Jalapenos, Mountains, and Mice

October 9, 2007

Sometimes, I don’t think things through. Case in point: I’ve been wanting to make jalapeño poppers for the last two weeks or so. I have all the ingredients I need: a hard cheese (the only variety widely available in bigger towns), jalapeño peppers, egg, flour, garlic powder, and even ranch dressing mix to have a dip for them and to cut down on the heat.

I got everything ready, stuffed the peppers, breaded them, fried them, mixed the ranch dressing, and headed into my salon to eat them and read a book.

It was a bit spicier than I anticipated… until the end of the first one. I bit into the thick cluster of jalapeño membrane, seeds, a bit of cheese, but mainly hot pepper guts.

I just about flipped a lid. It was burning hot; two or three times as hot as the other jalapeños I’ve eaten here.

Now, I like hot food, don’t get me wrong. I once ate an entire plate of Indian curry at a restaurant in Washington DC that literally had me crying huge tears, rolling down my face. I remember one of my friends looking at me and saying, "You know, you can stop eating if you need to." But it was good.

This, on the other hand, was HOT. My ears were burning, my nose was running, I was running around the house looking for something to calm my taste buds, my eyes were watering and I was wondering if instead of just being spicy, I was actually having an allergic reaction.

And then I sneezed.

Now, this wasn’t an ordinary sneeze. Oh, no. I still hadn’t entirely swallowed all of this bite of jalapeño popper, so this monster of a sneeze included little bits of burning hot green tiflflt and melted red-ball cheese coming through my sinus passages and getting stuck in my nostrils.
I blew my nose furtively with the white toilet paper I had thankfully splurged on last time I was in my souk town. It’s much nicer on the nose, as well as other parts of the body, than the pink sandpaper stuff I usually get.

After eating a carrot (peeling it through my tears) with ranch dressing, drinking a pomegranate Coke (pomegranate syrup), and eating, what else, a pomegranate, my tastebuds and heartrate have calmed down. My sinus cavities still feel tingly, however, when I breathe deeply.
And I ate the rest of my cheese-stuffed tiflflt, doused in ranch dressing and without the firey tops. I couldn’t let three other perfectly good jalapeños go to waste.

Today was also sort of a dramatic day because the mousetraps I left out did, indeed, catch another mouse. I wasn’t expecting it at all. I came back from the sbitar to see it, sprawled on the sticky trap. It looked dead initially, but after watching it a few seconds, it heaved a few short breaths.

For some reason, maybe because they’re rodents and some people keep them as pets, I hate dealing with dying or dead mice. It’s almost enough to let them just live in my house with me. Almost.

I left it alone a few hours, while I made my poppers and sent a few text messages. Prolonging the inevitable, I suppose.

However, feeling sorry for it, still alive, sitting there, stuck in a pool of clear sticky glue, I swept it into an empty trash can and took it outside. Now what? I tried to free him by poking him in the bottom with a stick, to get him unstuck. I don’t mind mice, just not in my house, scaring me to death in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, he was stuck fast and started protesting when I guess I poked him too hard. Nothing to do but kill him.

I felt really inhumane smashing his head in with a rock. I did it because it was better than letting him starve to death, and there are no cats or dogs around to finish the job. It took three or four times before he stopped moving and when I walked back in the house, I felt really dirty, really brutal, cruel, and, well, inhumane. But what am I supposed to do? I guess I could ignore them and live with them in peace. And who knows, maybe he was a she and I certainly don’t want little mouse babies running around my taddart made of alood.*

We (as in twelve volunteers in my province) went to the provincial capital for the delegue meeting last Friday. It was, all in all, a good time. One of the sectors is having their PST (Pre-service training) there, so not only did I get to say hi to some of my former LCFs, but also got to meet a few new trainees, some of whom might be my neighbor starting in December, depending on where their sites are. It made me miss training, but I can definitely say that I really appreciated it and had as much fun as I could during that time: no regrets there. I still feel that if I could work, say, as a teacher, and then every summer do Peace Corps training for three months in a different country for the rest of my life, I’d be set.

