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

December 10, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


December 12, 2007

Today has been an absolutely fantastic day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m a girl,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

“Is this a ‘Tamazitinu’ tree?”

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

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

“Tourdouar.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Home. Maison. Taddart.”

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

And, for better or for worse, it is.