I feel like today was sort of an ideal PC day.
After eating a leisurely breakfast, I went to the sbitar, gathering a lunch invitation along the way. Perfect. My nurse was back, after the long weekend, so I went and spent the morning with him, talking about things and watching him and interacting with patients. It’s great to have him back—I forgot how rewarding it is to go to the sbitar, and how encouraging he can be with things.
After talking to a few people about water sanitation, I mentioned to my nurse that I had a few ideas for projects, and asked when the next equippe-mobile will be. He told me not until November, to which I responded “Oh, that’s not for awhile. I’m excited because I have some good ideas for health education lessons.”
“Okay, that’s a great idea. Let’s go this weekend. It can’t be official, and I can’t give vaccinations, but we can go and do lessons. We’ll need to spend the night out there to make it really effective and to be able to gather people for a good amount of time, but let’s go.”
Wow. Okay. Now, I was thinking more mid-September or October, but if he can get the commune’s car this weekend, we’ll go… so, naturally, I’m trying to come up with some good health lessons. I have some ideas but I’d like to do it with visual aids or activities to be more convincing and engaging. I told him I wasn’t in a rush, but he responded with, “No, it’s a great idea, and I’ve decided that I’m going this weekend with or without you, but it’d be better if you came.” It’s wonderful working with motivated people.
I did lunch and tea at a “friend’s” house: the family of my hostmother’s husband. I don’t call him my hostfather because, well, he wasn’t there at all the entire time I was living at the house, but he’s a good guy, and one of his sisters is very friendly. We sat and drank tea, and listened to Berber music… even danced a bit. One thing I love about dancing here is that women often tie a sash or jangly thing around their waist, so it’s easier to feel what muscles to use to dance. I’m learning, shwiya b shwiya, how to dance a la Berber. I’ve never been able to isolate my hip muscles before, but I’m hoping to be able to not be shy by the time I get back so I can come to the US and crank up the Berber music and let go.
Lunch was tagine and, well, sheep head. They understood that I didn’t eat meat so they didn’t push the issue, but the matriarch did squeeze a mostly solid but soft white, veiny ball out of a sac of grey slimy eyeball covering. She pushed it over to my part of the table to show it to me, and said, nonchalantly,“We don’t eat the eyeball.” Um, thanks. I’m still not accustomed to people eating goat head or sheep’s head or intestines with their bare hands, let alone seeing someone squeeze and dissect an eyeball with the same hand they’re eating with, but, sometimes it’s fun.
When I got home, I realized some of the ingredients for specific recipes were going to go bad, so I went ahead and opened some of my special ingredients I bought at Marjane in Meknes this weekend: rice paper for spring rolls. Mine were simple: cabbage, carrot, and cucumber julienned and wrapped in the rice paper, but I made a dipping sauce with ground peanuts, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, rice wine vinegar, sugar, sesame oil, and a dash of fish sauce. Yes, you can get all of that at Marjane in Fes, Meknes, Casablanca, Rabat, Agadir (I think), and Marrakech. No, I don’t feel guilty for eating well occasionally in the Peace Corps.
As I was wrapping my first spring roll, some girls came to visit. I couldn’t entertain them because the kitchen was a mess and I was in the middle of making the first Asian food besides a mediocre stir-fry since being in country. They told me they’d just come in for five minutes, and I relented.
I decided to share my spring-roll goodness, talking about why it was good to eat raw vegetables. To my utter shock, all three girls loved them. One was afraid to try it at first, but after her friends demolished three of them, she relented. Not only did they love them, but they also loved the dipping sauce, despite the fact that it had fish sauce! A lot of older PCVs said it’s really hard to cook American or any different food for people at their site because they don’t often like it because they’re not used to it—after all, I think it’s safe to say that a majority of people in Tamazitinu eat variations of bread, tagine, couscous, and occasionally brochettes or chicken 90% of the time. I was pleasantly surprised at their willingness to try new things and how excited they were. One even wanted a spring roll to take home with her.
They grabbed my dirty clothes again, while I was washing dishes, and scrubbed some of them for me. As a thank-you, I made them an apple-orange-yogurt smoothie. I got my clothes cleaned and company for an hour or so, and they got a mini-health lesson and good nutritious food, and had fun, I have to believe, because they were quite insistent about both coming in and washing my clothes. I think it was a win-win situation all around.
The girls, one of whom is a neighbor, told me that I should go to a wedding. I didn’t know who the bride was, so I said probably not, but one said her aunt specifically said I should go. Okay. I was a bit early, so I tried to leave, but someone else invited me to her house. I had fun there, then went back to the wedding and ate dinner there. It was nice and I got to meet some neighbors, which is always a good thing. I also love eating at weddings because at the end of the meal, there’s usually a big basket of fruit. Tonight it was a green melon and grapes. Delicious.
People told me there was another foreigner at the wedding: a man from France who knew someone from Ait lxarij and comes to Tamazitinu once a year. I met him and explained about PC. He seemed to find it interesting and said he was jealous because he loves Tamazitinu and the people there. Yeah. I’m beginning to feel that way as well, at least days like today.
Then, home, and the first shower in my own house! I have rigged a summer shower, which, I must say, is delightful. I say it’s a summer shower, because there’s no real easy way to hook it up to hot water, so in the winter when it’s freezing, I’ll stick with a hot bucket bath. It was actually really easy, and I don’t know why more people here don’t do it: all I did was buy two meters of hose from a hardware store, and a plastic shower head from Marjane. I just fit it over the faucet; turn on the water, and voila: shower! The best part is that the water is occasionally lukewarm, so the temperature tonight was perfect: cool enough to be refreshing, but warm enough to take the edge off.
Aside from that, I bought a bit of cement last time I was in town, so soon I’ll be patching up some of the holes to the outside. I could probably get my landlord’s family to do it, but sometimes it’s more satisfying to do it on my own.
And so life goes… I’m most likely updating from my souk town on Thursday (tomorrow), but I really don’t want to go. I have to: I have tutoring (and am hoping to get some help for the lessons this weekend, enshallah!), and I told my nurse I’d pick up some medications from my conscription hospital. He sent me a mini-cooler for them, which has been amazing because it means this afternoon I had really cold water. My other goal is to try to find a fridge, and maybe a teapot and small table. I just feel like I need to be in site, because last Thursday I was at my souk town, then Meknes from Saturday until Tuesday. I think it’s good that I want to stay in site and not leave. It’s a nice change from homestay when I’d count down the days until I was able to leave and have a change of scenery.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
I am in a big city.
I feel like a real country girl right now. We went to Marjane, which is kind of like a Target, and went nuts with speciality ingredients so now I can make spring rolls and really good(really good) stir-fry.
We also went to McDonalds and I saw my first western toilet in a month. Good times.
Love, love, love being in a big town with other PCVs...
Much love...
I feel like a real country girl right now. We went to Marjane, which is kind of like a Target, and went nuts with speciality ingredients so now I can make spring rolls and really good(really good) stir-fry.
We also went to McDonalds and I saw my first western toilet in a month. Good times.
Love, love, love being in a big town with other PCVs...
Much love...
8/17/07
A few quick notes; I know I just updated a LOT on Thursday, so I’ll keep it brief with a few recent realizations:
I still have to work on my timing of “Salaama aleikum.” I know, it sounds obvious, you just say hi to people, but when walking down the streets or in the alleys, people usually wait until they’ve just passed a group of people to say hi. I, on the other hand, say hi when I get close enough to look them in the eye: a very American thing, I guess. It’s not so bad when I’m alone, but when I’m walking with other people, they say “hello” a good fifteen or twenty seconds after I do and it’s awkward. Small, but an interesting illustration of how many little adjustments I need to make here.
I miss iHndar. I know it sounds strange that I’d get attached to a place after two months, but it just feels like home there.
I keep forgetting how Posh Corps I have it, having electricity and water, and internet once a week or more if I want it… I can go to my souk town, as many as four days a week without getting in trouble with Peace Corps, but once seems like a lot and I don’t see going more than once or occasionally twice.
Though I dislike my souk town because of the heat and the harassment (not a big deal or threatening, just really annoying), I’m beginning to feel like people there are getting to know me. Half a dozen shop owners will call out to me, and even if they don’t remember my name, they’ll ask if I’m getting used to Tamazitinu and see how things are going. One of my internet guys is especially nice. I left my USB reader and 2GB card in the computer on Thursday and didn’t realize it for about two hours later. Lo and behold, it was waiting for me. My tutor has offered to drive me around on his motorcycle if I ever get into problems with transportation (can’t do it! Against PC rules…), and the best café owners ever don’t just let me leave stuff there while I run errands, or sit upstairs and read or do whatever I want, but were even willing to loan me money, a considerable amount of it, when I was talking about buying a fridge and how expensive they were. I turned them down, but they were willing to loan me $50 US. Crazy.
I often forget that I am an American living in an Arab country while we are at war with Iraq. I attest that mainly to the fact that so many Moroccans are able to distinguish between their feelings about American people and the American government. I can count the number of times in one hand where I’ve been given a hard time about the war, and I’ve now been in country almost six months. By contrast, there are days when walking down the street when I have five invitations to tea. I’m not always in love with every element of Moroccan culture or even the culture of Tamazitinu, but the people’s hearts here are incredible. I’ve even heard, twice, that “George Bush isn’t that bad, God loves everyone.” I’m not saying everyone says that, but I was in shock to hear it from two different people in two regions of Morocco.
That said, and please, do not worry about me, I kind of feel a bit strange going to a city this weekend that had a suicide bomber earlier in the week. When we made plans to go, obviously, there hadn’t been one yet, and PC has connections to security information and they keep our safety a number one priority. They don’t think it’s too dangerous, and their attitude is very conservative, safer is better, even if it limits personal freedoms. I’m not afraid. It’s just a reality I’ve never really lived in. They’re targeting tourists, and we don’t travel like tourists, but it probably means I won’t go to McDonalds. No great loss, though I really would like to eat food from home for a day or two. Of course, I crave Thai and Chinese and sushi more than I crave so-called “American” food as it is…
And so it goes. I’m listening to a lot of Carbon Leaf right now. I’m especially loving “Desperation Song” and “Learn to Fly.” I’ve also absolutely devoured Harpers, The New Yorker, and The Economist that a friend of mine sent me. Great magazines, especially Harpers, which I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read before. There was a really disturbing article about lobbyists in Washington (this is in the 7/07 issue) that’s worth taking a look at, if you have the spirit of an activist.
A few quick notes; I know I just updated a LOT on Thursday, so I’ll keep it brief with a few recent realizations:
I still have to work on my timing of “Salaama aleikum.” I know, it sounds obvious, you just say hi to people, but when walking down the streets or in the alleys, people usually wait until they’ve just passed a group of people to say hi. I, on the other hand, say hi when I get close enough to look them in the eye: a very American thing, I guess. It’s not so bad when I’m alone, but when I’m walking with other people, they say “hello” a good fifteen or twenty seconds after I do and it’s awkward. Small, but an interesting illustration of how many little adjustments I need to make here.
I miss iHndar. I know it sounds strange that I’d get attached to a place after two months, but it just feels like home there.
I keep forgetting how Posh Corps I have it, having electricity and water, and internet once a week or more if I want it… I can go to my souk town, as many as four days a week without getting in trouble with Peace Corps, but once seems like a lot and I don’t see going more than once or occasionally twice.
Though I dislike my souk town because of the heat and the harassment (not a big deal or threatening, just really annoying), I’m beginning to feel like people there are getting to know me. Half a dozen shop owners will call out to me, and even if they don’t remember my name, they’ll ask if I’m getting used to Tamazitinu and see how things are going. One of my internet guys is especially nice. I left my USB reader and 2GB card in the computer on Thursday and didn’t realize it for about two hours later. Lo and behold, it was waiting for me. My tutor has offered to drive me around on his motorcycle if I ever get into problems with transportation (can’t do it! Against PC rules…), and the best café owners ever don’t just let me leave stuff there while I run errands, or sit upstairs and read or do whatever I want, but were even willing to loan me money, a considerable amount of it, when I was talking about buying a fridge and how expensive they were. I turned them down, but they were willing to loan me $50 US. Crazy.
I often forget that I am an American living in an Arab country while we are at war with Iraq. I attest that mainly to the fact that so many Moroccans are able to distinguish between their feelings about American people and the American government. I can count the number of times in one hand where I’ve been given a hard time about the war, and I’ve now been in country almost six months. By contrast, there are days when walking down the street when I have five invitations to tea. I’m not always in love with every element of Moroccan culture or even the culture of Tamazitinu, but the people’s hearts here are incredible. I’ve even heard, twice, that “George Bush isn’t that bad, God loves everyone.” I’m not saying everyone says that, but I was in shock to hear it from two different people in two regions of Morocco.
That said, and please, do not worry about me, I kind of feel a bit strange going to a city this weekend that had a suicide bomber earlier in the week. When we made plans to go, obviously, there hadn’t been one yet, and PC has connections to security information and they keep our safety a number one priority. They don’t think it’s too dangerous, and their attitude is very conservative, safer is better, even if it limits personal freedoms. I’m not afraid. It’s just a reality I’ve never really lived in. They’re targeting tourists, and we don’t travel like tourists, but it probably means I won’t go to McDonalds. No great loss, though I really would like to eat food from home for a day or two. Of course, I crave Thai and Chinese and sushi more than I crave so-called “American” food as it is…
And so it goes. I’m listening to a lot of Carbon Leaf right now. I’m especially loving “Desperation Song” and “Learn to Fly.” I’ve also absolutely devoured Harpers, The New Yorker, and The Economist that a friend of mine sent me. Great magazines, especially Harpers, which I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read before. There was a really disturbing article about lobbyists in Washington (this is in the 7/07 issue) that’s worth taking a look at, if you have the spirit of an activist.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Handy-Woman
I've updated twice today; I kept the glossary as separate, but if you are curious about any terms I'm using, give it a peruse. :)
8.10.07
(3shra, shr tminya, alfayn u sb3a)
I feel like I’ve been a mixture of very productive and a bad volunteer recently. I’ve been to my souk town twice in one week, which just feels like too much, even if I tutor both days. This week, I have been to a few weddings, eaten some meals out, and visited my host family, but I’ve also essentially not left the house two days, and two other days I was out of town most of the day.
That being said, I do feel productive but still just scratching the surface with making my house “home.” Today, I finished my fire pit for burning trash. There’s something rewarding about hauling rocks around and shoveling dirt, even if I did it in the heat of the day and literally was soaked in sweat. I’m still a bit nervous about burning trash; plastic fumes have dioxins and furans. These chemicals are bio-accumulative, meaning that once they enter your body they never leave. That scares me, since I know I have and will continue to breathe some in. I’m also terrified about starting a fire in what is essentially the desert. I’ll continue to be cautious and eventually be more comfortable with burning trash, but I do like my little fire pit.
Today, I put screens in two windows. I realized, belatedly, that I didn’t have enough supplies to do the other three, but it’s okay to do it little by little. I need to get more screen and thumbtacks, but I might see if I can get someone to build me one for my bedroom window that opens and closes. There’s a great ledge that I want to be able to use as a shelf for cooling water, candles, herbs, and little other knickknacks if possible. If not, I can make do with the ledges in my salon.
I’ve started to scrub down the walls, but haven’t even been able to really make a dent in that. The problem with mud houses is that in a particularly bad thunderstorm, the roof leaks and leaves mud streaks on the walls. When I get a ladder or something to stand on, I’ll try my best to plug up the leaks if that’s feasible: maybe some plastic and cement will do the trick. The good thing is that I know exactly where the leaks are coming from, and that the last time we had rain, there was no leaking. It’s also nowhere near any electrical outlets. Hamdullah.
I think I’m slowly but surely making headway against the dirt and insects. Maybe that’s naïve and wishful thinking, but I’m thinking by putting in screens, using flypaper, plugging up antholes at first with ducttape and eventually, hopefully, cement, and keeping cloth under the front door (there’s a large crack), sweeping twice a day, keeping everything as absolutely positively clean as possible, and most importantly, maintaining these measures, I’ll be able to minimize these issues.
The last few days I’ve also started hanging up pictures, rearranging furniture, and putting mosquito netting up over my bed. I still am not satisfied with my bedroom setup; I’ll give it a few days and see what kind of ideas I come up with.
I’ve had a few questions about my house: yes, it is made of adobe. Most of the interior walls and the floors are covered in a thin layer of cement (paint-thin), but there are some parts of the hallway and bathroom that are just mud, as in I can pick out pieces of straw and if you get it wet, it turns into muddy goop on the floor. . One or two of the interior walls are all cement, but most are just coated in a layer the thickness of a few layers of paint. The roof has beams that are round raw tree trunks, then bamboo on top of that, then plastic and agrtil (the plastic carpeting) and ultimately a layer of adobe.
Okay, enough about my house, though I’m proud of the work I’m doing on it. I’ve never been the toolbelt type of a girl, but these days I’m wishing I had one.
The other things I’ve been doing that are productive are work-related: brainstorming real ideas of projects to implement. I know I will feel better and my community will understand why I’m here more when I start to actually do something. My newest idea that I’m really excited about is doing prenatal lessons for pregnant women. Most women I talk to aren’t open to going to the clinic to give birth unless there’s a complication, and most don’t plan to have a traditional birth attendant (qabla) come to their house during labor, so other than encourage this, I feel the best thing to do is have classes for them. I’m hoping to work with a qabla and my nurse so that it can be sustainable when I leave, and I’ll try to gage whether or not women would come. I’d like to have healthy snacks, go over fetal development, breastfeeding, nutrition during and after pregnancy, labor, minor discomforts, when things are serious enough to go to the doctor, and anything else that’s relevant. I’m hoping women will want to come.
I also have ideas for a few murals, for lay-healthworker trainings, a qabla training if it makes sense, especially for women in outer douars, working with schools, continuing informal lessons at the sbitar, having a girls’ group that meets at my house, designing some sort of waste-removal system for town, and maybe even some sort of a yoga or stretching class for these women who work so hard in the field and have lots of back problems. I don’t know anything about yoga except for having taken it a semester in college, but I think it’d be good to get people stretching. I’d also like to work with other people in my province and the Ministry of Health to do a training for medical providers on communication sensitivity, but I don’t know how feasible that is. On the same level of possibly controversial ideas, I’d love to get my nurse to work with some of the local leaders (men) in town to go over STD prevention. It’s not something I can address with men, but it’d be a good thing to do and to be able to help design the curriculum.
As a secondary project, I’d like to talk to the outfits that take 4x4s of tourists down the road to see if they need a rest stop, or if they’d use it. Since they’re paving the road past my site and it will become a thoroughfare within the next few months or year, my guess is that tourists will start to use the road more, and that might be a way to bring income to Tamazitinu. If we got a rest area with clean western toilets, AC, and crafts that benefit the artisans rather than the shopkeeper, and had something unique: maybe a small Berber history exhibit, it might be a draw. I have no idea how feasible that is, or how many tourists will be coming through, or how to get something like that started, but if it worked, it’d be amazing. I’m also considering teaching English lessons, and talking to schools to see if they want to do a world map mural.
It hasn’t sunk in that I’m here or in the Peace Corps. Once, when I was coming back from my souk town, we were stopped at a gas station and, since we had passed the gendarmes checkpoint, some of the men were climbing on the roof to be more comfortable. A tourist stopped and took a picture of our tobis with me in it. Of course, it was so crowded inside, she didn’t see me and I bet she’d be shocked to see a foreigner in the tobis, but it was really ironic to me: a tourist was (unknowingly) taking a picture of me.
