before I was summoned back to the ambulance, we were rolling down a dirt road to Itsybitsy’s madrasa.

On the way, I asked my nurse if the trees we kept passing were “Tamazitinu” trees. The real name of my town comes from a type of tree that used to fill the valley, but in the last 50 years, have been decimated to be used for firewood. I want to know what kind of trees my town was named for.

“Is this a ‘Tamazitinu’ tree?”

“No, it’s not a Tamazitinu, it’s a Tourdouar.” He said the name of the douar we were leaving.

“I know we’re not in Tamazitinu, but what’s the name of that tree?”

“Tourdouar.”

I was getting impatient. “I know we’re in Tourdouar, but what…”

“Katy, the name of the tree is Tourdouar. The town is called Tourdouar because of all the trees.”

Oh. It threw me off that both my town and this town were named after the trees that populated them. Interesting.

We got to Itsybitsy, and the Madrasa was empty. Nobody was there. After a few minutes, a handful of men and women came. We talked about coming back in the morning, as it was starting to look like darkness was imminent, when the loudspeaker on the stone, towerless mosque turned on.

“Bismillah.” (In the name of God). I thought it was the call to prayer.

“Attention! Attention! Women, bring your children to the Madrasa to get their vaccinations!” “…..tieutmin…ichiran…Madrasa… tismi… adbib… ichiran… Madrasa… tismi…”

Even the man making the announcement laughed a little before turning off the loudspeaker. I was doing everything I could to keep from rolling on the ground, it tickled me so much.

“I thought it was tinwuchi (sunset prayer) for a minute!” The women laughed.

Soon enough, people started gathering, and the nurse and doctor started in on the vaccinations and exams.

I ended up gathering a bunch of kids and a few young women and did the activity on the outside wall of the Madrasa. The kids got into it, which made me happy. At one point, when I was trying to explain not to share toothbrushes, I was obviously struggling with the language.

“Do you want me to translate?” It was a teacher from that madrasa. He did, and after I finished the lesson he came over.

“Do you speak French?” We talked for a few minutes. “I like your pedagogy,” he said. “They understood, and they participated. It was very effective. Is that what school is like in the US?” So we had a discussion about interactive, experiential learning. “In what you describe, the students do 80% of the work themselves. That’s wonderful.” Again, this was a very encouraging conversation for me, especially with how down I’ve been on my “work” (or lack thereof) recently. He invited me to come do lessons anytime, which is an offer I’d love to take him up on.

Some of the local teenage girls in Tourdouar, attached themselves to me (following me around, holding my hand, leaning against me), but some of the younger girls in Itsybitsy ended up not only following me around, but also trying as hard as they could to convert me. First, they wanted me to spend the night at their house, then “oh, just eat dinner with us then,” and then “repeat the statement of faith (in Islam) after us.” They were so insistent that I almost wanted to say it just to let them feel better. “Why don’t you want to be Muslim? We want you to go to Heaven. Don’t you want to go to Heaven? Just say it, just say it once, and you’ll go to Heaven. We want you to go to Heaven.” I tried saying my parents didn’t want me to convert, thinking that’d do the trick.

It brought out a round of whispers. “Just say it once, and don’t tell your parents. They won’t know. Please, Katy, just say it. Just say it.” It tore my heart to hear them because their intent was so good, so pure, so touching. They were really worried about the fate of my soul and it was heartbreaking to keep refusing because they were so sad and concerned.

Finally, we packed up and headed home. “Home, sweet home,” I said, in English as we pulled off the paved road onto my town’s dirt road.

“Do you know what home is?” I asked my nurse.

“Home. Maison. Taddart.”

I smiled. “That’s ‘house.’ Home is more like chez moi. My place. A place where you live, where your heart is, where you are comfortable. My real home is in the US, but now, I feel like we just got to my home. Tamazitinu is my home for two years.”

And, for better or for worse, it is.

Thanksgiving, Goat legs, and toothbrushes

NOTE: This entry starts before the previous entry, and ends afterwards. Last time I was at the internet, I forgot my USB drive that had the blog to upload. Sorry for the confusion!

