Convenience, Materialism
January 19, 2008
Life is strange these days. Three people in-country have left the Peace Corps in the last three weeks, which has been somewhat jarring. Even though I wasn’t particularly close to any of them, I have met and interacted to them all and really admire their good work. Your presence and examples will be missed, and I have a great deal of respect that one of you is going back to your community to finish up your work on your own.
Another way life has been bizarre is these random flashes I have occasionally to things at home; I’ll be cooking lunch and think randomly about Joe’s coffee house in Atlanta, or I’ll pull on a pair of long underwear and flash on the clothing aisles in Target; I’ll grind peanuts and think of row after row of peanut butter in a grocery store. My last care package had some DVDs of TV shows with commercials still in them, and when a commercial for Walgreens came on “Get whatever you want, whenever you want at a quick stop at your neighborhood Walgreens: convenient, close, and with everything you need!” I almost threw something at my computer. I had a dream about Walgreens once; that there was one in my souk town and how excited I was to be able to get so many things at one place.
I’m not saying that I don’t like the sort of home-grown feel of things here. I love the fresh vegetables: all organic, mostly pesticide-free, seasonal, and in many cases, from a five minute walk from my house. I love going to souk and wandering among the rows of spice vendors, vegetable vendors, poking into the used clothes stalls, and munching on popcorn or spiced chickpeas from the vendors as I shop. I even enjoy going to my regulars in my souk town: my vegetable guy who always throws in a few free pieces of fruit, the bakery where they still don’t know my name but are also still delighted with my Tashelheit, the hanut man who has decided that my Berber name is Znu who is my popcorn and flour guy, and the over-priced but well stocked place with goodies like ice cream powder mix, expensive canned mushrooms, and vermicelli noodles who always gives me a handful of dates as an apology for such high prices.
I even like wandering the women’s clothing souk, even though I can’t really afford to go clothes shopping that often, ducking in and out from under hanging clothes, peeking into alleys to see if they have stores or are just residential areas, staring at dried chameleons and oodles of different types of incense rocks and dried herbs at the traditional medicine stalls, hearing people who recognize the taromit who wanders through once a month tap their friends on their shoulders and whisper “there’s the foreigner who speaks Tashelheit,” trying to find the funniest or most inappropriate English slogans on clothing items (I won’t mention the most inappropriate here because it’s really bad, but some of my favorites are “Cocaine Nation” and “Cucchi,”) seeing the craziest colors of tracksuits or the funkiest mid-thigh length sweater-shirts, wanting to buy brightly colored glass beads or bolts of fabric or shades of yarn from the craftier stalls, and fingering dusty antiques from a more touristy place.
I love it. I wouldn’t give it up for Walgreens or Starbucks or Joe’s coffee shop or Target, not for anything, but sometimes I miss the convenience. Sometimes I’m shocked at what I can find in my town though: today at my favorite hanut, the buHanut was selling real threads of saffron.
I’ve been lazy today; I stayed in until about three, then went to a neighbor’s house and watched Dr. Phil and had tea and tabadirt. Tabidirt is one of my favorite winter foods: it’s cornbread stuffed with fat (but it melts and just tastes like butter or oil), scallions, hot pepper, cumin, and another spice called isufir (I forgot what it is in English!). It’s spicy and filling and absolutely delicious. If I can bring myself to actually buy fat, I may try to make some, though I bet it’d be similar and healthier with olive oil.
I’m trying to save money because I haven’t been budgeting as well as I should be, but it all slipped away when I went into a store in my souk town my nearest volunteer friend told me about. “It has beautiful things,” she told me.
And it does. It’s definitely a tourist shop and the prices reflect this, but the silver jewelry is, in my mind, exquisite. I especially love all the traditional things from the area. The owner of the shop travels to buy from the artisans and he gets a lot from nomads. He kept showing me pieces that were beautiful but not traditional and I told him that the things that had real meaning were what I was interested in, especially things from Ait Atta, the tribe that encompasses my site.
He showed me a pair of bracelets made of brass that he bought from his aunt: an older woman who grew up and is still a nomad in a region covered by Ait Atta. They are heavy, large, and almost crudely made, lacking some of the intricacies of the silversmithing. “She was running low on money so she sold them to me,” he told me. They were her wedding bracelets, and she wore them for years as they went with their animals to let them graze, staying often in tents.