It’s only in moments such as those that it hits me. I am in the Peace Corps. I am living in Morocco. I’ve become so accustomed to it that it doesn’t seem strange anymore. It seems normal here, even though I don’t know the language and am living in a mud house. It’s pretty unremarkable. Sometimes I wonder what in the world I’m doing here, but really, I forget where I am. Or I don’t forget; I don’t think I’m in the United States, obviously, but it just is unimportant. I don’t know how much sense this makes, but it’s really sort of strange when about once a week, it hits me that I live here and that I am a PCV. It’s a really bizarre feeling: sometimes it feels like a little panic attack, and sometimes it makes me giddy with joy and I just laugh out loud. It’s even more strange thinking of people in the US. When I can catch people on Skype, it’s almost surreal. Life goes on; it’s not just stopped in time, but it also feels stopped in time, the same as when I left.
I had a nightmare last night that I was at home and still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. In my dream, someone turned to me and asked, “So, you even did the Peace Corps for two years, and you STILL don’t know what you want to do?” Peace Corps has been in my plans since I was fifteen, but I’ve never had a concrete plan for after, and I still don’t. Non-profits? International development? Public health? I know I want to continue living abroad and working in developing nations, but doing what, I’m not sure. I certainly want to go to graduate school, I know that much.
8.11.07
I spoke too soon about winning the battle against insects. I accumulated Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix from a friend this week, so of course, last night I was up reading. I was feeling smug about my newly-mosquito-net covered bed, and especially crafty with my hanging “table”- a Tupperware box hung with dental floss that pokes through the mosquito net from a ceiling beam to keep a flashlight, lotion, and other little things that I might want at night. At midnight, I stepped out of the safety of my covered bed and saw something crawling on the ground. I thought at first it was a mouse, but it was moving too slowly and scuttling too much. I screamed: it was dark out, I was alone, and there was something big and nasty in my room.
It was a scorpion. Now, I’m not usually too freaked out by scorpions. When I lived in Texas, we had them in the house occasionally, and I know how to deal with them: pick them up with a pair of pliers and dispose. Nothing too difficult, and I’ve done it before here without worrying too much.
However, this scorpion was the queen of the scorpion world. It was huge. I’m talking the size of a small rat. I was terrified. Terrified. It was too big to try to use pliers with, and too big to try to get with a shoe because it’d make too much of a crunch, and I hate that crunching sound. So… half-asleep but really wired and pumped with adrenaline, ran to the kitchen, looking for anything, but wishing for a baseball bat.
I grabbed two pots and a broom and went back. It was gone. Oh, no. I am NOT going to sleep when this guy was literally behind my bed before it ambled out into plain view. It had to be behind the door.
I threw a knitting needle down on the ground and pushed it under the door with the broom. Going in the room was too risky. Who knows? It could come out and get me before I could defend myself because I didn’t know exactly where it would be coming from. I was hoping to push it out from behind the door into plain view with the knitting needle, but it wouldn’t leave. I stood there, staring at the room, for about two minutes doing nothing. Time to ET. Time to go home. I can deal with a lot of things but the idea of living in a house infested with monster scorpions is too much even for me.
But that’s what I wanted, right? What else did I expect? I’m in the desert, for crying out loud. There are scorpions in the desert. There are also camel spiders. It’s not worth going home for something stupid like that. I asked myself: are you a high-maintenance girl, or do you go with the flow?
I stepped in the room and closed the door. There was the monster scorpion. She was huddling in the corner, shaking, obviously terrified of the knitting needle that had been coming for her. Thinking the path was clear, she started to scuttle away. Do I throw a pot at her? Do I smash her with a frying pan with no handle? Or do I try to get her with the broom?
The broom had the longest handle, so it won out, and I gave a warrior cry as I beat her to death with it. At this point, I was feeling a bit badly for her, but when I swept her to the toilet and heard her shell rattling against the floor, I didn’t feel so badly. I took a bad picture before flushing her down my Turkish toilet, and haven’t seen another scorpion since; enshallah it will stay that way. I am, however, still on edge with bugs: once I leaned on my cell phone while reading and screamed and was halfway across the room before I realized what it was. Oh, well.
Today was an interesting day. Once more, I didn’t leave the house/courtyard until about 4:30. I finished burning my trash, took a shower (bucket bath, of course), washed clothes, cooked a southwestern stir fry and juice, realized my hair is falling out, so made myself another shake and had a protein bomb, and read some Harry Potter. I tweaked some of my insect and dirt prevention measures, and then realized that this is a bad habit to get into: staying at home. I need to make friends here and get to know my community.
So, at 4:30, I headed out the door, thinking I was just going for a walk, hoping to get at least one tea invite so I could feel social, and get back soon to my house to continue reading/cleaning/resting. I didn’t realize I wouldn’t get home for almost eight hours.
At first, I was disappointed. I walked all the way to my host family’s house while only seeing one person I knew and having a short conversation with her. Hostmom invited me in for tea, and I stayed only as long as I had to, as she was getting in a heated incomprehensible conversation with her husband and I felt awkward.
I was hoping the next door neighbors were home, but they weren’t. A neighbor girl, who sometimes went on walks with me and other neighbors, invited me for tea. I told myself I’d accept any and all tea invites on this walk, so I went in her house. I had no idea how poor her family was, but what was most intriguing was that it was nothing like any house I’ve seen in Tamazitinu before. I’ve seen it in outer douars, but not here, and it was only four or five houses from my homestay house. It’s all mud, but most of the living and animals are kept in mud rooms on the second floor. Difficult to describe, but cool to see they were raising quail, sheep, and goats. I’ve never seen quail here either. A baby goat came into the tea room and started drinking out of the tea-water bucket and eating out of the sugar bowl. It acted almost like a dog, and even leapt up on the windowsill. I’m adding that to my list of health-related lessons: keep your farm animals out of the room where you eat, and especially the sugar bowl. Audacious creature.
Her family is lovely, and said I was welcome any time to eat or drink tea. We had bread dipped in a mixture of olive oil and honey (both locally produced by hand, fresh and unprocessed; what am I going to do in the US when that’s impossible to find?) which is an interesting combination. Good people, though the father kept speaking Darija to me even when I told him I just speak a little Tam.
My young (11 or 12) friend invited me to go with her to the fields, and, since I had nothing better to do, I accepted. On the way, my closest friend (the 30 year old) from next door to homestay was at home and said when I got back, she’d go with me to Ait Bahalu: the house where my two friends who just got married live. Waxa.
I went to the fields, and we ate figs off her family’s trees. One tree cluster had no visible figs on them. “People must have eaten them,” she said, meaning people just wandering around the fields, wanting to eat figs. She said it so nonchalantly that maybe people really don’t care if you go around and pick a few vegetables or fruits from their fields. I’m still not comfortable doing that though. After munching on those, a few nut-like fruits that are tiny and sweet, and some not-yet-full-grown jalapeno peppers that aren’t spicy when they’re young, she spent about five minutes harvesting some alfalfa for sheep (and only let me help with one bunch), and we headed back.
My other friend grabbed me, and after walking into someone’s house and peeking in at a bride getting done up in makeup and passing by a wedding, we met up with two of her sisters and headed over to Ait Bahalu. On the way, my friend’s sister’s daughter, who is one and a half, did her typical act around me.
I’ve debated about whether to discuss this in a blog, but it’s too funny not to put out there. This little girl is obsessed with my chest. At first, probably a month ago, she just grabbed my chest and said, in Tam, “Breast.” This, of course, got lots of giggles and only served to encourage her. Now, though she knows my name, she calls me “Breast,” and does everything in her power to get as close and personal to them as she can, whether that means burying her face in my chest, plunging her hand down my shirt, grabbing them from the outside, or, when I pick her up and hold her to keep her hands to herself, even just resting her feet on them (or actually standing on them… or dancing on them…).
So, as we’re walking, she starts quietly. “Bush.” The word for breast in Tam is “bush” (boo-sh). Yes, there’s a joke there. No, I’m not going to go there. Then, she gets louder. Louder. When we’re walking down a crowded part of town, she starts screaming it and reaching for me from her mothers’ back. “BUSH! BUSH! BUSH! BUSH!”
I’m dying, I’m laughing so hard. We all are. We all try to say, “No, that’s bad; that’s hshuma to say, don’t say that,” but it’s such a strange phenomenon and she’s so passionate about it that it’s absolutely hilarious.
We get to Ait Bahamu, with her still whispering “Bush” and giggling every few minutes, under her breath. One of Bahamu’s daughters, who is married to my hostmother’s brother, invites me for dinner. I don’t know yet if I’ll accept, so I just say “thanks, enshallah.” We all sit around for awhile, I see one of my bride friends getting saffron painted on her face, and after an hour or so, we’re walking out the door.
Just as I’m starting to walk towards my house, my other bride friend sees me. “Katy! Come on!” She, who is all done up, this time with a white wrap and black head scarf with dangling jangly silver discs, grabs me and pulls me inside. “You have to stay for dinner.” Two invites to the same dinner? It was a sign. I stayed.
“But I’m not wearing nice clothes!” A woman, who I know I’ve seen before but don’t remember anything about says “You look fine, but if you want to borrow this, you can.” She was dressed almost as a bride too, though she’d been married for years. I still don’t understand this, but apparently it’s okay to dress like a bride even when you aren’t one. People started telling me to go with her, so I did. I love how giving people are here. I can’t say that enough.
We winded through the alleyways to her house, and she stripped down to pajama pants and a tank top, handing me articles of clothing. She wrapped a white lacey shawl around my torso and tied it with a belt, then did my hair in a bridal wrap. “Here. Let me do saffron too.” Five minutes later, I was back at Ait Bahalu.
Everyone was complementing me; “bsshha”s and “stisnt”s were flying at me from every direction. The mothers of both brides, the mothers of both grooms, the father of both grooms (remember what I said about the polygamous Bahalu?), neighbors, a lot of people who look familiar but I don’t know well, were talking to me. My bride friend was dragging me around with her, which I was grateful for, and after dancing some in the aheyduss line, I sat with her, then her mother some, then another older woman who called me over, then back to one of the brides. I ate, and sat and waited to eat, between her and a family from France who was related to the grooms. They also have family that is a neighbor: good to know! I had conversations with people in Tam and French, talked a lot to my bride friend, and finished up dinner and got home at about midnight.
It’s hard leaving the house sometimes, but every time I do, it ends up making things better.
Wedding season is over. When everyone said “shr tminya is full of weddings,” apparently that really means “the first half of shr tminya is full of weddings.” Speaking of shr tminya, I moved in the first, so I’ve been in my house eleven days. That’s a lot. Only around 654 to go.
August 13, 2007
I keep putting off going to the sbitar. I know my nurse is going to be disappointed in me for only going a little when he wasn’t there, but I had to move into my house and get settled. I think that the transition excuses my laziness, to some extent. I was going to go this morning, but didn’t. My next door neighbor, my landlady’s sister, had told me last night when we went to the fields together that she needed to go to the taHanut this morning at about eight am. I thought we’d go, I’d come home, start bleaching my vegetables, then head to the sbitar. We didn’t end up going until around 10:30, and by the time we were back, it was too close to lunchtime to really make much sense to go to the sbitar. Ar aska, enshallah (‘till tomorrow).
When we did go to the taHanut, I was really disappointed with the selection. All the veggies they had were some good looking carrots, potatoes, and onions, and some wilted tomatoes and peppers. The only fruit were yellowing oranges and some melons. I can get creative with food, but the last week, I’ve lived off of those ingredients. I need some variety: no wonder people here seem to eat meal upon meal of couscous, duas (tagine), bread, rice, and sharia (plain pasta). There aren’t a lot of options without going to the souk town, though vegetables from the field are quite delicious when in season. I’ll have to get a fridge and get some specialty vegetables and especially fruits from my souk town, like pears and quince and peaches and apples and avocadoes; cauliflower, eggplant, beets, and cilantro.
I went home and killed time napping and reading. I’ve now read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows three times, and HP 4 and 5 twice in the last week. I need some more variety but don’t have much reading material.
I don’t usually leave the house after lunch until after l3sr, the call to prayer around 4:30 pm. Most people aren’t out, the taHanuts aren’t open, and a lot of people are sleeping or resting. Come 4:30, I was out the door. I went over to IHndar, my old neighborhood. Tamazitinu is divided into different neighborhoods, and most of my friends live in IHndar, because that’s where my hostfamily was. I love it. Whenever I walk back now, it feels like coming home. I figure it’s good to get some exercise, and am hoping for some tea invites to be social.
Lo and behold, the man who has the nice house he wanted to rent me and there was all the confusion about invited me in. The older lady from next door who I adore was there, as well as “Bush” girl, her granddaughter. I sat around and had some tea, but skedaddled earlier than I could have because there were lots of awkward silences. He did still offer me his house, this time, is really nice house that has the western toilet and shower. I couldn’t use it all year, but until next summer. Tempting, but I don’t think so. I may feel differently in the winter, when the thought of a hot shower is too much. We’ll see. Whatever works itself out will work itself out. I do love IHndar.
On my way back, I was going to cut through the fields to go to another taHanut that was supposed to get a delivery of vegetables in the afternoon. I wanted fresh peppers. On the way, the director of the Neddi was out and about, and after I said hi, she and her mother invited me in for tea.
I’ve been intimidated by her in the past, I don’t really know why. I think part of it is that since she’s actually from the provincial capital, and not Tamazitinu, her Tam is really hard to understand. Another part is that she’s one of the only other women actually working in a prominent position in town and am afraid she judges me. In any case, I had a really good time at their house (they live in a room in the Neddi) and found out she’s my age. Ironic, to me, that other than the teachers, the only woman working in a somewhat official capacity is from out of town and is 23 years old. She and her mother left the capital and have lived here for three years and Tam is a second (third) language for them as well; they grew up speaking Arabic and Tassusite. I do think I’ll go hang out at the Neddi some more after it opens again in September. She was listening to Hindi music, and, really, just seems like a good, fun, warm person. I was quite glad to have gone over.
I finally headed home, after a quick stop for peppers and frozen Monaish. I was tired, and excited to have ingredients to make a really good lentil dish, served on top of leftover bread. I have an arrangement with my neighbor: I buy one type of flour for her, and she’ll bake me a little homemade round of bread every day.
It was getting dark out. As soon as I got home, four girls appeared at my doorstep. Okay. Neighbors. I invited them in and tried to talk to them, and gave them some instant iced tea. They stayed about half an hour, but I was tired and had to kick them out. Sweet girls though.
As soon as they left, I pulled out the computer and started blogging. My cell phone rang. It was my host mother, inviting me to have dinner at her house. I had just been to iHndar, but was excited to have another invite out.
Right before I left, there was a knock at the door again (I’m actually finishing this up on Tuesday now). Another neighbor. Nice. I had her drink some soda and talked for a few minutes, but left for iHndar soon afterwards. It was a wonderful dinner. I like my host family a lot better now that I don’t live with them. They’re good people. We got done eating around 10:30, and rather than walk back, they said to just sleep there. Once more, I slept under the stars, on two blankets and some agrtil. It’s nice sleeping outside. I don’t know which one I prefer: outside in iHndar, or at my house, on a bed, under mosquito netting and with a fan.
This morning (Tuesday now; the 14th), I got up at about seven, stayed at hostfamily’s for breakfast (coffee, bread, and honey), then was ushered next door by the older woman I like so much.
They got a shipment of medications from family in France and wanted me to translate when to use them. I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with the task, but I figured the safest thing to do was to separate them into two piles: one that was essentially aspirin substitutes and fever reducers that would be over the counter in the US, and one that was more prescription. I told them under NO CIRCUMSTANCE to take the prescription drugs without going to the doctor first.
I went to the sbitar, but it was empty. No nurse, no doctor. After half an hour, I left, and came home. Here I am now, debating whether or not to make that lentil dish for lunch.
I’m touched. A neighbor kid just ran me over four eggplants from their garden.
Oh, and another interesting sidenote: rumor has it that Tamazitinu is getting internet soon. Now, I don’t think I can afford getting internet in my house (and don’t know if I’d really want it anyway). I think that people are saying it’s coming to individual houses, and not necessarily a cyber, but I’m shocked. We don’t have a post office, police presence, we just got a paved road literally last month, the water is constantly out, I constantly meet women who got married when they were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen, there are only a handful of small shops, and we have no souk…but we may have internet. Never mind the fact that most of the women in my town are illiterate. It’s amazing what globalization and the immigrant population brings to Tamazitinu, and the sort of dichotomy between different groups here. Some houses don’t even have a latrine… but some will have internet.
And that’s another thing: the illiteracy. I think that’s the biggest barrier to health education in my town, the fact that probably 60-80% of the women here are illiterate. It might even be more than that. Most women my age haven’t been past elementary school, though a lot of the girls who are a few years younger have been to middle school, and there are some who go to high school. We only have a madrasa at site, so middle school or high school students have to board, which costs money, and a lot of parents don’t like having their children, especially their daughters away from home. When a lot of girls get married at 15, 16, 17, that happens when they’re not in school as well.
It’s even more difficult given the fact that Tam isn’t, for all intents and purpose, a written language. The alphabet is being revived, but there aren’t any health-related publications that I’ve found, so in order to teach women to be literate, they usually learn Fusha, the language of the Koran, which is not only nothing like Tam, but is very difficult and the women don’t speak it as a native language. So, everything I need to present to women needs to be in a way that is not written. I can’t make a little home-care booklet with written instructions, or a card to pass out with medications describing how to take it; everything has to be with symbols and pictures.
8.15.07
What a morning!
I woke up to having some girls pounding on my door. I almost didn’t answer, but realized it was the nice girls who I said could come back sometime. Time to get up anyway, so I told them to wait a minute, threw on clothes, and let them in. I made them some fruit punch, and we talked for about an hour or so. Nice girls, I thought.
When they left, I decided to go ahead and make lunch early for sort of a brunch, but there was a knock on the door half an hour later. The same girls, with a new girl I hadn’t seen before. “We have something for you.” Okay…
They handed me a fig and a huge bunch of grapes from one of their aunt’s garden. I was touched and had them come back in. They’re all nine years old, but two don’t live in Tamazitinu, one is the daughter of an immigrant to France so we spoke French, the other is from my friends’ site and knows Peace Corps and two volunteers, and the other one is a girl from Ait Bahalu. I went to the kitchen to get more juice or something for them to drink, and when I came out, they were all cleaning the house.
“You don’t have to do that!” But they did, and they had fun doing it. One girl swept and mopped all my floors, another scrubbed my bathroom, and when they finished that, they both sat down and started washing the clothes I had thrown in a basin to soak.
I kept saying, “No, no, no you don’t have to do that!” but they insisted they wanted to. I thought maybe they expected me to give them candy or something, money, even, but they left right at lunchtime and thanked me for letting them come over. Thanked me! They were the ones who brought me grapes and scrubbed my floors and washed my clothes, and seemed to have fun doing it.
It was a nice pick-me-up, to be sure.
8.10.07
(3shra, shr tminya, alfayn u sb3a)
I feel like I’ve been a mixture of very productive and a bad volunteer recently. I’ve been to my souk town twice in one week, which just feels like too much, even if I tutor both days. This week, I have been to a few weddings, eaten some meals out, and visited my host family, but I’ve also essentially not left the house two days, and two other days I was out of town most of the day.
That being said, I do feel productive but still just scratching the surface with making my house “home.” Today, I finished my fire pit for burning trash. There’s something rewarding about hauling rocks around and shoveling dirt, even if I did it in the heat of the day and literally was soaked in sweat. I’m still a bit nervous about burning trash; plastic fumes have dioxins and furans. These chemicals are bio-accumulative, meaning that once they enter your body they never leave. That scares me, since I know I have and will continue to breathe some in. I’m also terrified about starting a fire in what is essentially the desert. I’ll continue to be cautious and eventually be more comfortable with burning trash, but I do like my little fire pit.