The delegue meeting was fun. I enjoy them; I don’t really know why. It may be the knowing, tolerant look on our SIAAP (Ministry of Public Health, essentially) representative’s face as we talk to him in English, French, Tamazight, and Tashelheit; it may be the lackadaisical way some of us look in jeans and t-shirts at a professional meeting, it may be sitting and waiting around for the meeting to start, or the inevitable experience of just being able to go to a small city for a day or two and this provides the perfect excuse. In any case, I learned one very important piece of information: there is a fantastic organization I can work with, and I’m hoping, really hoping to be able to work with them. I think I blogged about meeting with the treasurer a few weeks ago. If not, I’ll be sure to update when (if!) I meet with them again.

Ramadan has been rough, though, and it’s strange to think I’ve been in site for four months and still have relatively little to show for it. Being alone, mixed with out-of-site weekends or trainings or delegue meetings with the same American PCV friends here is fun but also difficult. It’s like living two totally different lives, and the last two months, I’ve seen more Americans than I ever thought I’d see while being in the PC. It all weighs on you: balancing being in-site and out-of-site, feeling like I might not really be able to get to know people well at my site for language and cultural issues, dealing with drama among Americans, not knowing what work is feasible for site in two years, now only more like one and a half years, feeling like I’ve done nothing, feeling lonely, feeling like I have a lot of people to visit in town and don’t have enough time to be social, wondering if my counterpart understands why I’m here… and the list goes on. Ramadan is especially hard because not only are people fasting, but they’re also sleeping a lot, or working. It’s hard to upkeep any sort of relationship at all.

So, earlier than I had planned, in my provincial capital, outside one of the supermarkets that have more than two types of cheese, I had it. I needed to get out of there, I needed to be home. I grabbed the hotel key, got my stuff, and hopped on a bus. I missed my transit home, so I spent the night eating pomegranates, reading The Handmaid’s Tale, Harpers, and Newsweek, and staying alone in my souk town in the hotel that gives PCVs a discount.

The guys at the hotel invited me to eat lftor with them, which I did, in the lobby, and I went to sleep early, waking up to ensure a seat on my transit and get grocery shopping done.
Sometimes, all it takes is that: acknowledging that things are not always perfect or easy or going smoothly, because yesterday was fantastic.

I made myself get up and go to see my host mother, and it very well might have been the most positive interaction we’ve had. Her 1.5 year old can now actually pronounce my name better than a lot of the adults here, and the five year old still begs me to turn her upside down. She invited me to eat lftor with them that night, and I left, taking a circuitous route to see if one of my friends was home.

She was, and, I had a rather strange experience. Women here do not fast if they are menstruating, but they make it up after l3id sghrer. I don’t think I’m spelling it right: the holiday that is this weekend (the small Eid (3id)) that marks the end of Ramadan. So, in the middle of Ramadan, I sat in a room off to the side and ate lunch with two other women who, well, let’s just say we were all allowed to eat.

I have never felt such separation or so out in the open about menstruation. I didn’t feel like I was seen as unclean or looked down upon, but it was very clear to everyone in the household that the three women eating lunch were obviously currently menstruating. We even sat together in a little room off to the side.

My thoughts wandered to a book I read a few years ago: The Red Tent, and readings in anthropology class about different rituals relating to menstruation. This small experience was neither a ritual, nor, as I said, did it seem like others thought it was wrong or unnatural: it almost seemed advantageous. I don’t feel like I’ve ever worn it so blatantly in front of relative strangers, and men, even; taken action with others that show that we are menstruating.

I don’t know if my words accurately convey what I was feeling or not, but it was interesting, and not altogether uncomfortable. Refreshing, in a way, almost profound to be able to participate in something that only menstruating women can participate in; it is new to me and almost makes me feel more feminine.

Lftor with the host family was fun, comfortable, and warm. I’m hoping that the attitudes and feelings last night will be an indicator of my future relationship with them. Enshallah.
Today, I talked to my nurse about some of the things I’ve been frustrated about: mainly that he didn’t understand what my job function was. I’d tried to talk to him about it several times in the past two or three months, but he never seemed to understand. Instead, I wrote him a letter in French explaining that I think there was a lack of communication on my part as far as what I am here to do.