November 25, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving!

I just walked into my house from a weekend at a friend’s house to find half a goat leg outside my door. Now, this doesn’t look like a malicious affront (except maybe to the goat), but it is a strange thing to come home to, in all honesty.

What a fantastic weekend! A group of us got together and made a Thanksgiving dinner to be remembered. Who would have known that freeze-dried cranberries would make such a delicious cranberry sauce, or that it is possible to, with the help of a few ingredients shipped from another continent, have slow-roasted chicken, veggies with ranch dressing and hummus, apple-fennel salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, French peas, green been casserole, artichoke-sunflower seed rice, pumpkin pie, apple bake, and even a chocolate devil’s cake? Added to the fun we always have when we get together and are able to let down our hair, so to speak, it was an extraordinary weekend.

On the way home today, we passed by a “stubby car*” that was from the electric company, that had flipped over and was upside-down about 100 or 200 feet off the paved road. The men from my transit went and flipped the car back over, and one was parading around a beer bottle. I heard “shrb” “shrb:” the Darija word for “to drink” that’s used in Tamazight to mean “to drink alcohol.” It ends up that whoever was driving was drinking as well.

I don’t know what happened to the men in the car. I was going to go out and see, but I didn’t understand whether or not they had gone to the sbitar, and just as we were pulling away, someone said “there were three men; they are still out there, but they are fine and walking around.” Maybe I should have gone and seen, but I’m neither a doctor or a nurse, and, other than encouraging people to go to a clinic, there’s not much I could have done. Had I spoken better Tamazight, maybe I’d have understood the conversation more, but it looked as if everyone was all right or had already left: nobody was on the ground.

One of the most shocking things was what a woman said to me on the transit. “He was drinking. He’s going straight to the fire. Direct. Directly to the fire (hell).” I think the fact that “direkt" is the way you say “directly,” and the usage of “afa” (fire) made it all the more shocking of a thing to hear from this dear, sweet lady. “Directly to the fire.” Wow. Hamdullah nobody seemed to be hurt badly.

I was only in my souk town a few hours today, but it made me happy to go to my vegetable man. Not only did we talk about the volunteer posted at my souk town who is leaving the country after her two years of service tomorrow, but he also, as he does occasionally, throws in some fruit or vegetables for me for free. It makes me happy because he knows I’m not poor by any standard, he knows I’ll go to him regardless, and he knows that it’s not necessary, but it doesn’t cost him anything to throw in the three mandarin oranges and two bananas and so he does it. And I smile and feel like even in a town as big as my souk town, I’m beginning to know people and feel comfortable.

I went to the hammam (Turkish baths) at my friend’s site yesterday. I hadn’t been since training, and let me tell you, it’s still warming down to the soul. This was a “bled” or “countryside” hammam: only two rooms, no shop that sells the hammam soap or scrubby mitts, and rather than a separate male/female hammam, there is one with different hours. For the first time, I could actually talk to the women in there, and really forgot how uncomfortable it was the first few times to be in a room in nothing but underwear with absolute strangers. I want a hammam in my site. My community wants a hammam. A hammam would promote better hygiene, especially in the winter. I wonder how feasible of a project it is.

It got cold this weekend. When I say cold, I mean COLD. It’s probably dropping down to the 40s or high 30s at night, and is barely breaking 50 during the day, which, really, wouldn’t be bad at home, but there is no indoor heating anywhere I spend time. I’m still sleeping with just one heavy blanket (quite possibly the warmest I’ve ever owned), and have two others and a sleeping bag just in case, but I’m wearing gloves and a hat and a scarf and several pair of long underwear and other layers at night now. When I was walking to my house from the transit, one of my neighbors started talking to me, and she said something about snow.

“Snow? Here?”

“No, silly. Look at the mountains. It’s snowing now in the mountains.”

And lo and behold, it was. If I had my camera on me at the time, I’d have taken a picture of the striking streaky grey-white clouds over the distant mountains. Beautiful.

Sometimes, I wish I was living somewhere that didn’t go from 115+ in the summers to freezing cold in the winters with maybe a month in between, but it’s interesting. It keeps me on my toes.