Today, I put screens in two windows. I realized, belatedly, that I didn’t have enough supplies to do the other three, but it’s okay to do it little by little. I need to get more screen and thumbtacks, but I might see if I can get someone to build me one for my bedroom window that opens and closes. There’s a great ledge that I want to be able to use as a shelf for cooling water, candles, herbs, and little other knickknacks if possible. If not, I can make do with the ledges in my salon.
I’ve started to scrub down the walls, but haven’t even been able to really make a dent in that. The problem with mud houses is that in a particularly bad thunderstorm, the roof leaks and leaves mud streaks on the walls. When I get a ladder or something to stand on, I’ll try my best to plug up the leaks if that’s feasible: maybe some plastic and cement will do the trick. The good thing is that I know exactly where the leaks are coming from, and that the last time we had rain, there was no leaking. It’s also nowhere near any electrical outlets. Hamdullah.
I think I’m slowly but surely making headway against the dirt and insects. Maybe that’s naïve and wishful thinking, but I’m thinking by putting in screens, using flypaper, plugging up antholes at first with ducttape and eventually, hopefully, cement, and keeping cloth under the front door (there’s a large crack), sweeping twice a day, keeping everything as absolutely positively clean as possible, and most importantly, maintaining these measures, I’ll be able to minimize these issues.
The last few days I’ve also started hanging up pictures, rearranging furniture, and putting mosquito netting up over my bed. I still am not satisfied with my bedroom setup; I’ll give it a few days and see what kind of ideas I come up with.
I’ve had a few questions about my house: yes, it is made of adobe. Most of the interior walls and the floors are covered in a thin layer of cement (paint-thin), but there are some parts of the hallway and bathroom that are just mud, as in I can pick out pieces of straw and if you get it wet, it turns into muddy goop on the floor. . One or two of the interior walls are all cement, but most are just coated in a layer the thickness of a few layers of paint. The roof has beams that are round raw tree trunks, then bamboo on top of that, then plastic and agrtil (the plastic carpeting) and ultimately a layer of adobe.
Okay, enough about my house, though I’m proud of the work I’m doing on it. I’ve never been the toolbelt type of a girl, but these days I’m wishing I had one.
The other things I’ve been doing that are productive are work-related: brainstorming real ideas of projects to implement. I know I will feel better and my community will understand why I’m here more when I start to actually do something. My newest idea that I’m really excited about is doing prenatal lessons for pregnant women. Most women I talk to aren’t open to going to the clinic to give birth unless there’s a complication, and most don’t plan to have a traditional birth attendant (qabla) come to their house during labor, so other than encourage this, I feel the best thing to do is have classes for them. I’m hoping to work with a qabla and my nurse so that it can be sustainable when I leave, and I’ll try to gage whether or not women would come. I’d like to have healthy snacks, go over fetal development, breastfeeding, nutrition during and after pregnancy, labor, minor discomforts, when things are serious enough to go to the doctor, and anything else that’s relevant. I’m hoping women will want to come.
I also have ideas for a few murals, for lay-healthworker trainings, a qabla training if it makes sense, especially for women in outer douars, working with schools, continuing informal lessons at the sbitar, having a girls’ group that meets at my house, designing some sort of waste-removal system for town, and maybe even some sort of a yoga or stretching class for these women who work so hard in the field and have lots of back problems. I don’t know anything about yoga except for having taken it a semester in college, but I think it’d be good to get people stretching. I’d also like to work with other people in my province and the Ministry of Health to do a training for medical providers on communication sensitivity, but I don’t know how feasible that is. On the same level of possibly controversial ideas, I’d love to get my nurse to work with some of the local leaders (men) in town to go over STD prevention. It’s not something I can address with men, but it’d be a good thing to do and to be able to help design the curriculum.
As a secondary project, I’d like to talk to the outfits that take 4x4s of tourists down the road to see if they need a rest stop, or if they’d use it. Since they’re paving the road past my site and it will become a thoroughfare within the next few months or year, my guess is that tourists will start to use the road more, and that might be a way to bring income to Tamazitinu. If we got a rest area with clean western toilets, AC, and crafts that benefit the artisans rather than the shopkeeper, and had something unique: maybe a small Berber history exhibit, it might be a draw. I have no idea how feasible that is, or how many tourists will be coming through, or how to get something like that started, but if it worked, it’d be amazing. I’m also considering teaching English lessons, and talking to schools to see if they want to do a world map mural.
It hasn’t sunk in that I’m here or in the Peace Corps. Once, when I was coming back from my souk town, we were stopped at a gas station and, since we had passed the gendarmes checkpoint, some of the men were climbing on the roof to be more comfortable. A tourist stopped and took a picture of our tobis with me in it. Of course, it was so crowded inside, she didn’t see me and I bet she’d be shocked to see a foreigner in the tobis, but it was really ironic to me: a tourist was (unknowingly) taking a picture of me.
It’s only in moments such as those that it hits me. I am in the Peace Corps. I am living in Morocco. I’ve become so accustomed to it that it doesn’t seem strange anymore. It seems normal here, even though I don’t know the language and am living in a mud house. It’s pretty unremarkable. Sometimes I wonder what in the world I’m doing here, but really, I forget where I am. Or I don’t forget; I don’t think I’m in the United States, obviously, but it just is unimportant. I don’t know how much sense this makes, but it’s really sort of strange when about once a week, it hits me that I live here and that I am a PCV. It’s a really bizarre feeling: sometimes it feels like a little panic attack, and sometimes it makes me giddy with joy and I just laugh out loud. It’s even more strange thinking of people in the US. When I can catch people on Skype, it’s almost surreal. Life goes on; it’s not just stopped in time, but it also feels stopped in time, the same as when I left.
I had a nightmare last night that I was at home and still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. In my dream, someone turned to me and asked, “So, you even did the Peace Corps for two years, and you STILL don’t know what you want to do?” Peace Corps has been in my plans since I was fifteen, but I’ve never had a concrete plan for after, and I still don’t. Non-profits? International development? Public health? I know I want to continue living abroad and working in developing nations, but doing what, I’m not sure. I certainly want to go to graduate school, I know that much.
8.11.07
I spoke too soon about winning the battle against insects. I accumulated Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix from a friend this week, so of course, last night I was up reading. I was feeling smug about my newly-mosquito-net covered bed, and especially crafty with my hanging “table”- a Tupperware box hung with dental floss that pokes through the mosquito net from a ceiling beam to keep a flashlight, lotion, and other little things that I might want at night. At midnight, I stepped out of the safety of my covered bed and saw something crawling on the ground. I thought at first it was a mouse, but it was moving too slowly and scuttling too much. I screamed: it was dark out, I was alone, and there was something big and nasty in my room.
It was a scorpion. Now, I’m not usually too freaked out by scorpions. When I lived in Texas, we had them in the house occasionally, and I know how to deal with them: pick them up with a pair of pliers and dispose. Nothing too difficult, and I’ve done it before here without worrying too much.
However, this scorpion was the queen of the scorpion world. It was huge. I’m talking the size of a small rat. I was terrified. Terrified. It was too big to try to use pliers with, and too big to try to get with a shoe because it’d make too much of a crunch, and I hate that crunching sound. So… half-asleep but really wired and pumped with adrenaline, ran to the kitchen, looking for anything, but wishing for a baseball bat.
I grabbed two pots and a broom and went back. It was gone. Oh, no. I am NOT going to sleep when this guy was literally behind my bed before it ambled out into plain view. It had to be behind the door.
I threw a knitting needle down on the ground and pushed it under the door with the broom. Going in the room was too risky. Who knows? It could come out and get me before I could defend myself because I didn’t know exactly where it would be coming from. I was hoping to push it out from behind the door into plain view with the knitting needle, but it wouldn’t leave. I stood there, staring at the room, for about two minutes doing nothing. Time to ET. Time to go home. I can deal with a lot of things but the idea of living in a house infested with monster scorpions is too much even for me.
But that’s what I wanted, right? What else did I expect? I’m in the desert, for crying out loud. There are scorpions in the desert. There are also camel spiders. It’s not worth going home for something stupid like that. I asked myself: are you a high-maintenance girl, or do you go with the flow?
I stepped in the room and closed the door. There was the monster scorpion. She was huddling in the corner, shaking, obviously terrified of the knitting needle that had been coming for her. Thinking the path was clear, she started to scuttle away. Do I throw a pot at her? Do I smash her with a frying pan with no handle? Or do I try to get her with the broom?
The broom had the longest handle, so it won out, and I gave a warrior cry as I beat her to death with it. At this point, I was feeling a bit badly for her, but when I swept her to the toilet and heard her shell rattling against the floor, I didn’t feel so badly. I took a bad picture before flushing her down my Turkish toilet, and haven’t seen another scorpion since; enshallah it will stay that way. I am, however, still on edge with bugs: once I leaned on my cell phone while reading and screamed and was halfway across the room before I realized what it was. Oh, well.
Today was an interesting day. Once more, I didn’t leave the house/courtyard until about 4:30. I finished burning my trash, took a shower (bucket bath, of course), washed clothes, cooked a southwestern stir fry and juice, realized my hair is falling out, so made myself another shake and had a protein bomb, and read some Harry Potter. I tweaked some of my insect and dirt prevention measures, and then realized that this is a bad habit to get into: staying at home. I need to make friends here and get to know my community.
So, at 4:30, I headed out the door, thinking I was just going for a walk, hoping to get at least one tea invite so I could feel social, and get back soon to my house to continue reading/cleaning/resting. I didn’t realize I wouldn’t get home for almost eight hours.
At first, I was disappointed. I walked all the way to my host family’s house while only seeing one person I knew and having a short conversation with her. Hostmom invited me in for tea, and I stayed only as long as I had to, as she was getting in a heated incomprehensible conversation with her husband and I felt awkward.
I was hoping the next door neighbors were home, but they weren’t. A neighbor girl, who sometimes went on walks with me and other neighbors, invited me for tea. I told myself I’d accept any and all tea invites on this walk, so I went in her house. I had no idea how poor her family was, but what was most intriguing was that it was nothing like any house I’ve seen in Tamazitinu before. I’ve seen it in outer douars, but not here, and it was only four or five houses from my homestay house. It’s all mud, but most of the living and animals are kept in mud rooms on the second floor. Difficult to describe, but cool to see they were raising quail, sheep, and goats. I’ve never seen quail here either. A baby goat came into the tea room and started drinking out of the tea-water bucket and eating out of the sugar bowl. It acted almost like a dog, and even leapt up on the windowsill. I’m adding that to my list of health-related lessons: keep your farm animals out of the room where you eat, and especially the sugar bowl. Audacious creature.
Her family is lovely, and said I was welcome any time to eat or drink tea. We had bread dipped in a mixture of olive oil and honey (both locally produced by hand, fresh and unprocessed; what am I going to do in the US when that’s impossible to find?) which is an interesting combination. Good people, though the father kept speaking Darija to me even when I told him I just speak a little Tam.
My young (11 or 12) friend invited me to go with her to the fields, and, since I had nothing better to do, I accepted. On the way, my closest friend (the 30 year old) from next door to homestay was at home and said when I got back, she’d go with me to Ait Bahalu: the house where my two friends who just got married live. Waxa.
I went to the fields, and we ate figs off her family’s trees. One tree cluster had no visible figs on them. “People must have eaten them,” she said, meaning people just wandering around the fields, wanting to eat figs. She said it so nonchalantly that maybe people really don’t care if you go around and pick a few vegetables or fruits from their fields. I’m still not comfortable doing that though. After munching on those, a few nut-like fruits that are tiny and sweet, and some not-yet-full-grown jalapeno peppers that aren’t spicy when they’re young, she spent about five minutes harvesting some alfalfa for sheep (and only let me help with one bunch), and we headed back.
My other friend grabbed me, and after walking into someone’s house and peeking in at a bride getting done up in makeup and passing by a wedding, we met up with two of her sisters and headed over to Ait Bahalu. On the way, my friend’s sister’s daughter, who is one and a half, did her typical act around me.
I’ve debated about whether to discuss this in a blog, but it’s too funny not to put out there. This little girl is obsessed with my chest. At first, probably a month ago, she just grabbed my chest and said, in Tam, “Breast.” This, of course, got lots of giggles and only served to encourage her. Now, though she knows my name, she calls me “Breast,” and does everything in her power to get as close and personal to them as she can, whether that means burying her face in my chest, plunging her hand down my shirt, grabbing them from the outside, or, when I pick her up and hold her to keep her hands to herself, even just resting her feet on them (or actually standing on them… or dancing on them…).
So, as we’re walking, she starts quietly. “Bush.” The word for breast in Tam is “bush” (boo-sh). Yes, there’s a joke there. No, I’m not going to go there. Then, she gets louder. Louder. When we’re walking down a crowded part of town, she starts screaming it and reaching for me from her mothers’ back. “BUSH! BUSH! BUSH! BUSH!”
I’m dying, I’m laughing so hard. We all are. We all try to say, “No, that’s bad; that’s hshuma to say, don’t say that,” but it’s such a strange phenomenon and she’s so passionate about it that it’s absolutely hilarious.
We get to Ait Bahamu, with her still whispering “Bush” and giggling every few minutes, under her breath. One of Bahamu’s daughters, who is married to my hostmother’s brother, invites me for dinner. I don’t know yet if I’ll accept, so I just say “thanks, enshallah.” We all sit around for awhile, I see one of my bride friends getting saffron painted on her face, and after an hour or so, we’re walking out the door.
Just as I’m starting to walk towards my house, my other bride friend sees me. “Katy! Come on!” She, who is all done up, this time with a white wrap and black head scarf with dangling jangly silver discs, grabs me and pulls me inside. “You have to stay for dinner.” Two invites to the same dinner? It was a sign. I stayed.
“But I’m not wearing nice clothes!” A woman, who I know I’ve seen before but don’t remember anything about says “You look fine, but if you want to borrow this, you can.” She was dressed almost as a bride too, though she’d been married for years. I still don’t understand this, but apparently it’s okay to dress like a bride even when you aren’t one. People started telling me to go with her, so I did. I love how giving people are here. I can’t say that enough.
We winded through the alleyways to her house, and she stripped down to pajama pants and a tank top, handing me articles of clothing. She wrapped a white lacey shawl around my torso and tied it with a belt, then did my hair in a bridal wrap. “Here. Let me do saffron too.” Five minutes later, I was back at Ait Bahalu.
Everyone was complementing me; “bsshha”s and “stisnt”s were flying at me from every direction. The mothers of both brides, the mothers of both grooms, the father of both grooms (remember what I said about the polygamous Bahalu?), neighbors, a lot of people who look familiar but I don’t know well, were talking to me. My bride friend was dragging me around with her, which I was grateful for, and after dancing some in the aheyduss line, I sat with her, then her mother some, then another older woman who called me over, then back to one of the brides. I ate, and sat and waited to eat, between her and a family from France who was related to the grooms. They also have family that is a neighbor: good to know! I had conversations with people in Tam and French, talked a lot to my bride friend, and finished up dinner and got home at about midnight.
It’s hard leaving the house sometimes, but every time I do, it ends up making things better.
Wedding season is over. When everyone said “shr tminya is full of weddings,” apparently that really means “the first half of shr tminya is full of weddings.” Speaking of shr tminya, I moved in the first, so I’ve been in my house eleven days. That’s a lot. Only around 654 to go.
August 13, 2007
I keep putting off going to the sbitar. I know my nurse is going to be disappointed in me for only going a little when he wasn’t there, but I had to move into my house and get settled. I think that the transition excuses my laziness, to some extent. I was going to go this morning, but didn’t. My next door neighbor, my landlady’s sister, had told me last night when we went to the fields together that she needed to go to the taHanut this morning at about eight am. I thought we’d go, I’d come home, start bleaching my vegetables, then head to the sbitar. We didn’t end up going until around 10:30, and by the time we were back, it was too close to lunchtime to really make much sense to go to the sbitar. Ar aska, enshallah (‘till tomorrow).
When we did go to the taHanut, I was really disappointed with the selection. All the veggies they had were some good looking carrots, potatoes, and onions, and some wilted tomatoes and peppers. The only fruit were yellowing oranges and some melons. I can get creative with food, but the last week, I’ve lived off of those ingredients. I need some variety: no wonder people here seem to eat meal upon meal of couscous, duas (tagine), bread, rice, and sharia (plain pasta). There aren’t a lot of options without going to the souk town, though vegetables from the field are quite delicious when in season. I’ll have to get a fridge and get some specialty vegetables and especially fruits from my souk town, like pears and quince and peaches and apples and avocadoes; cauliflower, eggplant, beets, and cilantro.
I went home and killed time napping and reading. I’ve now read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows three times, and HP 4 and 5 twice in the last week. I need some more variety but don’t have much reading material.
I don’t usually leave the house after lunch until after l3sr, the call to prayer around 4:30 pm. Most people aren’t out, the taHanuts aren’t open, and a lot of people are sleeping or resting. Come 4:30, I was out the door. I went over to IHndar, my old neighborhood. Tamazitinu is divided into different neighborhoods, and most of my friends live in IHndar, because that’s where my hostfamily was. I love it. Whenever I walk back now, it feels like coming home. I figure it’s good to get some exercise, and am hoping for some tea invites to be social.
Lo and behold, the man who has the nice house he wanted to rent me and there was all the confusion about invited me in. The older lady from next door who I adore was there, as well as “Bush” girl, her granddaughter. I sat around and had some tea, but skedaddled earlier than I could have because there were lots of awkward silences. He did still offer me his house, this time, is really nice house that has the western toilet and shower. I couldn’t use it all year, but until next summer. Tempting, but I don’t think so. I may feel differently in the winter, when the thought of a hot shower is too much. We’ll see. Whatever works itself out will work itself out. I do love IHndar.
On my way back, I was going to cut through the fields to go to another taHanut that was supposed to get a delivery of vegetables in the afternoon. I wanted fresh peppers. On the way, the director of the Neddi was out and about, and after I said hi, she and her mother invited me in for tea.
I’ve been intimidated by her in the past, I don’t really know why. I think part of it is that since she’s actually from the provincial capital, and not Tamazitinu, her Tam is really hard to understand. Another part is that she’s one of the only other women actually working in a prominent position in town and am afraid she judges me. In any case, I had a really good time at their house (they live in a room in the Neddi) and found out she’s my age. Ironic, to me, that other than the teachers, the only woman working in a somewhat official capacity is from out of town and is 23 years old. She and her mother left the capital and have lived here for three years and Tam is a second (third) language for them as well; they grew up speaking Arabic and Tassusite. I do think I’ll go hang out at the Neddi some more after it opens again in September. She was listening to Hindi music, and, really, just seems like a good, fun, warm person. I was quite glad to have gone over.
I finally headed home, after a quick stop for peppers and frozen Monaish. I was tired, and excited to have ingredients to make a really good lentil dish, served on top of leftover bread. I have an arrangement with my neighbor: I buy one type of flour for her, and she’ll bake me a little homemade round of bread every day.
It was getting dark out. As soon as I got home, four girls appeared at my doorstep. Okay. Neighbors. I invited them in and tried to talk to them, and gave them some instant iced tea. They stayed about half an hour, but I was tired and had to kick them out. Sweet girls though.
As soon as they left, I pulled out the computer and started blogging. My cell phone rang. It was my host mother, inviting me to have dinner at her house. I had just been to iHndar, but was excited to have another invite out.