I was right. He didn’t understand, and I think things are a lot clearer now. He’s willing to help with whatever he can, but he wants me to come up with a plan of action. I don’t even know what’s feasible yet, and he wants me to have a plan of action? I’ll do it, after Ramadan, enshallah: come up with a list of people to talk to in order to see what sort of projects that I’m thinking about may work out. I feel better though: writing the letter was definitely the right thing to do. He didn’t blame me, but he did say that "my organization" should have given him more information. I’m just glad that he understands a little more where I am coming from and why I bring up some of the things that I do in conversation, or, more importantly, why I don’t do some things that I think he expects. Hopefully, this will make work easier here.

October 14, 2007

Sorry; I know I haven’t been as good at updating this blog. I’m still here, alive and doing well, it’s just during Ramadan it was cumbersome to go into my souk town and visit the cyber. Whenever I left my site, I’d end up getting into my souk town at about 7 am and waiting until 9 am for anything to open: cafes, internet, the post office, stores… and would literally have to wander around town for two hours, trying to entertain myself while being tired, usually, from waking up early.

But: now that yesterday was The Small Eid (l’eid imizan is what we call it here) and Ramadan is over, my schedule should be back to normal and I’ll be better about keeping in touch, enshallah.
One of my friends came and spent the weekend with me, which is fantastic. Besides cooking up a storm and actually having good, deep conversation with someone who is easy to speak to, we actually did a lot out and about. In fact, yesterday, we climbed a mountain.

Well, I don’t know if you can really call it a mountain or a foothill. If it is the mountain I think it might be on my map of Morocco, it’s 1500 meters, but I don’t know how high we started above sea level to begin with. In any case, I have friends here in Tamazitinu who climb it a few times a year, or at least a few times in their lives, and I see it every day. It’s only about a 40 minute walk from my house to the base, so it’s been something I think about often: when am I going to climb Taftschfasht (on my map, it’s called something different)?

When I visited my friend’s site about two months ago, we took a nice, long hike, so this weekend, if she was up for it, I decided it’d be a good time to go and that she’d be a good mountain-hiking buddy. The weather is starting to cool down some without being cold, and now that Ramadan is over, it wouldn’t be insensitive to carry bottled water around.

Getting a later start than anticipated, we set out, picnic snacks and water bottles in tow, for the mountain. About five minutes outside my house, my Rais (President of the local Commune; rough equivalent to the mayor; see glossary in previous entry sometime in mid-late August for other confusing terms) saw us and insisted we go to his house for lunch.

I tried to insist we were busy, but he persisted and so we drove in his car to his house and snacked on some nuts and pastries, had tea, agho (fresh buttermilk), a mango-orange juice that was divine, and snacks, and I got a few answers to important questions about Tamazitinu in, as normal, a combination of Tamazight, French, and English. I asked him about Tamazitinu getting internet, and he showed me his phone with a wi-fi USB port, and dug out records of his contract with the internet company. There was one "mushkil technique" (technical problem) that he didn’t explain to me, but for all intents and purposes, he has internet in his house now.

And I could get it too if I wanted, for the "low" price of 300D a month ($35). It’s tempting, but not worth 15% of my monthly mandat. Additionally, I know that if I had internet in my house, it’d be even harder to leave. Eventually, we will get a cybercafe in site as well, and I know that I won’t spend 300D/month there, so I’m thinking that, again, though tempting, it’s not a worthwhile investment (and have I mentioned that I live in a mud house and that we were a good hour off a paved road until about two months ago when they paved a road to my site… and that there are seven stores, three teleboutiques, a mosque, a women’s center, a clinic, and an elementary school at my site… and other than houses and fields, that’s it? My site is so full of contradictions.)

I also learned what I think is the etymology of the name of my town: People/Tribe of the Tree… or forest… or a certain kind of tree that used to exist here but doesn’t anymore… yes, even with our tri-lingual conversations, something often gets lost in translation. I also found out that in the long-range outlook, the Commune is planning to do something with waste disposal, but the biggest priorities are getting electricity and water to the outer douars. I don’t know what to do with this information, but it was good to get it, at least. So, the thirty minutes or so that I spent talking to him was actually quite useful, and with the way we banter, was enjoyable.

After maybe an hour, my friend and I left before eating lunch, which probably wouldn’t have started for another three hours.

Now, one of the important things about this mountain, which is really an enormous plateau, is that there is no path, per se, up to the top. I told my friend this and that we’d have to play it by ear, and we were willing to give it a go.