*stubby car:

November 27, 2007

I need to start walking around with a camera. The view of snowstorms and thunderstorms around my site is just incredible. The other night, as I was walking home at sunset, there were grey clouds peeking over the mountains in the same, odd geometric shapes, outlined with a fine line of bright orange and pink. It almost looked like some sort of fantasy mountains behind the real ones. Stunning.

I’m cold. I’m wearing three pair of socks, three shirts and a fleece, a hat, a scarf, three pair of pants, and sitting under a blanket. I’m wearing a headscarf about 90% of the time now, mainly because it’s warm and everyone tells me to. “It’s cold, why don’t you wear a headscarf?” I do, and sometimes even wrap it around my mouth and nose so only my eyes show. If anyone had told me a year or two ago that I would voluntarily walk around in a headscarf where only my eyes are showing and almost always wearing skirts, I’d have thought they were crazy.

I’m still struggling with what to do here. I’m going to a friend’s site this weekend to do a big SIDA (AIDS) activity with some high school students with her, and then have something planned for 10 or more little girls at my site when I get back. Mine is a lot less ambitious, but the most appropriate HIV/AIDS activity I could come up with that reflects the reality of my site: we’re going to do henna and I’m going to talk about not picking up needles from around the sbitar for the henna but to get them from the store. I’ll explain why, and maybe play a game or two with them without getting into HIV as an STD. I’m also making sure the girl I saw with the used syringes in her hand a few months ago is coming. If it goes well, I’ll try to do it again with girls in other neighborhoods.

I would really like to go up to some of the men in town and tell them that if they are indeed sleeping with prostitutes, their risk goes up, but as a single woman, especially an extremely liberal one by my community standards, I can’t do it. I also can’t talk to the women and say that if their husbands are sleeping with prostitutes, they’re at risk, because, really, they don’t have control in the relationship to ask for condoms. It’s a sad situation, and whenever a married woman comes to the sbitar with an STD, I want to go give her husband a talking-to. Maybe I can do a training for the association men with my nurse co-leading it, and then they can go out and talk to men about it in everyday conversation.

I went to the Neddi (women’s center) today. I’ve avoided it in the past because I’ve felt uncomfortable: everyone sits and works. It’s not a social atmosphere, it’s a “let’s sew or make pants or crochet” environment. Now that my language has gotten better, though, I might try to start going once or twice a week. There was some socializing going on, more than I had remembered, and it’ll help me get to know another group of women. If I get comfortable, and they get comfortable with me, maybe I could do specific health lessons there: it’s all women, and I think they’re all unmarried, so it’s a more liberal group in some ways.

One woman walked in and sort of sighed in pain, clutching her back. “Inrrakm tadawt?” I asked (literally: is your back killing you?).

“Yes. I have my period and my back is killing me!”

This is a perfect stranger. Yes, there might be something I can do in the Neddi with these women, and if not, well, maybe I’ll come back home knowing how to make Berber carpets. Seriously: we got some new huge carpet looms from the provincial capital and the director of the Neddi knows how to make them. I might be able to learn, which would be amazing.

That being said, I’m constantly surprised at the things people do when there are no men around. Yesterday, I was sitting with some neighbors as they were cracking open luz… what are luz? A nut… oh yes! Almonds (I’m losing my English, little by little). In any case, I offered to help but was turned down, but I kept talking for a few minutes. Out of nowhere, two hands came over my eyes. I suppose I should have tried to guess who it was, but I had no idea. After a second, she reached down, grabbed my breasts over my three or four layers of shirts, then laughed and sat down next to me.

It was a neighbor, but I don’t think I’ve ever been to her house, and I certainly don’t know her name. In other words, a perfect stranger.

Shocking.

My host mother’s sister-in-law had her baby while I was at IST. She’s beautiful and about two weeks old. Her sister-in-law had a baby maybe two or three months ago. Both women had it at home, with no trained help, just each other. I’m still amazed at how few problems people encounter with that here.


November 29, 2007

This will be a sporadic entry, I think.