Right before I left, there was a knock at the door again (I’m actually finishing this up on Tuesday now). Another neighbor. Nice. I had her drink some soda and talked for a few minutes, but left for iHndar soon afterwards. It was a wonderful dinner. I like my host family a lot better now that I don’t live with them. They’re good people. We got done eating around 10:30, and rather than walk back, they said to just sleep there. Once more, I slept under the stars, on two blankets and some agrtil. It’s nice sleeping outside. I don’t know which one I prefer: outside in iHndar, or at my house, on a bed, under mosquito netting and with a fan.
This morning (Tuesday now; the 14th), I got up at about seven, stayed at hostfamily’s for breakfast (coffee, bread, and honey), then was ushered next door by the older woman I like so much.
They got a shipment of medications from family in France and wanted me to translate when to use them. I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with the task, but I figured the safest thing to do was to separate them into two piles: one that was essentially aspirin substitutes and fever reducers that would be over the counter in the US, and one that was more prescription. I told them under NO CIRCUMSTANCE to take the prescription drugs without going to the doctor first.
I went to the sbitar, but it was empty. No nurse, no doctor. After half an hour, I left, and came home. Here I am now, debating whether or not to make that lentil dish for lunch.
I’m touched. A neighbor kid just ran me over four eggplants from their garden.
Oh, and another interesting sidenote: rumor has it that Tamazitinu is getting internet soon. Now, I don’t think I can afford getting internet in my house (and don’t know if I’d really want it anyway). I think that people are saying it’s coming to individual houses, and not necessarily a cyber, but I’m shocked. We don’t have a post office, police presence, we just got a paved road literally last month, the water is constantly out, I constantly meet women who got married when they were fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen, there are only a handful of small shops, and we have no souk…but we may have internet. Never mind the fact that most of the women in my town are illiterate. It’s amazing what globalization and the immigrant population brings to Tamazitinu, and the sort of dichotomy between different groups here. Some houses don’t even have a latrine… but some will have internet.
And that’s another thing: the illiteracy. I think that’s the biggest barrier to health education in my town, the fact that probably 60-80% of the women here are illiterate. It might even be more than that. Most women my age haven’t been past elementary school, though a lot of the girls who are a few years younger have been to middle school, and there are some who go to high school. We only have a madrasa at site, so middle school or high school students have to board, which costs money, and a lot of parents don’t like having their children, especially their daughters away from home. When a lot of girls get married at 15, 16, 17, that happens when they’re not in school as well.
It’s even more difficult given the fact that Tam isn’t, for all intents and purpose, a written language. The alphabet is being revived, but there aren’t any health-related publications that I’ve found, so in order to teach women to be literate, they usually learn Fusha, the language of the Koran, which is not only nothing like Tam, but is very difficult and the women don’t speak it as a native language. So, everything I need to present to women needs to be in a way that is not written. I can’t make a little home-care booklet with written instructions, or a card to pass out with medications describing how to take it; everything has to be with symbols and pictures.
8.15.07
What a morning!
I woke up to having some girls pounding on my door. I almost didn’t answer, but realized it was the nice girls who I said could come back sometime. Time to get up anyway, so I told them to wait a minute, threw on clothes, and let them in. I made them some fruit punch, and we talked for about an hour or so. Nice girls, I thought.
When they left, I decided to go ahead and make lunch early for sort of a brunch, but there was a knock on the door half an hour later. The same girls, with a new girl I hadn’t seen before. “We have something for you.” Okay…
They handed me a fig and a huge bunch of grapes from one of their aunt’s garden. I was touched and had them come back in. They’re all nine years old, but two don’t live in Tamazitinu, one is the daughter of an immigrant to France so we spoke French, the other is from my friends’ site and knows Peace Corps and two volunteers, and the other one is a girl from Ait Bahalu. I went to the kitchen to get more juice or something for them to drink, and when I came out, they were all cleaning the house.
“You don’t have to do that!” But they did, and they had fun doing it. One girl swept and mopped all my floors, another scrubbed my bathroom, and when they finished that, they both sat down and started washing the clothes I had thrown in a basin to soak.
I kept saying, “No, no, no you don’t have to do that!” but they insisted they wanted to. I thought maybe they expected me to give them candy or something, money, even, but they left right at lunchtime and thanked me for letting them come over. Thanked me! They were the ones who brought me grapes and scrubbed my floors and washed my clothes, and seemed to have fun doing it.
It was a nice pick-me-up, to be sure.
Glossary!
For some reason, my most recent blog post isn't showing up, but you can read it here: http://shwiyabshwiya.blogspot.com/2007/08/handy-woman.html
I've been meaning to do this for awhile, and finally bit the bullet and did it. People are telling me I’m using too many Berber or Arabic words in my blog and they don’t understand them. Here’s a small glossary of key terms. Additionally, if any of you know how to do footnotes in Blogger, let me know, and I’ll include the translations and descriptions as I go.
Abrid: Paved road, opposed to “piste,” unpaved road. There is now an abrid to Tamazitinu! (Tam, maybe Darija too?)
Adig rbi str: Literally “God protect you” or “God keep you to yourself;” used to mean goodbye in Tam.
Agho: Buttermilk. Sold in plastic bags, but in Tamazitinu, it’s usually fresh from the cow and un-pasteurized. People here often drink it plain, but it’s too sour for me to have more than a sip of plain. More often, it’s poured on top of couscous, which I enjoy in moderation. (Tam; in Darija it’s called “leben”).
Agrtil: A plastic carpeting used a lot in my region and probably most of Morocco. (Tam)
Aheyduss: I’m still not sure if this refers to the music, the dance, or the event, but it’s used to describe the time at a wedding when a line of men face a line of women and they dance (step in time, walking towards and away from each other), the men beat on hand-drums, and they sing a call and response song.
Ait: Tribe/group of people. See blog post entitled “My House” for more.
Ait Bahalu: A house in Tamazitinu that is a veritable compound. Bahalu (pseudonym; word means Grandfather in Tam) is the only person I know in town who has two wives, though someone told me he has three. I think it's just two though. He has around twenty children, most if not all are adults, and many of them work abroad. He’s highly respected in the community. Two of my closer friends here (aged 17 and 22) married two of his sons in 8/07, so they now live there too. Since I have friends that live there, I’ll probably be over there a lot. It’s a hopping place: always crowded. I have no idea how many people live there; at least 15 adults and a lot of kids.
Ait lxarijj: The word used to describe Moroccans who leave to work abroad and come back for the month of August and a holiday around January. Ait lxarijj makes a huge impact on Tamazitinu.
Amayn: Response to “adig rbbi str;” literally means “let it come to pass,” like “Amen” in English. (Tam; elsewhere?)
Asinsi: Head scarf (square).
Assif: Lake/river (Tam)
Association: Local Moroccan-led NGO (Non-governmental organization) with a specific goal. Tamazitinu has two active Associations: one that is in charge of tap water for the town, and one that works with development and built a public oven, women’s center, and other projects. (French)
Azizao: Also “azigzao.” A type of collard green usually eaten in my region on couscous, but also sometimes as a sort of bitter salad. Literally means “green.” (Tam).
Bit lma: Literally “room of water” (Darija), used in Tam and Darija as “bathroom.” Hashek.
Bled: The countryside/ rural areas. (Darija, also used in Tam; possibly from French?).
Bslama: Goodbye (Darija; used in Tam)
BssHa: “To your health.” Said to people when they have a new article of clothing, henna, come out of the shower, or come out of the Hammam. The response is “lla tik ssHa” (I think that means “God give you health also.”) (Darija, maybe Fusha; also used in Tam; the real Tam word is “stisnt.”)
Butagaz: Butane gas, used to power stoves and ovens here. There’s a certain element of caution needed because butagaz poisoning can be serious. Refers to the tank as well as the gas inside; sometimes just called Buta. (Darija; used in Tam, from French)
Car: A souk bus, CTM bus, or any other intercity large bus. Confused the mess out of me the first time I heard it used. “Car” is “tomobil.”
Carte de Sejour: Essentially a Moroccan green card; I need to get one and have it renewed every year. Until it is processed, I have a receipt I must have renewed at my gendarmes in my souk town every month. (French, used in Darija/Tam)
CBT: PC abbreviation for Community Based Training; the time during Pre-Service Training that we left in groups of 5 trainees to one LCF to live in a small town with host families and study language and cross-cultural information.
College: Middle school. Pronounced as in French, not like an American university. (Darija, from French, also used in Tam). My town has no college; the nearest is in my friend’s site 15 k away, and the girls who go there stay in a girl’s boarding house.
Commune: The equivalent of a Town Hall/Council; the place that the Rais, Khalifa, and other local officials work. Usually right next door to the sbitar.
Conscription Hospital: The regional hospital that oversees a handful of rural sbitars; my Conscription Hospital is in my souk town.
Cyber: Cybercafe/ Internet café. None yet in Tamazitinu. I’d put money on having one by the time my service is up.
Darija: Moroccan Arabic. Very different than Fusha, or Modern Standard Arabic. Sometimes in my blog, I refer to Darija as just “Arabic,” but Darija is essentially incomprehensible to people in, say, Lebanon, Jordan, or Egypt.
Dar Teliba: Girl’s boarding house (Darija; used in Tam).
Delegue: The title for the division of the Ministry of Health at the provincial level; all Health volunteers meet with the Delegue representatives from in the provincial capital every few months. (Darija, from French)
Dirham: Moroccan currency; there are about 8.5 Ds to the US dollar. As a frame of reference, a kaftan or jellaba is about 200-800+ D; yogurt is 2.5 D per cup, a kilo of figs are about 13 D, a small fridge is 2500D, a head scarf starts at about 20 D, Moroccan chocolate bars are 1 D, Snickers are 5 D, soft serve icecream on the street is 1 D, and a round of bread is 2 D at the public oven in Tamazitinu. Soda and bottled water is about 5 D depending on size and whether it’s a glass or plastic bottle. Bootleg DVDs are 10 D. Travelling 200K on a souk bus is 35 D; 50 in a taxi. My rent is 700 D a month. Getting to my souk town is 10 D each way. Internet is 5 D/hr.
Douar: Also spelled “Duwar,” a word (Darija; used in Tam) that refers to neighborhood or small village. Tamazitinu has between 8-10 douars, depending on whether you are talking about Douars that are served by the Commune or douars served by the sbitar. The nearest one served by my sbitar is essentially attached to Tamazitinu Center, the farthest is 65k away.
Enshallah: God willing; said when describing something in the near or far future. Eg: Ad dugh s Rabat shr xamsa, enshallah. I’ll go to Rabat in May, God willing. Also used as a way to say maybe or hopefully. (Fusha, used in Darija and Tam)
Environment: I talk about the Environment people sometimes, which refers to PCVs in that sector who work on different environmental related projects. The other sectors are Health, Youth Development and Small Business Development.
Equippe-Mobile: A 4x4 truck based out of my conscription hospital in my souk town that goes to all of Tamazitinu’s outer douars four times a year for vaccination drives.
ET: Early Termination. PC jargon for going home before the two years of service are up for any number of reasons. ETing is often used as a verb (or gerund, for that matter).
Flus: Money (Darija; “idrimen” in Tam, though “flus” is also used)
Fusha: Pronounced more like “Foos-ha;” Modern Standard Arabic.
Gendarmes: Rural police force. My gendarmes are located in my souk town, so there is essentially no police presence at site. They are also who I go to for Carte de Sejour business, and the head gendarme, who knows me by sight, wants me to tell him every time I leave the province so he can tell the police/gendarmes at my destination to expect me.
Hakek: “You’ve got it!” “That’s it!” (Tam…maybe Darija?)
Hamdullah: Also “lHamdullah;” literally “Praise God,” or “Hallelujah.” (Fusha; used in Darija and Tam)
Hammam: Public bathhouse. Amazing. Heavenly. My site doesn’t have one; maybe I’ll go in my souk town during winter. One of the associations in town wants to build one in Tamazitinu.
Hanut: Store; usually a small one-room store with one man working behind the counter. (Darija; taHanut in Tam)
Hashek: Literally means something like “Excuse me for talking about/doing something dirty.” In some places, said after words like “bathroom,” “excrement,” “dog,” “donkey,” “diarrhea,” etc. In some conservative communities, it’s used in a sentence such as, “Where is the bathroom, excuse me for saying something dirty?” “Mani bit lma, hashek?” In Tamazitinu, the only time I’ve heard it used is after a meal when a washing basin is passed around, after washing hands. (Darija, also used sparingly in my region in Tam; possibly from Fusha.)
Henna: A plant that is crushed, mixed with water and sometimes other substances, and put on the hands or feet (sometimes including fingernails and toenails). After a period of time ranging from a few hours to overnight, it’s washed off and the skin is stained yellow, orange, red, brown, or black for a few weeks. There are two types of designs used in Tamazitinu: plain henna, where it’s spread thickly and evenly, or zwaq, where it’s piped through a syringe in an elaborate design.
Hshuma: Shame! For shame! Shameful! There is a lot that is Hshuma in Morocco or Tamazitinu that’s not Hshuma in the US: tank tops, sneezing at the dinner table, shorts, pants without a long shirt for women, not wearing a headscarf in some places, doing certain things (dancing, etc) in mixed company, etc. It’s also a good thing to shout to someone who’s trying to take advantage of you because you’re a foreigner, or to a misbehaving kid. (Darija, also used in Tam; possibly Fusha)
iHndar: My host family’s neighborhood in Tamazitinu; my favorite neighborhood (but a good 10-15 min walk from my house).
Imiq s imiq: Little by little (Tam).
Jabador: Two-piece outfit with a shirt that usually goes somewhere mid-thigh to knees, with matching baggy pants. Probably my favorite type of Moroccan clothing. (Darija, also used in Tam)
Jellaba: Also “djellaba,” a long shirt-like garment with a hood. They don’t wear them at Tamazitinu, but women do wear them when they go to my souk town or other big towns, I guess as a way of dressing up. I see them all the time in bigger towns or cities. (Darija; called djellabit in Tam)
Kaftan: Fancy long shirt worn for weddings and special occasion. Expensive! (Darija; also used in Tam)
Khalifa: Local official. Reports to the Caid (my Caid is effectively an overnight trip: 45 minutes by tobis, 50 minutes by bus or taxi, then another two hours in tobis, but that last tobis only leaves once a day…but there is a different Caid 45 minutes away in my souk town. Don’t ask.). I believe he is also the liason with the gendarmes. My Khalifa wants me to tell him every time I leave my douar. I’m pretty good at telling him, but not 100%. I have to work on that.
LCF: PC abbreviation for “Language and Cultural Facilitator,” or our language teachers and basic cultural guides during training.
Lycee: High School. There is no lycee in my site; depending on what track students take, they go to lycee in my souk town or the provincial capital (Darija, from French, also used in Tam).
Madrasa: Primary school. (Darija, from Fusha (?), also used in Tam)
Microbat: Bacteria. Isn’t that a cool word? (Darija/Tam from French)
Monaish: A bagged liquid yogurt, available in strawberry, banana, and pineapple if you’re lucky. I hear you can also get mishmash (apricot), but have yet to see it. Delicious plain, frozen, or in shakes.
Moqaddam: Local official: the eyes and ears of the Khalifa. Each douar has a Moqaddam, but Tamazitinu only has one Khalifa for the center and the outer douars (even the ones 65 k away).
Neddi/Netti: Women’s center. My neddi has sewing, knitting, crosstitch, and crochet classes, teaches literacy classes (Fusha; Tam isn’t a written language… well… not for practical purposes, yet. See “Tifinagh” for more information), and holds a preschool.
Nk/Nkkin: I. (Tam; the word for “I” in Darija is “ana.”)
PC: Peace Corps. For more info see: www.peacecorps.gov
PCT: Peace Corps Trainee.
PCV: Peace Corps Volunteer.
Ponj: Large rectangular cushions used as cushions and beds here. They range in thickness from about an inch high to the height of a normal couch.
PST: Pre-service training; for me it was from March 07-May 07. At that time, I was a PCT and not yet a PCV.
Qabla: Traditional Birth Attendant (Darija; used in Tam)
Rais: The President of the Commune; similar to a mayor. (Darija; used in Tam)
Ramadan: One of the Five Pillars, Ramadan is the month of fasting in Islam. During Ramadan, from sunrise to sunset, believers fast from food, drink (including water), cigarettes, medicine (the very devout), swearing, and sexual behaviors. Fast is broken with lftor (breakfast) at sunset. This year (2007), I plan on trying to fast during Ramadan.
Rbbi: God (Tam)
Rizo: Cell phone reception. My site has rizo, lHamdullah.
Robini: Literally “faucet,” refers to tap water. “Is there robini?” means “is there piped tap water to homes?” or “is the water on?” As a joke, when ordering tap water at a restaurant, people at times ask for “Sidi Robini” (Mr. Robini) because a popular brand of bottled water is “Sidi Ali.” (Darija, used in Tam)
Ryal: Oh, here we go. Ryals don’t really exist as physical currency. There’s no Moroccan coins or bills that say “100 Ryals” on it anywhere; everything is officially Dirhams. However, in my region, and a lot of rural areas in the Atlas and south, prices are quoted in ryals and you have to do the conversion in your head. There are 20 ryals to the dirham, so all you need to do is drop the zero and divide by two, but it took some getting used to. The amazing thing is that even illiterate women and old men here know exactly how much something is in ryals, though if you ask to divide a number by 20 or multiply a number by 20, they would most likely struggle. However, they’re told something is “400 ryals” and hand over a 20 D bill without thinking. It still makes me smile when someone has a 100 dirham bill in their hand and asks if I have change for 2000.
Saffron: A yellow spice used in cooking that is very expensive; also used like makeup for special occasions when mixed with water and sugar. I’ve seen people paint a stripe on the forehead hairline, dots or short lines at the corner of eyes, circles beside the ears, a dot on the tip of the nose, a dot or line on the chin, and big circles around the eyes. I believe they use imitation saffron, opposed to the real thing, but I could be mistaken.
Salon: Also: Hanut n atay. Tea room/living room. In houses in Tamazitinu, as well as at my CBT family, the salon is a large rectangular room for entertaining guests, sleeping, eating meals, and watching television. If a family has ponjs, most likely they are in that room; if not, the ground is covered in agrtil and carpets or folded blankets. In my town, the bottom half of the room is usually painted one solid color or a solid color with a basic design, and the top half is left white or grey. (Darija; also used in Tam, from French).
SBD: Small Business Development; one of the four sectors of volunteers in PC Morocco. SBD Volunteers generally work on entrepreneurial skills with artisans (to oversimplify, that is). The other sectors are Health, Youth Development and Environment.
Sbitar: Clinic (Darija; used in Tam). My sbitar is a Centre de Sante, meaning it generally has at least a doctor and a nurse.
Seminar Site: During PST, a small city in the Atlas mountains that was our “home base” “for training in the large group of 35. A different part of training than CBT phases.
Sharia: A short-noodle pasta, eaten for dinner (plain, or with a bit of tomato) often at my site. (Darija, also used in Tam).
Shesh: Head scarf (rectangular).
Shr tminya: August: the month of weddings, heat, tourists, and ait lxarijj. Literally “Month eight,” and to take it more literally, “Moon eight.” The months are all named in that manner, though there are also Arabic words that sound a lot like in English (yanayr, fbrayr, mars, abril, etc.). In addition, some regions say “ayur tminya” (shr is moon or month in Darija; ayur is moon or month in Tam.) To make things even more confusing, a lot of people, especially farmers, use the Arabic calendar which is not like the Gregorian calendar, and that’s how many Islamic holidays are determined. This gets really mindboggling when you try to figure out how many months pregnant a woman is: the month can be shr tminya, ayur tminya, gusht, or a completely different calendar system.