Getting up was fun: it probably took us an hour and a half. Some of it had a really reasonable incline, but towards the top, we were scrambling over boulders for probably at least fifty feet. We stopped three times for a few minutes to take in the view, and it was amazing seeing my town from that perspective. I was too much of a taghiyult (donkey) to bring my camera, so I’ll have to make another trip to capture the view. From the top, it looks like my town, and three of my outer douars, are literally built in a dry riverbed, and you can see the shape of it and how the water came and cut through years ago. Starting from about halfway up, I could see the site of my nearest volunteer (8-20k away, depending on who you ask), and I could also see a major thoroughfare in my province.

The top was surreal. As I mentioned, Taftschfasht is an enormous plateau. Once we got to the top, it was like nothing I’ve ever seen: a rocky meadow with both tall, yellow, weedy grass littered with black stones. Standing towards the middle, it almost felt like you were on a prairie somewhere, because it’s so large and flat that all you can see is blue, cloudy sky and the strange rocks and weeds that seem to stretch into a false horizon. The silence was deafening, and other than our talking, breathing, and steps, the only audible noise was the jumping of huge locusts that I almost mistook for small frogs.

I think it’s probably at least a kilometer in length because, as I said, once you got towards the middle, it almost felt like an eerie claustrophobic island with a startlingly close horizon on each side. We walked from one side to another, me doing a crazy victory dance in the middle, isolated from the entire world except my friend and the locusts. At the far north side, we tried to see if there was a better route down with less bouldering. We agreed to try the northwest corner and after bread and Laughing Cow cheese and an apple each, we started what we knew would be a difficult descent.

At one point, I thought my retelling might end up being a cautionary tale: do not hike in mountains when you don’t know what you’re doing. I didn’t know if we’d make it down in one piece, because, though the first third of the descent was easy and fast, we ended up at a much steeper, crazier part of the mountain than we thought it would be. Not only did we probably spend a good half an hour sliding on our bottoms or inching down on all fours like a crab walk, but I started to get a little nuts because of the ridiculousness of the situation. There were, on the "inch-on-your-butt-and-try-to-slide-down-without-falling" parts, large white pieces of quartz with tiny perfectly formed crystal obelisks inside.

I’ve never found anything quite that "perfect" before in nature. The first one I found was probably the size of a throw-pillow, so heavy and obviously not something I wanted to lug around after our little adventure. But I could pretend I was going to take it home. So I threw it down the mountain and it would roll ten or twenty feet and stop. I’d shimmy down to it, pick it up, and throw it again. I probably chased this rock for fifteen minutes. The most ridiculous part is that there were actually many rocks like these around, and the reason they were still there was most likely because people know better and safer routes to take and don’t have to crab-walk down. Not only was I throwing and chasing rocks, but I’d use this as a way to pick my route down: follow the rock.

So we were a little crazy… but we made it down in about two hours: longer than it took to get up.

It was a fun day. One of my friends (the one who I went to her wedding and took pictures) came over all dressed up for Eid (the holiday) and I served tea and cookies. My friend and I also ended up meeting a lot of my friends in site, which was exciting. Finally, at least someone can put faces to the names and stories!

I was embarrassed though because the last week, my house has become infested with pinchy-bugs. My friend said they exist in the Seattle area, but I’d never seen these before. They look like big ants with longer body sections, but with two pinchers that are about as long as half their body as a tail. I don’t know if they pinch people (my guess is they do), or if they are poisonous (my prayer is that they are not), but they were terrifying at first. I’m used to them now, but for the last week, I’ve been killing ten or twenty a day in my bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, inside my fridge, on the outside of my mosquito net, and, well, pretty much everywhere. I think my battle with insects and mice and lizards in the house is doomed. I even keep my sugar in my fridge, but it doesn’t seem to prevent the invasion.

***

Wow. It’s later in the day, and I’m working on my Community Diagnosis, a rather lengthy and detailed report about my community. This is my first draft, and I already have a to-do list that involves talking with at least 5 or 6 people (though probably more) and get a lot of questions answered.

Part of the diagnosis that we are supposed to do is discuss information collection techniques, so I’m going through blogs, notes, my notebooks…everything… to figure out who I talked to and when. As far as informal talks, I can count 60 houses that I’ve been to in my douar… 60 out of about 340. I’ve been in-site 144 days (!!!), so that’s, on average, a new house every 2.4 days. I don’t know whether to be proud of that, or feel like a slacker. It’s almost 1 out of 5 houses though. I don’t know if I’ve ever been to 60 peoples’ houses even when I lived somewhere for five years. Strange.