In a nutshell, I felt productive today. I love those days. I went for a walk, talked to the preschool teacher and set up a time on Monday morning to do a tooth-brushing activity and give out toothbrushes. It was a lot easier than I had anticipated.

The second thing I did was not easy.

I’m ashamed to say that I’ve avoided the madrasa like the plague since Site Visit. Yes, I’m aware that site visit was in early May. But after hearing my host-mother say I should stay away from the madrasa and that the mudir (principal) didn’t want me in the school walls, I have to say, I was intimidated.

This was all because of the pictures. If you’ve kept up with this blog from the beginning, you might remember the story, but in a nutshell, a woman my third day in site during site visit (I was still in training: blog entry would be from mid-May) encouraged me to take pictures of the school from her house, which is directly across the street. I did. Some kids saw the pictures (I didn’t know it was “wrong,” so I showed the kids unabashedly) and told their teachers who told the mudir who yelled at my host-mother who, in turn, yelled at me. I immediately deleted the pictures, and felt terribly, though I was doing what I’ve learned to do in cross-cultural settings: follow the lead of the locals. I asked the woman if it was okay or hshuma, and she egged me on to take the pictures.

For the next few months, I kept getting mixed messages: was it a big MUSHKIL (problem) or just a small mushkil that would go away since I deleted the pictures? I wanted to talk to the mudir, but I never saw him on the streets, and my host mother warned me against going to the school.

I got official permission from the Ministry of Education to work in the schools a few weeks ago. I kept meaning to go talk to the mudir for my Community Diagnosis, but convinced myself it was better to wait until I got the official letter of permission, so I had a tangible, physical reason to set foot in the school walls.

This past weekend, I met with the principal of the high school and middle school at my friend’s site. It was ridiculous to me that I’d had a meeting with the mudir of a school outside my site and still hadn’t met the mudir of the school I lived across the street from during homestay. I also got my letter of permission about a week ago.

Two days ago, I set out with the letter of permission, but didn’t go to the madrasa. I didn’t even know where the headmaster’s office was. Is there a place to knock?

Today, bolstered by the ease of the conversation with the preschool teacher, I asked the Association President if I could give the mudir the letter. Ironically, the woman who took me to the gate and pointed out where the office was is in fact, the same woman who encouraged me to take the same pictures in the first place.

I walked to the office and knocked on the door. I was nervous. Really nervous.

I introduced myself, but it was pretty much unnecessary. Obviously he knew who I was. I handed him the letter and pretty much told him that I was willing to do anything he or the teachers were interested in as far as health education in the school. We briefly discussed murals and lessons. I was probably in there 7 or 8 minutes. He was neither nice nor hostile, and said he’d meet with the teachers and let me know if there was anything that they wanted from me. I apologized for the pictures, and I didn’t really understand his answer… something about the teachers being upset, and either that I wasn’t allowed in the school walls (!) or that pictures weren’t allowed in the school walls (hopefully…). In any case, I know two of the teachers rather well, and have met and socialized a little bit with another two or three, so hopefully that will serve me.

After a stop at my hostmother’s house, I wandered home and finally, for the first time in my life, beat Minesweeper- intermediate level. Three little girls (9-10 yrs old) came over and I practiced my toothbrushing lesson with them and we drew pictures together. They also had a lot of fun drawing on the paint program on my computer.


(This is where the entry from December 2 should fit in the progression.)

December 3, 2007

Happy December!

I’m nervous. I don’t know if it was a good or bad idea to a solo project with pre-schoolers. I don’t know how helpful the teacher will be. I don’t know if I will even begin to go through what I have planned, but at least I have several activities. If I only get through one of them, so be it. J I am excited though. Two education initiatives in three days isn’t bad, especially if I get to do the SIDA/Henna project with some girls this week.

Here goes nothing…

***

And it was fantastic! Really, given the perpetual “development work/what is my role crisis,” that I am still struggling through, I really needed this pick-me-up, even if it is as simple as teaching a bunch of pre-schoolers how to brush their teeth.