(In case you’re dying to know, the months in order are: shr waHd, shr juj, shr tleta, shr rb3a, shr xmsa, shr sta, shr sb3a, shr tminya, shr ts3ud, shr 3shra, shr Hdash, shr tnash. The numbers are Darija, not Tam (in Tam, numbers 1,2, and 3 are different. Numbers in Morocco are a bit complex as well.)).
Shukran: Thank you (Darija, from Fusha, also used in Tam, but technically it’s “saaha” in Tam).
Shwiya b shwiya: Little by little (Darija)
Site: The word PC uses for the place that I live. Technically, my site includes anywhere my sbitar serves, including outer douars, so though my friend’s site, which is 15 k away is not in my site and I need permission to go, I can go 65k to my outer douars and still be “in site.”
Souk: Also “souq.” Weekly regional market. (Darija; used in Tam)
Souk bus: A bus that is sort of like a greyhound bus that’s maybe fifteen years old that goes from large city to large city, picking up and dropping people off at the side of the road. The cheapest way to travel.
Souk town: The largest town around that has souk on Mondays; I go once or twice a week. Peace Corps Morocco jargon.
Stage/Staj: Training group in Peace Corps. My Health Stage had 35 trainees; currently 34 volunteers, and was the same time as the Environment stage. Also used to refer to training period, ie “During stage, we learned about different ways to improve already existing wells.” Pronounced as in French: stah-j, not a theater stage.
Tagine: This word has two uses: one is a large cooking dish made out of clay that has a conical-shaped lid, the other use is the sort of stew that is cooked inside that usually has vegetables and meat. You eat tagine from a tagine. In Tam, the word used for the food is usually “Duas.”
taHanut: Store; see “Hanut.” (Tam).
Taharuyt: The traditional women’s wrap here, though not worn by everyone all the time. It’s black with some sort of colorful embroidery in a single stripe in the middle, and some sort of edging.
Tam: Short for “Tamazight”
Tamazight: The Berber language in the Atlas Mountain region.
Tamazitinu: Literally “My Town” in Tamazight; what I am calling my site on this blog. (Tam)
Taragua: Also “Taraguwa;” irrigation canals in the fields (since Tam isn’t written, there’s lots of spelling variation in transliteration). (Tam).
Taromit: Foreigner (woman; a foreign male is “aromi.”). I’m constantly referred to as “taromit.” (Tam).
Tashelheit: The word that is used most often by people in my region for the language; used by Peace Corps to describe Tassusite, the Berber language spoken further West. (See one of my previous blog entries for more in-depth discussion on this)
Tassusite: Sometimes called Tashelheit (but not the Tashelheit spoken by the people at my town; confusing!), the language of Berber people further west than my site.
TBA: Traditional Birth Attendant, or qabla. Usually a woman trained by her mother or sometimes more formal trainings, but without being a midwife or having an academic background in medicine.
Taqesha: Like a kaftan, but usually two layers: a gauzey layer over a solid layer. I thought I bought a taqesha but it was really a kaftan.
Tarzoulte: Traditional black powdered eyeliner, worn inside the eyelid, so it looks like you’re putting it in your eye when you put it on. No matter how hard you wash your face, it stays on for a few days. I love it, though I feel very “Goth.”
Teleboutique: Place that has one or more public pay phones. Good for places with no rizo or when rizo is out or if you don’t have a cell phone. Tamazitinu has three. (Darija, from French, also used in Tam)
Tifinagh: Written Tamazight/Tashelheit/Tassusite. Not widely used because it was outlawed a number of years ago and was not used for years. In 2003, it was revived in some schools, and it’s used by some people who are pursue their Berber heritage. It’s very common as graffiti in my region, but not used widely in publications. If you haven’t seen the Tifinagh alphabet, it’s worth googling, because it looks like something you’d create as a secret language as a child: really cool.
Tobis: From “Autobus” originally, a word used to describe a van used to transport people in rural areas. My tobis is a 15-passenger van that leaves at 5:30-6 am and 2 pm to go to my souk town and comes back at around 11 am and 5 pm.
Tomobil: Car.
Turkish toilet: A squat toilet: a plastic or ceramic plate with two raised footholds and a hole in the middle for excrement. Usually a pour-flush latrine. Hashek.
Water Chateau: Water tower, or place that has a storage tank, pump, and well for water distribution. Chateau means “castle” in French (and might also be used as water tower in French?)
Waxa: Okay. (Darija, also used in Tam). In my region, we also say “waxait”
YD: Youth Development sector of PC Morocco; they all learn Darija and teach English and other things in Dar Chebabs, or youth centers. The other sectors are SBD, Health, and Environment.
Zween: Good, pretty, nice, awesome, cool. (Darija; maybe Fusha?)
I've been meaning to do this for awhile, and finally bit the bullet and did it. People are telling me I’m using too many Berber or Arabic words in my blog and they don’t understand them. Here’s a small glossary of key terms. Additionally, if any of you know how to do footnotes in Blogger, let me know, and I’ll include the translations and descriptions as I go.
Abrid: Paved road, opposed to “piste,” unpaved road. There is now an abrid to Tamazitinu! (Tam, maybe Darija too?)
Adig rbi str: Literally “God protect you” or “God keep you to yourself;” used to mean goodbye in Tam.
Agho: Buttermilk. Sold in plastic bags, but in Tamazitinu, it’s usually fresh from the cow and un-pasteurized. People here often drink it plain, but it’s too sour for me to have more than a sip of plain. More often, it’s poured on top of couscous, which I enjoy in moderation. (Tam; in Darija it’s called “leben”).
Agrtil: A plastic carpeting used a lot in my region and probably most of Morocco. (Tam)
Aheyduss: I’m still not sure if this refers to the music, the dance, or the event, but it’s used to describe the time at a wedding when a line of men face a line of women and they dance (step in time, walking towards and away from each other), the men beat on hand-drums, and they sing a call and response song.
Ait: Tribe/group of people. See blog post entitled “My House” for more.
Ait Bahalu: A house in Tamazitinu that is a veritable compound. Bahalu (pseudonym; word means Grandfather in Tam) is the only person I know in town who has two wives, though someone told me he has three. I think it's just two though. He has around twenty children, most if not all are adults, and many of them work abroad. He’s highly respected in the community. Two of my closer friends here (aged 17 and 22) married two of his sons in 8/07, so they now live there too. Since I have friends that live there, I’ll probably be over there a lot. It’s a hopping place: always crowded. I have no idea how many people live there; at least 15 adults and a lot of kids.
Ait lxarijj: The word used to describe Moroccans who leave to work abroad and come back for the month of August and a holiday around January. Ait lxarijj makes a huge impact on Tamazitinu.
Amayn: Response to “adig rbbi str;” literally means “let it come to pass,” like “Amen” in English. (Tam; elsewhere?)
Asinsi: Head scarf (square).
Assif: Lake/river (Tam)
Association: Local Moroccan-led NGO (Non-governmental organization) with a specific goal. Tamazitinu has two active Associations: one that is in charge of tap water for the town, and one that works with development and built a public oven, women’s center, and other projects. (French)
Azizao: Also “azigzao.” A type of collard green usually eaten in my region on couscous, but also sometimes as a sort of bitter salad. Literally means “green.” (Tam).
Bit lma: Literally “room of water” (Darija), used in Tam and Darija as “bathroom.” Hashek.
Bled: The countryside/ rural areas. (Darija, also used in Tam; possibly from French?).
Bslama: Goodbye (Darija; used in Tam)
BssHa: “To your health.” Said to people when they have a new article of clothing, henna, come out of the shower, or come out of the Hammam. The response is “lla tik ssHa” (I think that means “God give you health also.”) (Darija, maybe Fusha; also used in Tam; the real Tam word is “stisnt.”)
Butagaz: Butane gas, used to power stoves and ovens here. There’s a certain element of caution needed because butagaz poisoning can be serious. Refers to the tank as well as the gas inside; sometimes just called Buta. (Darija; used in Tam, from French)
Car: A souk bus, CTM bus, or any other intercity large bus. Confused the mess out of me the first time I heard it used. “Car” is “tomobil.”
Carte de Sejour: Essentially a Moroccan green card; I need to get one and have it renewed every year. Until it is processed, I have a receipt I must have renewed at my gendarmes in my souk town every month. (French, used in Darija/Tam)
CBT: PC abbreviation for Community Based Training; the time during Pre-Service Training that we left in groups of 5 trainees to one LCF to live in a small town with host families and study language and cross-cultural information.
College: Middle school. Pronounced as in French, not like an American university. (Darija, from French, also used in Tam). My town has no college; the nearest is in my friend’s site 15 k away, and the girls who go there stay in a girl’s boarding house.
Commune: The equivalent of a Town Hall/Council; the place that the Rais, Khalifa, and other local officials work. Usually right next door to the sbitar.
Conscription Hospital: The regional hospital that oversees a handful of rural sbitars; my Conscription Hospital is in my souk town.
Cyber: Cybercafe/ Internet café. None yet in Tamazitinu. I’d put money on having one by the time my service is up.
Darija: Moroccan Arabic. Very different than Fusha, or Modern Standard Arabic. Sometimes in my blog, I refer to Darija as just “Arabic,” but Darija is essentially incomprehensible to people in, say, Lebanon, Jordan, or Egypt.
Dar Teliba: Girl’s boarding house (Darija; used in Tam).
Delegue: The title for the division of the Ministry of Health at the provincial level; all Health volunteers meet with the Delegue representatives from in the provincial capital every few months. (Darija, from French)
Dirham: Moroccan currency; there are about 8.5 Ds to the US dollar. As a frame of reference, a kaftan or jellaba is about 200-800+ D; yogurt is 2.5 D per cup, a kilo of figs are about 13 D, a small fridge is 2500D, a head scarf starts at about 20 D, Moroccan chocolate bars are 1 D, Snickers are 5 D, soft serve icecream on the street is 1 D, and a round of bread is 2 D at the public oven in Tamazitinu. Soda and bottled water is about 5 D depending on size and whether it’s a glass or plastic bottle. Bootleg DVDs are 10 D. Travelling 200K on a souk bus is 35 D; 50 in a taxi. My rent is 700 D a month. Getting to my souk town is 10 D each way. Internet is 5 D/hr.
Douar: Also spelled “Duwar,” a word (Darija; used in Tam) that refers to neighborhood or small village. Tamazitinu has between 8-10 douars, depending on whether you are talking about Douars that are served by the Commune or douars served by the sbitar. The nearest one served by my sbitar is essentially attached to Tamazitinu Center, the farthest is 65k away.
Enshallah: God willing; said when describing something in the near or far future. Eg: Ad dugh s Rabat shr xamsa, enshallah. I’ll go to Rabat in May, God willing. Also used as a way to say maybe or hopefully. (Fusha, used in Darija and Tam)
Environment: I talk about the Environment people sometimes, which refers to PCVs in that sector who work on different environmental related projects. The other sectors are Health, Youth Development and Small Business Development.
Equippe-Mobile: A 4x4 truck based out of my conscription hospital in my souk town that goes to all of Tamazitinu’s outer douars four times a year for vaccination drives.
ET: Early Termination. PC jargon for going home before the two years of service are up for any number of reasons. ETing is often used as a verb (or gerund, for that matter).
Flus: Money (Darija; “idrimen” in Tam, though “flus” is also used)
Fusha: Pronounced more like “Foos-ha;” Modern Standard Arabic.
Gendarmes: Rural police force. My gendarmes are located in my souk town, so there is essentially no police presence at site. They are also who I go to for Carte de Sejour business, and the head gendarme, who knows me by sight, wants me to tell him every time I leave the province so he can tell the police/gendarmes at my destination to expect me.
Hakek: “You’ve got it!” “That’s it!” (Tam…maybe Darija?)
Hamdullah: Also “lHamdullah;” literally “Praise God,” or “Hallelujah.” (Fusha; used in Darija and Tam)
Hammam: Public bathhouse. Amazing. Heavenly. My site doesn’t have one; maybe I’ll go in my souk town during winter. One of the associations in town wants to build one in Tamazitinu.
Hanut: Store; usually a small one-room store with one man working behind the counter. (Darija; taHanut in Tam)
Hashek: Literally means something like “Excuse me for talking about/doing something dirty.” In some places, said after words like “bathroom,” “excrement,” “dog,” “donkey,” “diarrhea,” etc. In some conservative communities, it’s used in a sentence such as, “Where is the bathroom, excuse me for saying something dirty?” “Mani bit lma, hashek?” In Tamazitinu, the only time I’ve heard it used is after a meal when a washing basin is passed around, after washing hands. (Darija, also used sparingly in my region in Tam; possibly from Fusha.)
Henna: A plant that is crushed, mixed with water and sometimes other substances, and put on the hands or feet (sometimes including fingernails and toenails). After a period of time ranging from a few hours to overnight, it’s washed off and the skin is stained yellow, orange, red, brown, or black for a few weeks. There are two types of designs used in Tamazitinu: plain henna, where it’s spread thickly and evenly, or zwaq, where it’s piped through a syringe in an elaborate design.
Hshuma: Shame! For shame! Shameful! There is a lot that is Hshuma in Morocco or Tamazitinu that’s not Hshuma in the US: tank tops, sneezing at the dinner table, shorts, pants without a long shirt for women, not wearing a headscarf in some places, doing certain things (dancing, etc) in mixed company, etc. It’s also a good thing to shout to someone who’s trying to take advantage of you because you’re a foreigner, or to a misbehaving kid. (Darija, also used in Tam; possibly Fusha)
iHndar: My host family’s neighborhood in Tamazitinu; my favorite neighborhood (but a good 10-15 min walk from my house).
Imiq s imiq: Little by little (Tam).
Jabador: Two-piece outfit with a shirt that usually goes somewhere mid-thigh to knees, with matching baggy pants. Probably my favorite type of Moroccan clothing. (Darija, also used in Tam)
Jellaba: Also “djellaba,” a long shirt-like garment with a hood. They don’t wear them at Tamazitinu, but women do wear them when they go to my souk town or other big towns, I guess as a way of dressing up. I see them all the time in bigger towns or cities. (Darija; called djellabit in Tam)
Kaftan: Fancy long shirt worn for weddings and special occasion. Expensive! (Darija; also used in Tam)
Khalifa: Local official. Reports to the Caid (my Caid is effectively an overnight trip: 45 minutes by tobis, 50 minutes by bus or taxi, then another two hours in tobis, but that last tobis only leaves once a day…but there is a different Caid 45 minutes away in my souk town. Don’t ask.). I believe he is also the liason with the gendarmes. My Khalifa wants me to tell him every time I leave my douar. I’m pretty good at telling him, but not 100%. I have to work on that.
LCF: PC abbreviation for “Language and Cultural Facilitator,” or our language teachers and basic cultural guides during training.
Lycee: High School. There is no lycee in my site; depending on what track students take, they go to lycee in my souk town or the provincial capital (Darija, from French, also used in Tam).
Madrasa: Primary school. (Darija, from Fusha (?), also used in Tam)
Microbat: Bacteria. Isn’t that a cool word? (Darija/Tam from French)
Monaish: A bagged liquid yogurt, available in strawberry, banana, and pineapple if you’re lucky. I hear you can also get mishmash (apricot), but have yet to see it. Delicious plain, frozen, or in shakes.
Moqaddam: Local official: the eyes and ears of the Khalifa. Each douar has a Moqaddam, but Tamazitinu only has one Khalifa for the center and the outer douars (even the ones 65 k away).
Neddi/Netti: Women’s center. My neddi has sewing, knitting, crosstitch, and crochet classes, teaches literacy classes (Fusha; Tam isn’t a written language… well… not for practical purposes, yet. See “Tifinagh” for more information), and holds a preschool.
Nk/Nkkin: I. (Tam; the word for “I” in Darija is “ana.”)
PC: Peace Corps. For more info see: www.peacecorps.gov
PCT: Peace Corps Trainee.
PCV: Peace Corps Volunteer.
Ponj: Large rectangular cushions used as cushions and beds here. They range in thickness from about an inch high to the height of a normal couch.
PST: Pre-service training; for me it was from March 07-May 07. At that time, I was a PCT and not yet a PCV.
Qabla: Traditional Birth Attendant (Darija; used in Tam)
Rais: The President of the Commune; similar to a mayor. (Darija; used in Tam)
Ramadan: One of the Five Pillars, Ramadan is the month of fasting in Islam. During Ramadan, from sunrise to sunset, believers fast from food, drink (including water), cigarettes, medicine (the very devout), swearing, and sexual behaviors. Fast is broken with lftor (breakfast) at sunset. This year (2007), I plan on trying to fast during Ramadan.
Rbbi: God (Tam)
Rizo: Cell phone reception. My site has rizo, lHamdullah.
Robini: Literally “faucet,” refers to tap water. “Is there robini?” means “is there piped tap water to homes?” or “is the water on?” As a joke, when ordering tap water at a restaurant, people at times ask for “Sidi Robini” (Mr. Robini) because a popular brand of bottled water is “Sidi Ali.” (Darija, used in Tam)
Ryal: Oh, here we go. Ryals don’t really exist as physical currency. There’s no Moroccan coins or bills that say “100 Ryals” on it anywhere; everything is officially Dirhams. However, in my region, and a lot of rural areas in the Atlas and south, prices are quoted in ryals and you have to do the conversion in your head. There are 20 ryals to the dirham, so all you need to do is drop the zero and divide by two, but it took some getting used to. The amazing thing is that even illiterate women and old men here know exactly how much something is in ryals, though if you ask to divide a number by 20 or multiply a number by 20, they would most likely struggle. However, they’re told something is “400 ryals” and hand over a 20 D bill without thinking. It still makes me smile when someone has a 100 dirham bill in their hand and asks if I have change for 2000.
Saffron: A yellow spice used in cooking that is very expensive; also used like makeup for special occasions when mixed with water and sugar. I’ve seen people paint a stripe on the forehead hairline, dots or short lines at the corner of eyes, circles beside the ears, a dot on the tip of the nose, a dot or line on the chin, and big circles around the eyes. I believe they use imitation saffron, opposed to the real thing, but I could be mistaken.
Salon: Also: Hanut n atay. Tea room/living room. In houses in Tamazitinu, as well as at my CBT family, the salon is a large rectangular room for entertaining guests, sleeping, eating meals, and watching television. If a family has ponjs, most likely they are in that room; if not, the ground is covered in agrtil and carpets or folded blankets. In my town, the bottom half of the room is usually painted one solid color or a solid color with a basic design, and the top half is left white or grey. (Darija; also used in Tam, from French).
SBD: Small Business Development; one of the four sectors of volunteers in PC Morocco. SBD Volunteers generally work on entrepreneurial skills with artisans (to oversimplify, that is). The other sectors are Health, Youth Development and Environment.
Sbitar: Clinic (Darija; used in Tam). My sbitar is a Centre de Sante, meaning it generally has at least a doctor and a nurse.
Seminar Site: During PST, a small city in the Atlas mountains that was our “home base” “for training in the large group of 35. A different part of training than CBT phases.
Sharia: A short-noodle pasta, eaten for dinner (plain, or with a bit of tomato) often at my site. (Darija, also used in Tam).
Shesh: Head scarf (rectangular).
Shr tminya: August: the month of weddings, heat, tourists, and ait lxarijj. Literally “Month eight,” and to take it more literally, “Moon eight.” The months are all named in that manner, though there are also Arabic words that sound a lot like in English (yanayr, fbrayr, mars, abril, etc.). In addition, some regions say “ayur tminya” (shr is moon or month in Darija; ayur is moon or month in Tam.) To make things even more confusing, a lot of people, especially farmers, use the Arabic calendar which is not like the Gregorian calendar, and that’s how many Islamic holidays are determined. This gets really mindboggling when you try to figure out how many months pregnant a woman is: the month can be shr tminya, ayur tminya, gusht, or a completely different calendar system.