But I’m stressing about this community diagnosis now. It’s going to be long, I can tell you that. My unfinished outline is 10 pages.

October 16, 2007

I cannot believe October is more than halfway over. I cannot believe that soon I will be 24; soon I will really be in my mid-twenties. It’s a scary thought.

I found out today that the Rais is also a teacher. It makes sense, when I think about it, but I had no idea and it bothers me that I didn’t know that.

Today, I went to a new person’s house, which is always exciting. I did yesterday as well.

Yesterday, it was a neighbor’s house. I ate lunch there, talked to her son (who is going to university this year!) and daughter, and had a good time. Unfortunately… hmm. I don’t know how to describe what happened without sounding callous.

Part of the information I try to collect is on population and family size. I ask how many kids people have, in a friendly way, just to make conversation, but it also helps me get a feel for the average family size here. Usually it’s not a big deal, and people will even tell me, usually nonchalantly, "Oh, I have four boys, two girls, and one that’s dead."

This woman said she had seven kids. As always, I say "Wow! That’s a lot! Tbarkallah! (sort of a congratulatory God phrase). I can’t imagine being pregnant seven times!"
Her sister looked at me. "No, she’s been pregnant nine times." Oops. And the woman almost starts crying. She doesn’t, but you can tell she’s upset… and stays upset for awhile, understandably.

It happened again today at a family I know well’s house… I found out one woman was pregnant and asked her if she wanted a boy or a girl (she already has one of each). I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but she told me that she had a daughter already that got sick and died when she was one and a half. She wasn’t upset in an obvious way or anything, but I felt terrible.

But I need to know these things too for statistics. I hate statistics sometimes. How is it that, in a place where miscarriages and child death is more common than at home, I can be expected to ask people if they have any dead children, which is something that is important to know if I need to write grants for post-natal education or some other program? And what do you say, besides,
"Oh, that’s hard…" when you don’t really even speak the language that well?

Sometimes development work is rough.

Where I was going before though, with talking about visiting a new person’s house, was that it was a lot of fun. She’s probably the fifth or sixth woman I’ve met here who can’t have kids for some reason. I don’t understand what causes that either, but it seems to happen more regularly here than at home.

In any case, there was a neighbor kid over. She was pretty cutthroat with trying to convert me, and she was probably about eleven years old. "You should wear a scarf and pray. Do you know our Prophet Mohammed peace be upon him? You should pray. Why don’t you pray?"
I answered the questions the way I usually do, and she kept going. Lots of kids ask me lots of questions, so it doesn’t really bother me, but this took me aback:

"Which is better, Morocco or the US?"

"Sometimes Morocco is better, sometimes the US is. It just depends."

"No. The US is bad. There are Jewish people there."

From the mouths of babes. I have never really seen anti-Semitism here before until today. In fact, I’ve had conversations with hotel owners in my souk town and teachers here with how peaceful this area of the country was with Jewish people in the past, and that the Berbers and Jews got along very well, and consequently, was a lot less anti-Semitic than the rest of Morocco or, in some ways, much of the Arab world.

And, yet, here was a child, regurgitating, doubtless, what she had been told by someone in her family, or from the news.

"No, that doesn’t make the U.S. bad. Jewish people aren’t bad people. In the US, we have Jewish people, Christians, and Muslims and a lot of them are friends with each other. I have Jewish friends and I have Muslim friends at home. It’s not really a problem."

"But Jews kill Muslims."

I didn’t go into the fact that my grandmother was Jewish; I didn’t want to go there with my language ability being as poor as it is, but it was interesting, explaining, again, that I have Jewish and Muslim friends and a lot of them are friends too in the U.S. and not all Jews hate Muslims. I don’t know how much she believed me, though she said she understood.

This is in the same town where, when George Bush appears on television sometimes, older women will look at me and say, "That’s your president, right? He’s a good guy. God loves everyone, and God loves President Bush. Maybe the war is bad, but God loves everyone and God loves President Bush." These are the same women who are illiterate and uneducated, but they still know Bush. And they don’t hate him.

*adobe house