I walked in, and everyone just stared at me. “I need five minutes to get set up,” I told the teacher, but he didn’t teach or anything, he just stared too. Great.

I taped up the two posters on dental hygiene one of my stage-mates made during training that are fantastic, as well as my two huge mouths: one with pearly white teeth; one with only four yellowed or brown teeth and cracked lips.

Then, I turned to the class.

“Hi!”

“Hello!” they chimed back, shyly. They were so cute: 14 little girls and 7 little boys, staring at me, not knowing what to expect.

“Does anyone know my name?”

“Katy!” a few of them chimed out, and when I asked, a few of them knew I was from the US as well.

I started off asking them which mouth was better, and they told me the happy mouth was because it was full of teeth and not empty. For the rest of the day, there was a “full” mouth and an “empty” mouth.

I held up my pictures of food and got them all shouting out what they were. “Apple!” “Yogurt!” “Milk!” “Candy” “Sugar!” “Eggplant!” “Squash!” “Cheese!” Not only did they recognize what I had painted last night, but they had fun and some even got up and ran and pointed as they shouted. I was immediately relaxed. At this point, some of the women from the Neddi walked in, wondering, I’m sure, what exactly was going on.

We identified which mouths they went in by going through, and then I called them up one by one and handed them a food to see if they could point to the “full” or “empty” mouth. When they identified it correctly (and all but 3 kids got them right on the first try!), we went through them again. Repetition, repetition, repetition!

Then, I demonstrated how to brush your teeth, and called them up in groups of 5. The teacher and I individually helped all of them, and then they did it (surprisingly well) on their own. The others were quiet and patient and watched their classmates eagerly.

The last part of the “workshop” was a coloring activity. I passed out all my coloring supplies and a piece of paper, and asked them to color food that’s good for their teeth. A few of the older kids settled right in, but some of the younger kids said, “I don’t know how.” The neddi women agreed. “They’re too young!”

I disagreed, and after talking to them individually and giving them a little bit of guidance (“What food is good for your teeth? Is an apple good for your teeth? Okay, then draw an apple!”), they all eagerly started drawing. A few of them kept running over to me, “Look, look!” It was fun, and I had a great time. It makes me want to go back and do another lesson with them.

One thing that made me really happy: there was a little girl who was walking home later that day for lunch. After I asked her a few questions related to healthy food, completely unprompted, she said, “I’m going home and eating lunch. And then after I eat lunch, I’m going to brush my teeth!” At least one little girl got something from it, even if it only lasts a week or two. Hopefully with some follow-up it’ll be more permanent.

Afterwards, I went to a friend’s house and did the lesson for them (which they enjoyed, or at least seemed interested in and then studied the posters intently). They served me the most incredible bread: aghrom n taguri but with cornbread. I need to learn to make it and make it at home. It’s the stuffed fatbread, but with warm, moist homemade cornbread from the corn in the field.


December 4, 2007

Wow! Another great day.

I went to the sbitar at 9:30 this morning because my nurse was supposed to be back from Agadir. He wasn’t yet, “not until noon.” On the way I had a lunch invite at noon, but since I answered with “enshallah,” it wasn’t set in stone.

Since I had a few hours to kill, I walked to my neighboring douar to one of my friends’ house. Her sisters were home but she was in the fields, so I sat a bit awkwardly for a few minutes until she came in. From that point on, it was fun, relaxing, and I was really glad I had come. She invited me sometime soon to a picnic spot “an hour’s walk away with lots of water, like a river!” and told me that if I didn’t go to their house during l’Eid (the big holiday coming up) then either I was going straight to hell, or our friendship was going to hell. One or the other.

I mentioned that I had done the lesson at the preschool, as we were picking hot peppers off the vine, and she stared at me. “Why don’t you tell US these things?”

“What things?” I asked.

“We need to know what foods are good to eat for your teeth too.”

My heart started racing. They were curious. They wanted to know.

“Okay. I can tell you now, but what about other people. Would they want to know?”

“Yes, you should come to our literacy class in the Mosque and teach the women there. We meet at 3:00 a few days a week.”