(In case you’re dying to know, the months in order are: shr waHd, shr juj, shr tleta, shr rb3a, shr xmsa, shr sta, shr sb3a, shr tminya, shr ts3ud, shr 3shra, shr Hdash, shr tnash. The numbers are Darija, not Tam (in Tam, numbers 1,2, and 3 are different. Numbers in Morocco are a bit complex as well.)).
Shukran: Thank you (Darija, from Fusha, also used in Tam, but technically it’s “saaha” in Tam).
Shwiya b shwiya: Little by little (Darija)
Site: The word PC uses for the place that I live. Technically, my site includes anywhere my sbitar serves, including outer douars, so though my friend’s site, which is 15 k away is not in my site and I need permission to go, I can go 65k to my outer douars and still be “in site.”
Souk: Also “souq.” Weekly regional market. (Darija; used in Tam)
Souk bus: A bus that is sort of like a greyhound bus that’s maybe fifteen years old that goes from large city to large city, picking up and dropping people off at the side of the road. The cheapest way to travel.
Souk town: The largest town around that has souk on Mondays; I go once or twice a week. Peace Corps Morocco jargon.
Stage/Staj: Training group in Peace Corps. My Health Stage had 35 trainees; currently 34 volunteers, and was the same time as the Environment stage. Also used to refer to training period, ie “During stage, we learned about different ways to improve already existing wells.” Pronounced as in French: stah-j, not a theater stage.
Tagine: This word has two uses: one is a large cooking dish made out of clay that has a conical-shaped lid, the other use is the sort of stew that is cooked inside that usually has vegetables and meat. You eat tagine from a tagine. In Tam, the word used for the food is usually “Duas.”
taHanut: Store; see “Hanut.” (Tam).
Taharuyt: The traditional women’s wrap here, though not worn by everyone all the time. It’s black with some sort of colorful embroidery in a single stripe in the middle, and some sort of edging.
Tam: Short for “Tamazight”
Tamazight: The Berber language in the Atlas Mountain region.
Tamazitinu: Literally “My Town” in Tamazight; what I am calling my site on this blog. (Tam)
Taragua: Also “Taraguwa;” irrigation canals in the fields (since Tam isn’t written, there’s lots of spelling variation in transliteration). (Tam).
Taromit: Foreigner (woman; a foreign male is “aromi.”). I’m constantly referred to as “taromit.” (Tam).
Tashelheit: The word that is used most often by people in my region for the language; used by Peace Corps to describe Tassusite, the Berber language spoken further West. (See one of my previous blog entries for more in-depth discussion on this)
Tassusite: Sometimes called Tashelheit (but not the Tashelheit spoken by the people at my town; confusing!), the language of Berber people further west than my site.
TBA: Traditional Birth Attendant, or qabla. Usually a woman trained by her mother or sometimes more formal trainings, but without being a midwife or having an academic background in medicine.
Taqesha: Like a kaftan, but usually two layers: a gauzey layer over a solid layer. I thought I bought a taqesha but it was really a kaftan.
Tarzoulte: Traditional black powdered eyeliner, worn inside the eyelid, so it looks like you’re putting it in your eye when you put it on. No matter how hard you wash your face, it stays on for a few days. I love it, though I feel very “Goth.”
Teleboutique: Place that has one or more public pay phones. Good for places with no rizo or when rizo is out or if you don’t have a cell phone. Tamazitinu has three. (Darija, from French, also used in Tam)
Tifinagh: Written Tamazight/Tashelheit/Tassusite. Not widely used because it was outlawed a number of years ago and was not used for years. In 2003, it was revived in some schools, and it’s used by some people who are pursue their Berber heritage. It’s very common as graffiti in my region, but not used widely in publications. If you haven’t seen the Tifinagh alphabet, it’s worth googling, because it looks like something you’d create as a secret language as a child: really cool.
Tobis: From “Autobus” originally, a word used to describe a van used to transport people in rural areas. My tobis is a 15-passenger van that leaves at 5:30-6 am and 2 pm to go to my souk town and comes back at around 11 am and 5 pm.
Tomobil: Car.
Turkish toilet: A squat toilet: a plastic or ceramic plate with two raised footholds and a hole in the middle for excrement. Usually a pour-flush latrine. Hashek.
Water Chateau: Water tower, or place that has a storage tank, pump, and well for water distribution. Chateau means “castle” in French (and might also be used as water tower in French?)
Waxa: Okay. (Darija, also used in Tam). In my region, we also say “waxait”
YD: Youth Development sector of PC Morocco; they all learn Darija and teach English and other things in Dar Chebabs, or youth centers. The other sectors are SBD, Health, and Environment.
Zween: Good, pretty, nice, awesome, cool. (Darija; maybe Fusha?)
Thursday, August 9, 2007
8.6.07
There were fifteen weddings in Tamazitinu last night. Now, depending on who you ask, Tamazitinu has between 2500-4000 residents. Yesterday was a crazy day, though I only went to two weddings.
I started off by going to my souk town. (My souk town is the nearest city to my site, and I go once or twice a week for tutoring, shopping, internet, and the post office, as well as any official business pertaining to getting a national identity card) On souk days, transportation out is a royal pain: it fills up easily and the tobis driver turns people away sometimes, effectively locking people in Tamazitinu. To diminish the odds of being kept in, I walk about a mile or a mile and a half to the paved road, which is one of the first stops. This means I have to wake up at about 4:45 am to get there by 5:30.
Once in my larger souk town, I checked email and met up with two nearby volunteers. We walked (about two miles) to souk instead of a petit taxi because it’s good to get the exercise, and I bought a few necessities: some plastic shelves for the bathroom, towels to clean with, clothespins, and a pressure cooker.. I can’t wait to learn how to cook lentils and beans here, and the pressure cooker makes it a lot easier, since canned beans are a lot more expensive than dried. I also saw a man from my town who invited me to his family’s house for tea, but since I was with friends, we refused
I realized I was going to be late for my tutoring session, so I somehow managed to find a petit taxi and got back to the main part of town. After tutoring, I priced fridges again and might have found a good deal on a small new one. It’s not coming in until Thursday or Friday, but it’s worth the wait to save the money. I did some more internet, grabbed some fruits and vegetables and a headscarf that matches my new kaftan, and on my way to get flour, I saw my friend who is getting married today and yesterday’s father who helped me get flour and get a kid to wheel the bag to the tobis. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to how wonderfully friendly and helpful people are in my town sometimes, in completely unexpected ways.
The bus ride back was, as always, hot and cramped as we fit 20-25 people in a 15-passenger van, but there were some boys in the back who were playing the drum used for wedding aheydusses and so it was particularly festive.
Once I got back, I was encouraged to sit outside with some neighbors, and I did until I was exhausted and headed back to change out of my sweaty clothes. As soon as I did that, they came to my door and took me to my friend’s house to prepare for her wedding.
After bread and tea, I sat around, talking to the bride’s family and some of her friends. There was a huge vat of couscous over a fire that was probably four feet tall. I offered to help, but they said I didn’t know how to cook Moroccan food, which is true, so I felt in the way but had fun anyway. This all started at about 8 pm. People started arriving an hour later, and by ten-thirty, I was utterly exhausted. It was taking an effort to sit up and stay awake. I told myself to stay at least through dinner.
Dinner (couscous and fruit) gave me a surge of energy, so I went home and put on my kaftan and new headscarf. Everyone loved it. People tend to get very excited when I wear the black wrap or a headscarf or any Moroccan clothes. When I was walking back, the bride saw me through her bedroom window. “Katy!”
I walked into her room and gave her a hug before her appearance outside. It made me feel really good that she wanted to see me before her wedding, you have no idea. I’ve only been here two months, and sometimes I do feel lonely. This made me feel like she really wanted me there, as did her mother and father.
I told her I had to run across town to see another wedding- at least make an appearance—but that I’d be back. Now, this other wedding is of two other “friends” of mine and it’s in the part of town that my host family lives in; again, maybe a mile away. I trudged over in my kaftan and was immediately grabbed into the aheyduss line: a line of women facing a line of men singing a call and response, stepping in time with the music, and playing drums. The association vice president’s brother, who also happens to be my friend’s brother and my ex-neighbor, and newly-wed husband of my landlady’s daughter, saw me with the clothes and said, “Oh, hakek, Katy!” “You’ve got it!” Erm, yeah. I really feel rather self-conscious at times because I know at weddings a lot of people stare at me, so I left the aheyduss line after two songs and stood on the sidelines, waiting for the bride and groom to appear.
My old next-door neighbor, the woman who I said was more like a host-mom, called me over and so I went and sat with her and a lot of people I knew that were hostfamily neighbors. It’s strange feeling like I know people in town even though I’ve only been here two months. I waited, and the bride and groom came out. I watched them sit for awhile, then dance, and after about half an hour, decided I had to go back to my other friends’ wedding to not miss her grand entrance. Her mother had insisted I take pictures, so I felt obligated not to miss it.
I trudged the mile back and realized it was 1 am. Exhausted, I came back upon the wedding to find it very empty. Someone told me that they weren’t starting until all the people from the other wedding came over. So I could have stayed longer! If only I’d known…
The reason that I was so surprised that there were two weddings a mile away is that the two grooms are brothers. I was wondering what family members were planning on doing, and I belatedly realized the answer: start at one, and move to the other.
The bride’s mother grabbed me and made me dance and take pictures of her. The bride and groom came out. There was an aheyduss line. I was exhausted. I took some pictures, and left before the end. When I got home it was 3:30. I had not only walked probably 6-8 miles when it was all said and done, but had been up for 23 hours, spending the majority of that time outside. I felt badly for missing the milk (when the bride and groom feed each other glasses of milk), but the weddings continue today with lunch and more aheydusses and traditional bride costumes. I can’t wait. I just hope that they combine the weddings today.
This is why it’s almost 11 and I’m still sitting around in pjs eating a power bomb, and drinking my newest juice concoction: one cucumber, two oranges, and a pear. Delicious. Why didn’t I ever make juices or smoothies at home? During the summer, there’s nothing quite as magnificent.
There were fifteen weddings in Tamazitinu last night. Now, depending on who you ask, Tamazitinu has between 2500-4000 residents. Yesterday was a crazy day, though I only went to two weddings.
I started off by going to my souk town. (My souk town is the nearest city to my site, and I go once or twice a week for tutoring, shopping, internet, and the post office, as well as any official business pertaining to getting a national identity card) On souk days, transportation out is a royal pain: it fills up easily and the tobis driver turns people away sometimes, effectively locking people in Tamazitinu. To diminish the odds of being kept in, I walk about a mile or a mile and a half to the paved road, which is one of the first stops. This means I have to wake up at about 4:45 am to get there by 5:30.
Once in my larger souk town, I checked email and met up with two nearby volunteers. We walked (about two miles) to souk instead of a petit taxi because it’s good to get the exercise, and I bought a few necessities: some plastic shelves for the bathroom, towels to clean with, clothespins, and a pressure cooker.. I can’t wait to learn how to cook lentils and beans here, and the pressure cooker makes it a lot easier, since canned beans are a lot more expensive than dried. I also saw a man from my town who invited me to his family’s house for tea, but since I was with friends, we refused
I realized I was going to be late for my tutoring session, so I somehow managed to find a petit taxi and got back to the main part of town. After tutoring, I priced fridges again and might have found a good deal on a small new one. It’s not coming in until Thursday or Friday, but it’s worth the wait to save the money. I did some more internet, grabbed some fruits and vegetables and a headscarf that matches my new kaftan, and on my way to get flour, I saw my friend who is getting married today and yesterday’s father who helped me get flour and get a kid to wheel the bag to the tobis. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to how wonderfully friendly and helpful people are in my town sometimes, in completely unexpected ways.
The bus ride back was, as always, hot and cramped as we fit 20-25 people in a 15-passenger van, but there were some boys in the back who were playing the drum used for wedding aheydusses and so it was particularly festive.
Once I got back, I was encouraged to sit outside with some neighbors, and I did until I was exhausted and headed back to change out of my sweaty clothes. As soon as I did that, they came to my door and took me to my friend’s house to prepare for her wedding.
After bread and tea, I sat around, talking to the bride’s family and some of her friends. There was a huge vat of couscous over a fire that was probably four feet tall. I offered to help, but they said I didn’t know how to cook Moroccan food, which is true, so I felt in the way but had fun anyway. This all started at about 8 pm. People started arriving an hour later, and by ten-thirty, I was utterly exhausted. It was taking an effort to sit up and stay awake. I told myself to stay at least through dinner.
Dinner (couscous and fruit) gave me a surge of energy, so I went home and put on my kaftan and new headscarf. Everyone loved it. People tend to get very excited when I wear the black wrap or a headscarf or any Moroccan clothes. When I was walking back, the bride saw me through her bedroom window. “Katy!”
I walked into her room and gave her a hug before her appearance outside. It made me feel really good that she wanted to see me before her wedding, you have no idea. I’ve only been here two months, and sometimes I do feel lonely. This made me feel like she really wanted me there, as did her mother and father.
I told her I had to run across town to see another wedding- at least make an appearance—but that I’d be back. Now, this other wedding is of two other “friends” of mine and it’s in the part of town that my host family lives in; again, maybe a mile away. I trudged over in my kaftan and was immediately grabbed into the aheyduss line: a line of women facing a line of men singing a call and response, stepping in time with the music, and playing drums. The association vice president’s brother, who also happens to be my friend’s brother and my ex-neighbor, and newly-wed husband of my landlady’s daughter, saw me with the clothes and said, “Oh, hakek, Katy!” “You’ve got it!” Erm, yeah. I really feel rather self-conscious at times because I know at weddings a lot of people stare at me, so I left the aheyduss line after two songs and stood on the sidelines, waiting for the bride and groom to appear.
My old next-door neighbor, the woman who I said was more like a host-mom, called me over and so I went and sat with her and a lot of people I knew that were hostfamily neighbors. It’s strange feeling like I know people in town even though I’ve only been here two months. I waited, and the bride and groom came out. I watched them sit for awhile, then dance, and after about half an hour, decided I had to go back to my other friends’ wedding to not miss her grand entrance. Her mother had insisted I take pictures, so I felt obligated not to miss it.
I trudged the mile back and realized it was 1 am. Exhausted, I came back upon the wedding to find it very empty. Someone told me that they weren’t starting until all the people from the other wedding came over. So I could have stayed longer! If only I’d known…
The reason that I was so surprised that there were two weddings a mile away is that the two grooms are brothers. I was wondering what family members were planning on doing, and I belatedly realized the answer: start at one, and move to the other.
The bride’s mother grabbed me and made me dance and take pictures of her. The bride and groom came out. There was an aheyduss line. I was exhausted. I took some pictures, and left before the end. When I got home it was 3:30. I had not only walked probably 6-8 miles when it was all said and done, but had been up for 23 hours, spending the majority of that time outside. I felt badly for missing the milk (when the bride and groom feed each other glasses of milk), but the weddings continue today with lunch and more aheydusses and traditional bride costumes. I can’t wait. I just hope that they combine the weddings today.
This is why it’s almost 11 and I’m still sitting around in pjs eating a power bomb, and drinking my newest juice concoction: one cucumber, two oranges, and a pear. Delicious. Why didn’t I ever make juices or smoothies at home? During the summer, there’s nothing quite as magnificent.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Moved in!
7.3.07
Tonight is my third night in my own home. It’s also the second night that my next-door neighbor (who, for some reason, I can never understand) walked over a plate of leftover couscous. It’s normal in this town to bring leftovers to neighbors and it’s nice to be included in that, even if she scared the absolute living daylights by knocking on my bedroom window at 12:15 at night.
I love the way my house is turning out. Today, I pretty much stayed in all day and worked on it. I put down agrtil (plastic carpeting) in the salon and rearranged the ponjs. Yesterday, in my souk town, I bought screen and I cut one for a window today but after nailing in two nails, I realized I need smaller nails or even thumbtacks.
My “office” is probably my favorite room as of right now because I got it all together today. There were some spare pieces of lumber in the courtyard and two bricks, so I made a makeshift bookshelf that’s really low to the ground. The house came with a desk and a plastic chair, so after cleaning them off, I unpacked and then hung up health posters and a felt human body diagram on the walls. I’m hoping that the health education atmosphere will get me in a working mood and will inspire me to do good things.
My room is still in progress and I’m still unpacking, but I’m hoping to decorate it with pictures. The sort of idea I’m going for is to have everything in the salon be like a traditional house in my town: ponjs, Berber carpets if I can afford them, eventually, maybe turn scarves into curtains, and eventually, a table for entertaining if I get daring enough to have people over for tea. The office, as I said, is the health room, and my bedroom is going to be as much like my bedroom at home as possible, but dorm-room style with pictures, cheap artwork, colorful scarves, and things dangling from the ceiling beams. To complete the “dorm room” atmosphere, I bought a blanket that is zebra striped. It’s the same tactic I used with my first car: when things are falling apart, there’s nothing like a little zebra stripes to jazz it up in a tacky but fun way.
The bathroom, if I haven’t mentioned it already, is definitely just a room with a faucet and a Turkish toilet. I scavenged a shack in the courtyard and found an old wooden drawer that I’m hanging from the window to use as a shelf temporarily. It actually looks kind of interesting. Rustic. I also scavenged an old wooden bowl that is now sitting on my desk holding a few balls of yarn, knitting needles, seeds, and tissues. Don’t ask.
Yesterday, I bought spices and a butagaz tank. My next-door neighbor volunteered her son to push it in a wheelbarrow for me. I didn’t know what to make of that, but it was nice not having to haul it the half-mile or so to my house from the buta taHanut, so I gave him some candy afterwards. My landlady said I didn’t need to pay him, and if I ever needed more butagas or vegetables, all I’d have to do is get him and he’d run errands for me. Interesting. She also said if I need azigzao for couscous, mint for tea, or figs (my tree is small), the neighbors will give me some. It’s a very sharing-oriented community; I just need to figure out what the implications are for me and what expectations people have for me to reciprocate.
I’m struggling not having a fridge, and today was a bigger challenge because the water was out from about nine this morning until nine at night. On top of that, I realized belatedly that I hadn’t bought any pots and pans yet, so cooking was a challenge to say the least.
The lack of a fridge is tough, though doable (though hopefully my tutor will help me get one cheaply). Yesterday, I bought some yogurt in my souk town and had to figure out how to do a makeshift fridge. There are instructions in a book I have here, but I didn’t have the material for the real thing. It was time to improvise. I wrapped the yogurt and a bag of olives in wet fabric from a torn shirt, set it on top of a few tuna cans in a small bucket of water, and made sure the fabric was setting in the water but not the food. The water evaporates off the cloth and cools the food, and by having the fabric sit in water, it keeps the cloth surrounding the food relatively wet.
The lack of water today was annoying. Luckily, I had a bucket of water in the bathroom that I boiled and filtered with a piece of gauze from my medical kit, so I had (hot) drinking water. Everyone here in Tamazitinu keeps large containers of water in what people call a Berber cooler: the bottle is wrapped in cloth and the cloth is kept wet, keeping the water cool with the same principle as the makeshift fridge. I wrapped my Nalgene and two smaller water bottles and it worked pretty well for drinking water. I had to wait to wash dishes until later at night, and wasn’t able to shower (bucket bath) as I had planned. Oh, well. There’s always tomorrow. Or tonight, for that matter. In the afternoon, I found out a neighbor has a well and I can use that water if there’s an outage again. Good to know.
Water is also considered a shared commodity here, for better or for worse. This means if I need to use someone’s faucet or well, it’s not a problem, but it also means if you’re on a crowded bus with a bunch of strangers and you have a water bottle, it’s expected that you’ll pass it around. As a foreigner, I have a bit more leeway with that, but people have asked. If it’s hot water, or not at least relatively cold, people usually don’t want it, so I’ve taken to drinking hot water to keep from getting people sick or from getting sick myself. By using a Nalgene bottle, it also means people are less likely to ask than if I have a bottle of water from the store or a bottle wrapped in wet cloth.
Since I don’t have everything I’d like to in order to cook, and I didn’t get as many ingredients as I’d like, my diet has been, well, interesting the last few days. On Wednesday, I didn’t eat dinner at home because I wasn’t hungry and was too stressed out about moving, and Thursday I ate breakfast and lunch in my souk town. When I got back, again, I didn’t have any pots and pans, though I’m sure I could borrow from a neighbor, so I made a shake I had been planning on: yogurt, vanilla sugar, fresh figs, dates, and almonds. Heavenly. It took me a good ten minutes to figure out my blender, but it works really well, lHamdullah.
This morning, I went outside to the fig tree and picked a few. I cannot wait to eat pomegranates from my garden, but they won’t be ready for another month or two. In any case, I had dates, then tuna in tomato sauce (they sell it canned that way here) with Laughing Cow cheese as a sort of mid-morning snack. I call the tuna with cheese my protein-bomb and, let me tell you, it’s an amazing breakfast, though I don’t know how often I’ll be able to get tuna. It’s a lot more expensive than sardines or other canned fish. I finally used the beautiful French press mug that my mother sent me in a care package and had delicious spiced coffee. It took me a good ten minutes again to figure out how to use the grinder that came with the blender, but it was worth it for freshly ground coffee.
I was so busy working on unpacking and decorating and arranging things that I forgot about lunch and ate a cucumber and some dates and almonds as a snack. I love dates. In the late afternoon, I ran out to the nearest taHanut and got a Monaish (delicious, as always), a few vegetables, and the cheapest pot available in town. I’ll get a pressure cooker sometime in the next few weeks, so this little simple pot will work for now. I made Chinese eggplant with onion, garlic, green pepper, ginger, and soy sauce and rice vinegar I got from the provincial capital last time I was there. It wasn’t the best eggplant I’ve ever cooked, but it wasn’t bad either, considering it was the first time I’ve cooked alone with butagaz. I got hungry a few hours later, so I made what was supposed to be Raita but ended up being more like a spicy vegetable juice: yogurt, garlic, paprika, tHmira, salt, pepper, tomato, cucumber. Now, I’m intermittently munching on my neighbor’s leftover couscous between paragraphs.
My house is in a different part of town than my hostfamily’s house and it almost feels like I’m in a new site. I go to different taHanuts, and my neighbors are different. Most people I know live in my host mothers’ neighborhood, so it’ll be interesting to see how it works out getting to know my new neighbors. There’s certainly a different vibe in this part of town: quieter, for one. Now, Tamazitinu has between 2,000-4,000 people living here, depending on who you ask, so it’s not really that drastically different, but it seems just surreal to be here. Good, but surreal.
That being said, my house is not perfect. I saw my first scorpion in Morocco on the wall of the hallway today. It doesn’t bother me, because we had them all the time when I lived in Texas, but it was the first I’ve seen since I’ve been in Morocco. There are also lots of different insects in the house. Ants in the kitchen, no matter how clean I keep it, flies, though not as many as some places, crickety things (locusts, maybe?), spiders, mosquitoes, and other unidentifiable critters. My hostfamily house often had lizards in the bathroom and I had one tonight. I’m hoping once I nail in the screens that will help, but I’m not confident it will.
The other frustration is keeping clean. Now, I know those of you who have lived with me will probably be surprised that I’m trying to keep clean, as I tend to be messy. I don’t mind mess, but I hate dirt and grime. No matter how many times I wipe down the kitchen counter, it’s always dirty. There was so much dirt on the floor of the salon this afternoon that there were visible orange streaks, and I had just swept in the morning.
Oh, well. This is the Peace Corps, after all, and the trade-off is that it is much cooler than a cement house. I’m not sweating right now, whereas at my hostfamily’s house, if I had been doing the same thing, I’d be soaked. I can sleep inside, in a bed instead of outside now. I didn’t mind sleeping under the stars, but I like having the option. I’m in love with the house, despite my critter companions and the fact that if I walk around barefoot, my feet get really dirty. It feels like my space already. I’ll try to take pictures. In any case, good night and take care.
7.4.07
I still need to go get my bike from my hostfamily’s house, but it’s noonish now and I don’t want a lunch invitation. I also have beans cooking on the stove, so I need to keep an eye on the buta.
The little boy from next door who pushed my buta tank in the wheelbarrow for me came over this morning. First, he brought some sort of seed that people eat here and asked for “soda” mix (fruit punch powder). Later, he brought over a hardboiled egg. They’re taking care of me here, for sure, but he wouldn’t leave me alone and after looking at my stuff and exploring my house for an hour, I finally had to kick him out so I could take a shower. Both him and his mother are impossible to understand. Hopefully I’ll be able to learn to understand them soon. It’s strange that some people are really easy to understand and some are tougher. When I went to buy the butatank, the butHanut was impossible to understand because he’s old and slurs his words together. A nice man who was helping me out looked at him and said “No, you have to enunciate around her and speak clearly.” I don’t know the word for enunciate, but I got the jist of what he was saying. He then offered me buttermilk whenever I wanted it; just bring an empty bottle to his house and they’d fill it up for me. Some of the richer people in town have their own cows.
I pulled out my mp3 player, and it wouldn’t turn on. Even when I plugged it in, it didn’t work. Finally, I got it to turn on but it scared me. It has my music collection for the last ten years on it, and since uploading them, I’ve lost or broken some CDs, I don’t have any other music in-country, and I don’t know where a lot of the other music is. I spent all morning copying all the music that’s important to me over onto my computer. All in all it was only 2GB, but I’m glad to have it on my computer. There’s a lot on my .mp3 player I don’t ever listen to on a regular basis.
There’s dirt in the water coming out of the tap right now. I don’t know why; it probably has to do with the fact that the water was out yesterday. I’m not sure if it’s treated right now, so I’m filtering (through gauze) and boiling everything I’m drinking. It sounds like a pain, but it’s not that bad: boil a huge kettle in the morning, then fill up the bottles, maybe boil more in the afternoon. It’s a good habit to get into in any case.
My friend who’s getting married on Tuesday just came over to say hi. It means a lot to me that she came, even if she just stayed a bit. I’m nervous about having people over though, because it means I have to feed them something, even if it’s just bread and tea or peanuts and tea. Right now, I have the excuse of not having a teapot yet, but I need to get one soon because I can’t use that excuse forever.
It is now officially wedding season in Tamazitinu, if not all of the region. Everyone kept telling me about how shr tminya (August) is full of weddings, and let me tell you, it’s the truth. On the first, the day I moved into my house, there were five weddings going on. There were aheydusses in every part of town and people wandered from one to the next. I bought a kaftan in my souk town so that I can be dressed appropriately, and it was cheaper than my jellaba, surprisingly. I figure it’s a good investment and I’ll wear it a lot this month. I’ll have to take a picture of me in it. Hopefully at my friends’ wedding on Tuesday, I’ll be allowed to take pictures. It’s a double-wedding, and I’m friends, if you can call it that after two months and a language barrier, with both brides and am friendly with the grooms. When one came over today, I asked where and what time the wedding was on Tuesday and she said she’d come get me. I’ve skipped out on weddings the last two nights because I’ve been exhausted and just ready to be unpacked.
I still need a lot for the house: towels and cleaning supplies (!), some storage containers, pillows for the couch, a hose for the bathroom so I can make a makeshift shower from the faucet, Tide, a teapot, frying pan, pressure cooker, oven, fridge, and maybe a table for the salon. I can’t believe how lucky I am that my house came with a wardrobe, bed, table, plastic chair, and two sort-of comfortable armchairs. I spent a lot of money on the two ponjs, but I got them from my landlady and they’re a lot nicer than what I would have gotten elsewhere. They also have wooden stands, so they are at a nice height and not low to the ground. I also didn’t have to worry about transportation (from the shop to my tobis, on top of my tobis from my souk town to Tamazitinu, then from where the tobis stops to my house. Difficult.). If you take into account all I get to use for free with the house, it’s not that much at all, and they’re worth it. If you come visit, most likely you’ll be sleeping on one of the ponjs. Bring a pillow.
Someone else came over just now. I love it: every time someone knocks on the door and I ask who it is, they say, “Nkkin!” “Me!” Thanks. That’s helpful. It cracks me up, but it’s going to help me learn names, because when I ask “Who is ‘nkkin?’” they tell me their names. It was my friend’s mother making sure I knew when the wedding is on Monday night and Tuesday. She said she’ll come get me. It makes more sense for her to get me than her daughter.
My beans aren’t cooking. I don’t understand. I soaked them overnight and now it’s been about an hour and a half. I’ll figure it out eventually, trial by error. It’ll be faster once I get the pressure cooker.
It’s now a few hours later and I’m eating the beans. Not bad. They’re not nice and thick the way I like them, but as a soup, the flavor’s pretty good. It’d be better with onions. I think after lunch and cleaning the kitchen, I’ll venture out and go to see my hostfamily, if they’re there. My hostdad should be there by now. He works in big cities most of the year, but comes back for August and a few weeks around New Year, so even though I lived in his house for two months and am in love with his two darling daughters, I’ve never met him. It should be interesting to see how the dynamic changes when he’s there.
I’m reading through resources right now and trying to come up with potential projects. One that will be fairly easy and cheap, which means I probably won’t have to apply for any grants, is to hold pre-natal lessons for pregnant women. When my nurse gets back from being on vacation, I’ll discuss it with him. I’d love to have the one qabla (TBA= Traditional Birth Assistant) in town help cofacilitate them. I’m also thinking about getting some kids together and teaching health lessons to them; maybe a girls group that meets at my house. There are lots of fun activities and it’d be a fun way to include younger women. All right. Off to do dishes, and then hopefully, to visit hostfamily. Take care!
____________________
I just got back from visiting my hostfamily. My hostmom’s husband was there on his vacation from work in Tanja (Tangiers) so I finally got to meet him. He seems like a nice enough guy, laid back and fun. He’s trying to get a visa to go work in Barcelona. I wish him luck. I felt a bit badly when the one year old was all over me and wouldn’t go near him, but she’s probably only seen him twice in her life: once when she was just a month old for one month, and then once at six months for a few weeks. I didn’t realize until today that I’ve been present for more of her short life than her father has. I like my hostmom a lot better when I’m not living with her.
I turned down a few invitations for tea at other places. It’s just too hot. I’m also learning the hard way that vegetables are only really available at my site certain days of the week. I need to learn when and stock up, which, again, will be easier when I have a fridge. Instead, I bought a frozen Monaish and blended it with almonds and figs. Interesting flavor: figs, strawberry yogurt, and almonds, but not bad and the first ice-cold food I’ve had since my last frozen Monaish about a week ago. The blender cost almost as much as the stove, but I’m beginning to think it was a really good investment for summer: juices, grinding spices, grinding coffee beans, salad dressings, and cold soups.
So, there you have it. I was afraid that I would get really lonely living alone, but I’ve had three visitors today to my house, plus the woman who shares the garden who invited me to go to another neighborhood with her, and when I went for a walk, I had four tea invitations. I’ll probably go to an aheyduss later tonight (wedding outside dance party), so I think it’ll be easy to have time to myself when I want it, but also be able to be social when I want as well.
I don’t know what’s going on with Tamazitinu recently though. Yesterday, the water pump broke at the water chateau that provides robini (tap water) to the whole town, so there was no running water. Today, after about ten in the morning, the rizo (cell phone coverage) went out, so there is no cell phone reception right now. Next thing you know I’ll have no electricity for awhile.
Back for the night. I’m not sure why I’m in the mood to write a lot. I think it’s because there’s been a big change with moving and it’s almost as if everything is new again. So far, the transition has been much easier than I had expected.
My seventeen year old friend who gets married on Tuesday came by again and grabbed me to go to the aheyduss. I threw on a headscarf and the black embroidered wrap that many women here wear and headed on out. I stayed with her, but 20 or 30 people either came up to me or I came up to them and said hi. I didn’t really realize how many people I know. I don’t know everyone’s name, but have at least had some sort of conversation with them and they know me. It felt really good to go out and realize I am getting to know people here and that’s a good thing. Everyone complemented my headscarf (asinsi) and wrap (taharuyt) and if they hadn’t seen my henna, that as well with a “bssHHa!” Even the Rais, who stood watching from the top of a hill (his sister was one of the brides) smiled and pointed to my clothes and gave me a thumbs-up.
We walked with the huge group of Tamazitinu residents, probably at least 500 from near the public oven to the taragua (irrigation ditches/spring) in the fields and there were four brides tonight. I don’t have any pictures of brides yet, but I have a promise from the women getting married on Tuesday I can take pictures of (and hopefully with) them. I like that two of my “friends” here are getting married to brothers on the same day. It should be fun and I’ll really feel like I should be there. Tonight, all four brides had the more traditional dress on. I’ll tell you the truth: I don’t think I’ve ever even paid attention to the clothes because I’m too busy looking at the…headdress. I think that’s the best word for it. It’s amazing. I don’t know what exactly it is composed of, but it has at least several scarves, some dangly sparkly metal coin-like large sequins, and several colors of what we use as Christmas tree tinsel. The brides usually have a design of some sort painted on their cheeks and sometimes saffron. It’s a really intensely colorful and bright sight. I can’t wait to see my friends like that. One day of the wedding, the bride has a more modern outfit, but tonight was traditional dress night for all four brides, and as the procession walked the kilometer or so, some of their family members carried tall stalks of bamboo that towered over the crowd.
From the taragua, the groups split up to go to the three weddings (one was a double-wedding) and I followed my friend towards the wedding near her house and not too far from mine. We stopped by her house and drank buttermilk and ate watermelon and grapes from her fridge, then went to the wedding. I was a bit tired, so I left early. My landlady’s sister, who lives next door on the opposite side from the boy who stopped by, stopped me and invited me in for dinner. She’s baking me a loaf of bread for tomorrow. It’s funny, everyone in my town eats a lot of bread and they know I don’t eat a lot. She asked when the last time I had bread was and when I told her two days ago, she was in shock. “Weird. That’s weird.” I’m glad I learned the word for weird last weekend, or else I would have thought she was commanding me to “Like it! Like it!” It’s incomprehensible to most people that I don’t know how to bake bread and that I don’t eat it all the time, or how I can bear to drink tea without sugar. “It’s bitter!”
In the tradition of several of my other blog entries, here is a Tamazight language note: Ait.
Ait is a strange word. It literally means “tribe,” and is a very common word in town names. Tamazitinu is actually an “Ait” town (if you haven’t been following long, “Tamazitinu” literally means “my town” or “my place” or “my home” in Tam; I don’t use the real name of my town for security reasons.) There is also an Ait that refers to a few towns in my region that speak the same dialect and migrated from the mountains at the same time.
However, it is also used for family names. Depending on who you ask, there are 5-8 big families in my town, and sometimes they’ll refer to people’s houses that way, or even people. “There’s a wedding at Ait Lanshir” or “That’s Fadma Hussein from Ait Moha.” That makes sense to me: if “ait” means “tribe,” referring to families like that makes good sense.
There’s also “Ait Lxarij,” which refers to anyone who leaves Morocco (at least in my region) and goes abroad to work, coming back for a month in summer and the biggest holiday around January. There’re a lot of cars because of Ait Lxarij,” or “That house is of Ait Lxarij.”I’ve spelled it a few different ways in my blog, but it’s used a lot in my region. And who cares about spelling, anyway, when the Ministry of Health spells the name of my souk town differently than the post office? In addition, they refer to people as "Ait Fransa" or "Ait Sbeliul" or "Ait Iroland"(from France, Spain, the Netherlands, respectively).
The strangest usage that I’ve heard though came from my hostsister a few weeks ago. We were sitting outside, chatting and I, as usual, had participated in the first five or ten minutes and then lost the ability to communicate well and started to tune things out. They were talking about the house that originally people wanted me to rent and my little sister said something about “Ait Abrid.” Abrid means paved road. Apparently, you can make up your own Aits here, because “Ait Abrid” referred to the men who were in town renting the house as they worked on the road.
I’ve now made up my own Ait. Sometimes I refer to myself as being “Ait Taromit Tamadurt.” I’m from the tribe of crazy foreigners. They usually love it. I’m thinking of putting up a sign that says “Ait Taromit Tamadurt” in Arabic script and Tifinagh on the door to my house. We’ll see.
Tonight is my third night in my own home. It’s also the second night that my next-door neighbor (who, for some reason, I can never understand) walked over a plate of leftover couscous. It’s normal in this town to bring leftovers to neighbors and it’s nice to be included in that, even if she scared the absolute living daylights by knocking on my bedroom window at 12:15 at night.
I love the way my house is turning out. Today, I pretty much stayed in all day and worked on it. I put down agrtil (plastic carpeting) in the salon and rearranged the ponjs. Yesterday, in my souk town, I bought screen and I cut one for a window today but after nailing in two nails, I realized I need smaller nails or even thumbtacks.
My “office” is probably my favorite room as of right now because I got it all together today. There were some spare pieces of lumber in the courtyard and two bricks, so I made a makeshift bookshelf that’s really low to the ground. The house came with a desk and a plastic chair, so after cleaning them off, I unpacked and then hung up health posters and a felt human body diagram on the walls. I’m hoping that the health education atmosphere will get me in a working mood and will inspire me to do good things.
My room is still in progress and I’m still unpacking, but I’m hoping to decorate it with pictures. The sort of idea I’m going for is to have everything in the salon be like a traditional house in my town: ponjs, Berber carpets if I can afford them, eventually, maybe turn scarves into curtains, and eventually, a table for entertaining if I get daring enough to have people over for tea. The office, as I said, is the health room, and my bedroom is going to be as much like my bedroom at home as possible, but dorm-room style with pictures, cheap artwork, colorful scarves, and things dangling from the ceiling beams. To complete the “dorm room” atmosphere, I bought a blanket that is zebra striped. It’s the same tactic I used with my first car: when things are falling apart, there’s nothing like a little zebra stripes to jazz it up in a tacky but fun way.
The bathroom, if I haven’t mentioned it already, is definitely just a room with a faucet and a Turkish toilet. I scavenged a shack in the courtyard and found an old wooden drawer that I’m hanging from the window to use as a shelf temporarily. It actually looks kind of interesting. Rustic. I also scavenged an old wooden bowl that is now sitting on my desk holding a few balls of yarn, knitting needles, seeds, and tissues. Don’t ask.
Yesterday, I bought spices and a butagaz tank. My next-door neighbor volunteered her son to push it in a wheelbarrow for me. I didn’t know what to make of that, but it was nice not having to haul it the half-mile or so to my house from the buta taHanut, so I gave him some candy afterwards. My landlady said I didn’t need to pay him, and if I ever needed more butagas or vegetables, all I’d have to do is get him and he’d run errands for me. Interesting. She also said if I need azigzao for couscous, mint for tea, or figs (my tree is small), the neighbors will give me some. It’s a very sharing-oriented community; I just need to figure out what the implications are for me and what expectations people have for me to reciprocate.
I’m struggling not having a fridge, and today was a bigger challenge because the water was out from about nine this morning until nine at night. On top of that, I realized belatedly that I hadn’t bought any pots and pans yet, so cooking was a challenge to say the least.