I’m not allowed in a Mosque, being a non-Muslim, but she said her uncle was the president of an association and we might be able to use that building.

Perfect. I’ll do anything I can that people ask me to, so the fact that this was initiated from a woman in the community means it’s something I believe in, wholeheartedly. I might go to her house again tomorrow or sometime next week and see if she can introduce me to her uncle.

It reminded me of something that happened last time I went to my souk town.

Saturday, on my way to the SIDA workshop at my friend’s site, I did what I usually do when I need to leave Tamazitinu: I walked about 3k to the main road to wait for my transit.

I wasn’t sure if I was really early, or really late, but another transit was driving by. I thought I recognized it as one I took early one morning from a town about 40k away. I wasn’t going to flag it down, but it slowed and honked, so I stood by the side of the road and asked where it was going. Yes, my souk town.

I hopped in, responding to the “Ca va?” from the man next to me with a, “oh, labas, lHamdullah.” I hate it when people speak French to me here. I know it’s done out of politeness, but I’m not French, and French is a second language to me in the same way that Tashelheit is! If I speak to you in Tashelheit and it’s your first language, please speak it back to me!

We turned off a random dirt road and stopped somewhere for about ten minutes. Okay. No problem. Transits do things like this all the time.

Then we got back on the main road. Instead of heading for my souk town, we drove through my friend’s site. I could have just gotten out there, but I had my heart set on a hot shower from the public showers in my souk town, so I rode it out. Then, we stopped in a neighboring douars of hers for, literally, 45 minutes. It drove me crazy. I think we were stopping to the transit driver could get some of the olives made into olive oil at a press. Seriously. But that’s how things go here.

I still hadn’t really talked to anyone until we got back on the road, when I started up a basic conversation with the women in front.

It ends up I was wrong. The transit wasn’t from the place 60 k away, it was from one of my outer douars that I had been to on Equippe-Mobile. And, not only did they know my nurse and go to Equippe-Mobile, but when I told them why I was living in Tamazitinu, they complained about the health situation in their town. “We have no clinic, no medicine, just the doctor that comes maybe twice a year.”

“Maybe some day I’ll come to your douar and talk to women about health.” I just threw it out there, not really being able to say anything else comforting or encouraging.

“Oh, would you really do that? That’d be great! God bless your parents. God bless your parents.” It was sincere. They wanted me to come… so now, I’m going to do everything in my power to make it out there, including, during the Equippe-Mobile run next week (enshallah), trying to find someone who will host me for a night or two so I can spend a full day or so out there, really talking to people.

Okay, enough of that tangent. Back to today.

When I got back to the sbitar, my nurse was there and it was busy so I left early, but not before he went to his house, brought his laptop, and showed me a PowerPoint presentation on STDs he was in the middle of making, including graphic pictures on various anatomical parts. It was, well, not what I was expecting, but if he takes on STDs, it’ll make me happy. It’s an issue here, despite what feels to be very stringent cultural norms rooted in Islam.

He also mentioned an Equippe-Mobile run next week (which I absolutely LOVE!), so I just got done making a giant model of a fly using nothing more than cardboard, black “mica” (plastic) bags, duct tape, and extra screening from my windows. There are a few posters I want to make this week (if not more), and a few topics I would like to design lessons around. I also want to photocopy my moquaddam survey and get contact numbers and information for people out there so I can actually go and spend a few nights in some of these places. It’s a lot more what I pictured doing with Peace Corps (some douars have no running water or electricity), and there are more health needs out there than in Tamazitinu center. I can’t wait to go out there, I really can’t. I may even pack an overnight bag and see if someone will let me stay with them on our last Equippe-Mobile day.


***

I want to talk about God. Not in a spiritual or abstract way, but about the word “rbi.”

Some women in my town call God “Sidi Rbi.” Now, the word Sidi (sometimes shortened to Si) is sort of like “Mister,” though my understanding is that it also means saint. So when someone is talking about “Sidi Rbi,” they’re either saying “Saint God,” or “Mister God.” Either way, sometimes it strikes me as funny when I translate it, “Mister God is good.” Now, please don’t take my finding it funny in a wrong way. It sounds right and normal in Tashelheit; I’ve even been known to use it. It’s just one day I translated it in my head and I kind of like it. “Mister God.”