The lack of a fridge is tough, though doable (though hopefully my tutor will help me get one cheaply). Yesterday, I bought some yogurt in my souk town and had to figure out how to do a makeshift fridge. There are instructions in a book I have here, but I didn’t have the material for the real thing. It was time to improvise. I wrapped the yogurt and a bag of olives in wet fabric from a torn shirt, set it on top of a few tuna cans in a small bucket of water, and made sure the fabric was setting in the water but not the food. The water evaporates off the cloth and cools the food, and by having the fabric sit in water, it keeps the cloth surrounding the food relatively wet.
The lack of water today was annoying. Luckily, I had a bucket of water in the bathroom that I boiled and filtered with a piece of gauze from my medical kit, so I had (hot) drinking water. Everyone here in Tamazitinu keeps large containers of water in what people call a Berber cooler: the bottle is wrapped in cloth and the cloth is kept wet, keeping the water cool with the same principle as the makeshift fridge. I wrapped my Nalgene and two smaller water bottles and it worked pretty well for drinking water. I had to wait to wash dishes until later at night, and wasn’t able to shower (bucket bath) as I had planned. Oh, well. There’s always tomorrow. Or tonight, for that matter. In the afternoon, I found out a neighbor has a well and I can use that water if there’s an outage again. Good to know.
Water is also considered a shared commodity here, for better or for worse. This means if I need to use someone’s faucet or well, it’s not a problem, but it also means if you’re on a crowded bus with a bunch of strangers and you have a water bottle, it’s expected that you’ll pass it around. As a foreigner, I have a bit more leeway with that, but people have asked. If it’s hot water, or not at least relatively cold, people usually don’t want it, so I’ve taken to drinking hot water to keep from getting people sick or from getting sick myself. By using a Nalgene bottle, it also means people are less likely to ask than if I have a bottle of water from the store or a bottle wrapped in wet cloth.
Since I don’t have everything I’d like to in order to cook, and I didn’t get as many ingredients as I’d like, my diet has been, well, interesting the last few days. On Wednesday, I didn’t eat dinner at home because I wasn’t hungry and was too stressed out about moving, and Thursday I ate breakfast and lunch in my souk town. When I got back, again, I didn’t have any pots and pans, though I’m sure I could borrow from a neighbor, so I made a shake I had been planning on: yogurt, vanilla sugar, fresh figs, dates, and almonds. Heavenly. It took me a good ten minutes to figure out my blender, but it works really well, lHamdullah.
This morning, I went outside to the fig tree and picked a few. I cannot wait to eat pomegranates from my garden, but they won’t be ready for another month or two. In any case, I had dates, then tuna in tomato sauce (they sell it canned that way here) with Laughing Cow cheese as a sort of mid-morning snack. I call the tuna with cheese my protein-bomb and, let me tell you, it’s an amazing breakfast, though I don’t know how often I’ll be able to get tuna. It’s a lot more expensive than sardines or other canned fish. I finally used the beautiful French press mug that my mother sent me in a care package and had delicious spiced coffee. It took me a good ten minutes again to figure out how to use the grinder that came with the blender, but it was worth it for freshly ground coffee.
I was so busy working on unpacking and decorating and arranging things that I forgot about lunch and ate a cucumber and some dates and almonds as a snack. I love dates. In the late afternoon, I ran out to the nearest taHanut and got a Monaish (delicious, as always), a few vegetables, and the cheapest pot available in town. I’ll get a pressure cooker sometime in the next few weeks, so this little simple pot will work for now. I made Chinese eggplant with onion, garlic, green pepper, ginger, and soy sauce and rice vinegar I got from the provincial capital last time I was there. It wasn’t the best eggplant I’ve ever cooked, but it wasn’t bad either, considering it was the first time I’ve cooked alone with butagaz. I got hungry a few hours later, so I made what was supposed to be Raita but ended up being more like a spicy vegetable juice: yogurt, garlic, paprika, tHmira, salt, pepper, tomato, cucumber. Now, I’m intermittently munching on my neighbor’s leftover couscous between paragraphs.
My house is in a different part of town than my hostfamily’s house and it almost feels like I’m in a new site. I go to different taHanuts, and my neighbors are different. Most people I know live in my host mothers’ neighborhood, so it’ll be interesting to see how it works out getting to know my new neighbors. There’s certainly a different vibe in this part of town: quieter, for one. Now, Tamazitinu has between 2,000-4,000 people living here, depending on who you ask, so it’s not really that drastically different, but it seems just surreal to be here. Good, but surreal.
That being said, my house is not perfect. I saw my first scorpion in Morocco on the wall of the hallway today. It doesn’t bother me, because we had them all the time when I lived in Texas, but it was the first I’ve seen since I’ve been in Morocco. There are also lots of different insects in the house. Ants in the kitchen, no matter how clean I keep it, flies, though not as many as some places, crickety things (locusts, maybe?), spiders, mosquitoes, and other unidentifiable critters. My hostfamily house often had lizards in the bathroom and I had one tonight. I’m hoping once I nail in the screens that will help, but I’m not confident it will.
The other frustration is keeping clean. Now, I know those of you who have lived with me will probably be surprised that I’m trying to keep clean, as I tend to be messy. I don’t mind mess, but I hate dirt and grime. No matter how many times I wipe down the kitchen counter, it’s always dirty. There was so much dirt on the floor of the salon this afternoon that there were visible orange streaks, and I had just swept in the morning.
Oh, well. This is the Peace Corps, after all, and the trade-off is that it is much cooler than a cement house. I’m not sweating right now, whereas at my hostfamily’s house, if I had been doing the same thing, I’d be soaked. I can sleep inside, in a bed instead of outside now. I didn’t mind sleeping under the stars, but I like having the option. I’m in love with the house, despite my critter companions and the fact that if I walk around barefoot, my feet get really dirty. It feels like my space already. I’ll try to take pictures. In any case, good night and take care.
7.4.07
I still need to go get my bike from my hostfamily’s house, but it’s noonish now and I don’t want a lunch invitation. I also have beans cooking on the stove, so I need to keep an eye on the buta.
The little boy from next door who pushed my buta tank in the wheelbarrow for me came over this morning. First, he brought some sort of seed that people eat here and asked for “soda” mix (fruit punch powder). Later, he brought over a hardboiled egg. They’re taking care of me here, for sure, but he wouldn’t leave me alone and after looking at my stuff and exploring my house for an hour, I finally had to kick him out so I could take a shower. Both him and his mother are impossible to understand. Hopefully I’ll be able to learn to understand them soon. It’s strange that some people are really easy to understand and some are tougher. When I went to buy the butatank, the butHanut was impossible to understand because he’s old and slurs his words together. A nice man who was helping me out looked at him and said “No, you have to enunciate around her and speak clearly.” I don’t know the word for enunciate, but I got the jist of what he was saying. He then offered me buttermilk whenever I wanted it; just bring an empty bottle to his house and they’d fill it up for me. Some of the richer people in town have their own cows.
I pulled out my mp3 player, and it wouldn’t turn on. Even when I plugged it in, it didn’t work. Finally, I got it to turn on but it scared me. It has my music collection for the last ten years on it, and since uploading them, I’ve lost or broken some CDs, I don’t have any other music in-country, and I don’t know where a lot of the other music is. I spent all morning copying all the music that’s important to me over onto my computer. All in all it was only 2GB, but I’m glad to have it on my computer. There’s a lot on my .mp3 player I don’t ever listen to on a regular basis.
There’s dirt in the water coming out of the tap right now. I don’t know why; it probably has to do with the fact that the water was out yesterday. I’m not sure if it’s treated right now, so I’m filtering (through gauze) and boiling everything I’m drinking. It sounds like a pain, but it’s not that bad: boil a huge kettle in the morning, then fill up the bottles, maybe boil more in the afternoon. It’s a good habit to get into in any case.
My friend who’s getting married on Tuesday just came over to say hi. It means a lot to me that she came, even if she just stayed a bit. I’m nervous about having people over though, because it means I have to feed them something, even if it’s just bread and tea or peanuts and tea. Right now, I have the excuse of not having a teapot yet, but I need to get one soon because I can’t use that excuse forever.
It is now officially wedding season in Tamazitinu, if not all of the region. Everyone kept telling me about how shr tminya (August) is full of weddings, and let me tell you, it’s the truth. On the first, the day I moved into my house, there were five weddings going on. There were aheydusses in every part of town and people wandered from one to the next. I bought a kaftan in my souk town so that I can be dressed appropriately, and it was cheaper than my jellaba, surprisingly. I figure it’s a good investment and I’ll wear it a lot this month. I’ll have to take a picture of me in it. Hopefully at my friends’ wedding on Tuesday, I’ll be allowed to take pictures. It’s a double-wedding, and I’m friends, if you can call it that after two months and a language barrier, with both brides and am friendly with the grooms. When one came over today, I asked where and what time the wedding was on Tuesday and she said she’d come get me. I’ve skipped out on weddings the last two nights because I’ve been exhausted and just ready to be unpacked.
I still need a lot for the house: towels and cleaning supplies (!), some storage containers, pillows for the couch, a hose for the bathroom so I can make a makeshift shower from the faucet, Tide, a teapot, frying pan, pressure cooker, oven, fridge, and maybe a table for the salon. I can’t believe how lucky I am that my house came with a wardrobe, bed, table, plastic chair, and two sort-of comfortable armchairs. I spent a lot of money on the two ponjs, but I got them from my landlady and they’re a lot nicer than what I would have gotten elsewhere. They also have wooden stands, so they are at a nice height and not low to the ground. I also didn’t have to worry about transportation (from the shop to my tobis, on top of my tobis from my souk town to Tamazitinu, then from where the tobis stops to my house. Difficult.). If you take into account all I get to use for free with the house, it’s not that much at all, and they’re worth it. If you come visit, most likely you’ll be sleeping on one of the ponjs. Bring a pillow.
Someone else came over just now. I love it: every time someone knocks on the door and I ask who it is, they say, “Nkkin!” “Me!” Thanks. That’s helpful. It cracks me up, but it’s going to help me learn names, because when I ask “Who is ‘nkkin?’” they tell me their names. It was my friend’s mother making sure I knew when the wedding is on Monday night and Tuesday. She said she’ll come get me. It makes more sense for her to get me than her daughter.
My beans aren’t cooking. I don’t understand. I soaked them overnight and now it’s been about an hour and a half. I’ll figure it out eventually, trial by error. It’ll be faster once I get the pressure cooker.
It’s now a few hours later and I’m eating the beans. Not bad. They’re not nice and thick the way I like them, but as a soup, the flavor’s pretty good. It’d be better with onions. I think after lunch and cleaning the kitchen, I’ll venture out and go to see my hostfamily, if they’re there. My hostdad should be there by now. He works in big cities most of the year, but comes back for August and a few weeks around New Year, so even though I lived in his house for two months and am in love with his two darling daughters, I’ve never met him. It should be interesting to see how the dynamic changes when he’s there.
I’m reading through resources right now and trying to come up with potential projects. One that will be fairly easy and cheap, which means I probably won’t have to apply for any grants, is to hold pre-natal lessons for pregnant women. When my nurse gets back from being on vacation, I’ll discuss it with him. I’d love to have the one qabla (TBA= Traditional Birth Assistant) in town help cofacilitate them. I’m also thinking about getting some kids together and teaching health lessons to them; maybe a girls group that meets at my house. There are lots of fun activities and it’d be a fun way to include younger women. All right. Off to do dishes, and then hopefully, to visit hostfamily. Take care!
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I just got back from visiting my hostfamily. My hostmom’s husband was there on his vacation from work in Tanja (Tangiers) so I finally got to meet him. He seems like a nice enough guy, laid back and fun. He’s trying to get a visa to go work in Barcelona. I wish him luck. I felt a bit badly when the one year old was all over me and wouldn’t go near him, but she’s probably only seen him twice in her life: once when she was just a month old for one month, and then once at six months for a few weeks. I didn’t realize until today that I’ve been present for more of her short life than her father has. I like my hostmom a lot better when I’m not living with her.
I turned down a few invitations for tea at other places. It’s just too hot. I’m also learning the hard way that vegetables are only really available at my site certain days of the week. I need to learn when and stock up, which, again, will be easier when I have a fridge. Instead, I bought a frozen Monaish and blended it with almonds and figs. Interesting flavor: figs, strawberry yogurt, and almonds, but not bad and the first ice-cold food I’ve had since my last frozen Monaish about a week ago. The blender cost almost as much as the stove, but I’m beginning to think it was a really good investment for summer: juices, grinding spices, grinding coffee beans, salad dressings, and cold soups.
So, there you have it. I was afraid that I would get really lonely living alone, but I’ve had three visitors today to my house, plus the woman who shares the garden who invited me to go to another neighborhood with her, and when I went for a walk, I had four tea invitations. I’ll probably go to an aheyduss later tonight (wedding outside dance party), so I think it’ll be easy to have time to myself when I want it, but also be able to be social when I want as well.
I don’t know what’s going on with Tamazitinu recently though. Yesterday, the water pump broke at the water chateau that provides robini (tap water) to the whole town, so there was no running water. Today, after about ten in the morning, the rizo (cell phone coverage) went out, so there is no cell phone reception right now. Next thing you know I’ll have no electricity for awhile.
Back for the night. I’m not sure why I’m in the mood to write a lot. I think it’s because there’s been a big change with moving and it’s almost as if everything is new again. So far, the transition has been much easier than I had expected.
My seventeen year old friend who gets married on Tuesday came by again and grabbed me to go to the aheyduss. I threw on a headscarf and the black embroidered wrap that many women here wear and headed on out. I stayed with her, but 20 or 30 people either came up to me or I came up to them and said hi. I didn’t really realize how many people I know. I don’t know everyone’s name, but have at least had some sort of conversation with them and they know me. It felt really good to go out and realize I am getting to know people here and that’s a good thing. Everyone complemented my headscarf (asinsi) and wrap (taharuyt) and if they hadn’t seen my henna, that as well with a “bssHHa!” Even the Rais, who stood watching from the top of a hill (his sister was one of the brides) smiled and pointed to my clothes and gave me a thumbs-up.
We walked with the huge group of Tamazitinu residents, probably at least 500 from near the public oven to the taragua (irrigation ditches/spring) in the fields and there were four brides tonight. I don’t have any pictures of brides yet, but I have a promise from the women getting married on Tuesday I can take pictures of (and hopefully with) them. I like that two of my “friends” here are getting married to brothers on the same day. It should be fun and I’ll really feel like I should be there. Tonight, all four brides had the more traditional dress on. I’ll tell you the truth: I don’t think I’ve ever even paid attention to the clothes because I’m too busy looking at the…headdress. I think that’s the best word for it. It’s amazing. I don’t know what exactly it is composed of, but it has at least several scarves, some dangly sparkly metal coin-like large sequins, and several colors of what we use as Christmas tree tinsel. The brides usually have a design of some sort painted on their cheeks and sometimes saffron. It’s a really intensely colorful and bright sight. I can’t wait to see my friends like that. One day of the wedding, the bride has a more modern outfit, but tonight was traditional dress night for all four brides, and as the procession walked the kilometer or so, some of their family members carried tall stalks of bamboo that towered over the crowd.
From the taragua, the groups split up to go to the three weddings (one was a double-wedding) and I followed my friend towards the wedding near her house and not too far from mine. We stopped by her house and drank buttermilk and ate watermelon and grapes from her fridge, then went to the wedding. I was a bit tired, so I left early. My landlady’s sister, who lives next door on the opposite side from the boy who stopped by, stopped me and invited me in for dinner. She’s baking me a loaf of bread for tomorrow. It’s funny, everyone in my town eats a lot of bread and they know I don’t eat a lot. She asked when the last time I had bread was and when I told her two days ago, she was in shock. “Weird. That’s weird.” I’m glad I learned the word for weird last weekend, or else I would have thought she was commanding me to “Like it! Like it!” It’s incomprehensible to most people that I don’t know how to bake bread and that I don’t eat it all the time, or how I can bear to drink tea without sugar. “It’s bitter!”
In the tradition of several of my other blog entries, here is a Tamazight language note: Ait.
Ait is a strange word. It literally means “tribe,” and is a very common word in town names. Tamazitinu is actually an “Ait” town (if you haven’t been following long, “Tamazitinu” literally means “my town” or “my place” or “my home” in Tam; I don’t use the real name of my town for security reasons.) There is also an Ait that refers to a few towns in my region that speak the same dialect and migrated from the mountains at the same time.
However, it is also used for family names. Depending on who you ask, there are 5-8 big families in my town, and sometimes they’ll refer to people’s houses that way, or even people. “There’s a wedding at Ait Lanshir” or “That’s Fadma Hussein from Ait Moha.” That makes sense to me: if “ait” means “tribe,” referring to families like that makes good sense.
There’s also “Ait Lxarij,” which refers to anyone who leaves Morocco (at least in my region) and goes abroad to work, coming back for a month in summer and the biggest holiday around January. There’re a lot of cars because of Ait Lxarij,” or “That house is of Ait Lxarij.”I’ve spelled it a few different ways in my blog, but it’s used a lot in my region. And who cares about spelling, anyway, when the Ministry of Health spells the name of my souk town differently than the post office? In addition, they refer to people as "Ait Fransa" or "Ait Sbeliul" or "Ait Iroland"(from France, Spain, the Netherlands, respectively).
The strangest usage that I’ve heard though came from my hostsister a few weeks ago. We were sitting outside, chatting and I, as usual, had participated in the first five or ten minutes and then lost the ability to communicate well and started to tune things out. They were talking about the house that originally people wanted me to rent and my little sister said something about “Ait Abrid.” Abrid means paved road. Apparently, you can make up your own Aits here, because “Ait Abrid” referred to the men who were in town renting the house as they worked on the road.
I’ve now made up my own Ait. Sometimes I refer to myself as being “Ait Taromit Tamadurt.” I’m from the tribe of crazy foreigners. They usually love it. I’m thinking of putting up a sign that says “Ait Taromit Tamadurt” in Arabic script and Tifinagh on the door to my house. We’ll see.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
My house
After buying a lot of spices (yum!), 2 meters of screen to keep out the bugs (now, I need to figure out how to install it!), tutoring (yes, I found a tutor!), and walking around town, I found some more energy to write.
I'm still feeling torn about my site. I love it some days: the days I am inturrupted at night by a woman who I might have talked to once or twice before and taken to her house for tea and cookies and dinner, or the days where people greet me on the street by name, or even the butHanuts in my souk town who know me and ask how life is in Tamazitinu.
I'm also quite happy to have found a tutor. Finally! He's great: a linguistics/English language graduate who is currently unemployed so eager to tutor and very good at understanding my questions about structure. He seems like a good tutoring match for me and his schedule is pretty flexible, so all around it's an excellent situation.
And... I'm exhausted. Sorry to be so brief. Much love to all; take care! Oh, and for those of you who are wondering, yes, I did read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It's the first time since book three I didn't read it the day it came out, but I had finished by midnight on Monday (since that's when I was able to go into town and download..erm...find...the book). Not bad. :)
I'm still feeling torn about my site. I love it some days: the days I am inturrupted at night by a woman who I might have talked to once or twice before and taken to her house for tea and cookies and dinner, or the days where people greet me on the street by name, or even the butHanuts in my souk town who know me and ask how life is in Tamazitinu.
I'm also quite happy to have found a tutor. Finally! He's great: a linguistics/English language graduate who is currently unemployed so eager to tutor and very good at understanding my questions about structure. He seems like a good tutoring match for me and his schedule is pretty flexible, so all around it's an excellent situation.
And... I'm exhausted. Sorry to be so brief. Much love to all; take care! Oh, and for those of you who are wondering, yes, I did read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It's the first time since book three I didn't read it the day it came out, but I had finished by midnight on Monday (since that's when I was able to go into town and download..erm...find...the book). Not bad. :)
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