Another strange but nice use of “Rbi” is when people knock on doors. Whenever someone knocks on a door or rings the doorbell, it’s normal to hear a voice from inside ask “Who is it!”

There seem to be three acceptable responses, and none of them include actually identifying the person who is at the door.

The first is “Nkkin!” (“I!”)

I won’t lie: this one is rather annoying. I often say “Shkun nkkin?” which probably makes no sense grammatically, but in my head means “who is ‘nkkin’?” I still haven’t gotten up the guts to say this when I knock at someone elses’ door.

The second: “Eh ohhhhhhh!”

No explanation needed.

The third (usually in response to “Mayd illan” or “who is there?”): “Illa Rbi!”

“There is God.”

I think it’s the simplicity, the half-joking, half earnest and faithful response that really just sort of warms my heart.

***

I want to talk a bit about tea in Tamazitinu.

From what I’ve gathered, the word “tea” (“atay”) only refers to green Chinese gunpowder tea (usually Sultan brand), boiled beyond recognition, and served with the equivalent of a hunk of sugar that is baseball sized for maybe 4-8 small cups of tea. If I’m lucky, they’ll also add fresh mint leaves. There are also tisanes, or herbal infusions; the three I’m familiar with are sheeba, flio, and louiza (I’m not sure which is which, but they include lemon vervein, a plant in the mint family, and absinthe), but I’ve only had those two or three times outside my own house.

However, at home in the States, I am a tea fanatic. I crave good oolongs, and can be a bit sheeky (snobby) about tea, truth be told. Therefore, I’ve had a variety of delicious and different teas and tisanes sent to me by people who love me.

I’ve resolved not to ever buy Sultan tea and make it that way. Everyone else does, so why not be different? However, so far, I have had very little success at sharing my teas with Moroccans in Tamazitinu.

My first attempt was while I was still in homestay. I received my first care package, and in it, among other goodies, was a package of Trader Joe’s Orange Rooibos. Perfect. Citrus rooibos aren’t as smooth as lavender, chai, ginger, or vanilla rooibos, but it really suited the hot summer months.

“I’m going to make American tea.” I told my host mother. “I would like to make some for you.”

I lit up the butagaz tank, brought the water to almost boiling, and let the tea seep. When it was strong enough for my liking, I poured myself two cups of the tea, black, and then added a bunch of sugar to it. I’d never put sugar in myself, but I’d been warned by other volunteers that people will almost always flat-out refuse to drink any tea that’s not sugared.

I poured the tea with the sugar into another cup, then poured that tea back in the pot, the way people do here to help the sugar dissolve. Then, I poured a cup of tea for my host mother.

“Here. If you want, try my American tea. We don’t usually put sugar in it, but I did and it’s good with the sugar too. It’s not a problem if you don’t like it.” (Of course, since I had barely been in site a month, it probably came out something like: Try. Good. Tea from America. Tea from America contains no sugar but this has sugar. Good. If bad, no problem.”)

She looked at it and then looked at me and put it down. She refused to even taste it.

“No really! It’s good. Just taste a sip.”

Giving me a rueful look, she touched her lips to the rim, tilted the glass up, made a face, and gave the rest to her one-year-old daughter. (I’ve seen infants spoon-fed sugary tea, coffee… you name it).

A few days later, my fantastic homestay next-door-neighbor asked for some American tea. I busted out good ol’ Trader Joe’s again and brewed it. She was kind enough to finish her one glass before saying “No thanks,” to a second glass. Her daughters couldn’t even do that much, and four cups of virtually untouched tea sat on the tea-serving dish.

Okay. Maybe the problem was not that it’s a different type of tea, maybe it’s that Rooibos is very distinctive.
Fast-forward about a month to a time when I had just moved in. Three girls came over, drew pictures, helped me clean my house, and ate my spring rolls. Even though the dipping sauce was definitely new to their palates, they loved them. “Good!” I thought. “A new test group for ‘American tea!’”

I brewed up something I had gotten from the supermarket in my provincial capital: Vanilla Madagascar Tea. It was simple: just a black tea with a hint of vanilla, and I thought it’d take sugar well.

So went the drill; again, me keeping some black for myself and sugaring up the pot.

… and there were three NO’s! One girl even spit hers out on my freshly swept agrtil.

Lesson learned. My latest care package, however, I got a delicious powdered Coconut Chai. When one of my friends woke me from a curious nightmare where I was getting kicked out for being out-of-site without permission, (on the up-side, I was about to drink a Dr. Pepper!), and came to my house, I fixed us breakfast and made some of the Chai tea.

I kept in mind a lesson from an experience a friend of mine had. She had made a particularly fruity tea for her host family and given it to them. Her hostmother liked it, but turned to her and said, condescendingly, “This is good, but it’s not tea. Next time you make it for people, call it juice, okay?”

Maybe if I didn’t call the Chai tea actual tea, she’d like it. I sat her down with the pot and a cup of tea.

“Okay. This is like tea, but it’s not really tea. It’s more like coffee, because it has milk and spices.”

She seemed to get it. Still… nope! Nothing!

Well, at least this time I was prepared. I had a large cup of sheeba (one of the Moroccan infusions) brewing and brought it out to her.

It ends up she doesn’t like sheeba either.

Maybe it’s time to bite the bullet and get some Sultan and fresh mint.

SIDA day

I'm still processing things from my last blog.

That being said, I've now participated in two projects at other Volunteer's sites and I'm particularly happy with the SIDA-awareness (HIV/AIDS) day that I helped a friend with yesterday.

I'm typing this at the Cyber in my souk town, so I won't be able to take the time to give the day justice, but I'll try to hit on some of the highlights.

My friend's site is actually physically the closest to mine. It's much bigger than Tamazitinu, and has a College/Lycee: Middle and High Schools. In fact, about 50 girls from my town stay at the boarding house there and attend middle school.

One of the benefits of this to her is that there are teachers who speak English and therefore, a way to talk about SIDA to students in an academic and safe way. I attended one of the planning meetings last weekend, but one teacher in particular, really spearheaded the efforts to do a SIDA day workshop.

We expected there to be 30-40 students. There were 200 crammed in a room meant for 60. The workshop was set up where we gave out ribbons and explained the signifance, then a science teacher (who has taught sex education-like classes before) described SIDA in very technical terms. It was in Arabic, so I didn't understand any of it, but I know it was described as an STD and used cellular biology and discussed DNA.

We had a dialogue that we had students read out loud. Then, my friend gave out the numbers and some relevent statistics, and, the most interesting and rewarding part happened when we opened the floor for questions.

Obviously, as sex is so taboo as a subject in this Muslim country, we were all a little worried. There was some discussion of whether it was appropriate to talk about it, but the students had some of the most incredible questions that my friend and I responded to. Some included:

What should you do if you know your husband has SIDA?
Why is there so much SIDA in Africa?
What can we do in poor countries to prevent or treat SIDA?
Does SIDA exist in our region?
Is there anywhere in the world that doesn't have SIDA?
What impact has globalization had on SIDA?
If you have a child who has SIDA, what should you do about it?
What treatment exists in Morocco?
How are relationships with people with SIDA in the US?

My friend and I took turns answering and one of the teachers translated into Arabic.

It was amazing. People were interested, engaged, and for the most part, mature and open. Afterwards, some girls came up and asked questions they had been embarassed to ask in the open ("If I share soap, can I get SIDA?") and the teachers (8 had come and to some degree, participated) thanked us for coming and for the discussion.

I was floored. It wasn't a perfect day: we weren't able, due to time constraints, to do the art project or the way of evaluating retention of key information, but it was really positive and honest and done in a way that wasn't hashuma, or shameful. Some of the boys laughed a bit too much, but really, I had no idea how well it would go, or how many people would come and participate.

I think, because of the nature of my site, that it's not something I can duplicate, but it was really good to be a part of it.