I didn’t want to buy them because it seems like they are something that should go to her daughter, but when I held them, for some reason, it moved me. The weight of them, the way they felt in my hand (they are too small for my wrists), the idea of them being worn for the first time on this woman’s wedding night, the idea of her wearing them for years… I don’t know. They almost felt alive in my hands.
I paid too much for them. I didn’t want to buy them, but I knew that I’d keep thinking about it if I didn’t. The story called me. I tried to buy them both and give one back to him to give to his aunt so she could give it to her daughter, but he said that she would probably end up selling it again anyway, so I kept them both, and I haven’t been able to put them down ever since. I may see if I can get a smith somewhere to turn them into bracelets that open so I can wear them, though they’re too big and heavy and crude to wear at home.
My budgeting and supposed lack of materialism went out the window; they’re completely not utilitarian. Oh, well.
I’ve started being more honest about some of the differences between here and home with people. I’ve never denied drinking alcohol, but I’ve sort of made it seem like I’ve never drank; recently, I’ve explained, when asked, about wine and how my “prophet,” turned water into wine, so it’s not forbidden and even some clergy drink alcohol in moderation. Prophet isn’t the best word, but it’s the only thing that I can convey clearly in Tashelheit. I’ve also explained a lot about having male friends that are “just like a brother,” so it’s not shameful or looked down on to be alone with a man if you’re not married because many times women at home have male friends that are like brothers. I don’t know if it’s going to be bad that I’ve admitted to drinking at home and said that I’ve been alone with men before, but if part of my job is to do cross-cultural education, it’s better than being dishonest.
Here, unmarried women are never alone in a room with an unmarried man that is not in her family. Never. (Note: I’m talking about my particular community, not Morocco in general, or even rural Morocco or Amazigh people). The implication is that there will be some sort of hanky panky going on as a given. Even married women are seldom alone in a room with another man outside her family. It’s stressful to me trying to navigate the circumstances. Some people tell me to say hi to men on the street in my town even if I don’t know them. Some women tell me not to talk to them unless I have a reason to. I tend to take a conservative leaning middle ground: I’m friendly with my hanut guys, association people, men who are over 50, the commune staff, the sbitar staff, and teachers: all people I have an excuse to work with and be friendly towards. I’ll also say hi if other men who I know or recognize address me first in a respectful way, but other than that I pretty much ignore many of the men in my site out on the street. In their house, if there is another woman around, I’m friendly. I say hi to every woman I see in my site though.
I vacillate between feeling very lonely and feeling very integrated here. On Monday or Tuesday, six of my friends showed up at my house (with three kids under two!) and (thank God I had just baked!) had coffee and warm zucchini bread. The idea of having squash in a sweet bread was a bit foreign to them, but most of the women enjoyed it. Sometimes it’s more difficult than I anticipated though, not feeling like I have friends in my town I can relate to as well as I’d like. People are the same everywhere, in their hearts and souls, but the linguistic and cultural differences can be very daunting sometimes.
I’m still also frustrated at work, or the lack thereof. There is a fantastic curriculum for a women’s health class, but it’s only in English, French, and Arabic: not Tashelheit. I’m trying to find an Arabic-speaking woman who would be willing to help lead the classes, but I’m running into dead ends. I am working to get an incinerator built, but it feels more of something I’m imposing than a community-generated project. My girl’s group is going well, but it’s quite informal, and I missed another Equippe-Mobile run over Christmas, which is very disappointing to me. It’s not enough to make me want to go home, but the lack of work and the fact that there aren’t any organizations here who really want to work with me as far as health is concerned is disappointing.
I am happy with my World Wise Schools exchange: earlier this month I got my first batch of letters from a 10th grade social studies class in West Virginia. The questions were insightful and I love talking about my life and experiences here. I sent off a reply yesterday and am looking forward to their responses. If any other groups want to do any sort of exchange, let me know. I might even be able to hook up a group with an English class at my friend’s site nearby if Moroccan pen pals seem interesting. I signed up online to be matched with a group somewhere in the world for an art exchange with some of my neighbor girls, which is really exciting to me. Most likely, I’ll have to pay out of pocket, but it’s worth it.
January 21, 2008
Maybe I’m being too harsh in only letting little girls come over for my girls group. This morning, a new girl came to my doorstep. She looked familiar but I never saw her before. She looked young to be wearing a full headscarf, but I’ve seen younger.
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Khadija!” she giggled, blushed, and looked away.
“No, what’s your real name?”
“Zahra!”
“Her name is Aisha Mbark Ait Ihiya!” said a friend, also giggling.
I looked closer. It was a little neighbor boy trying to come in. Wearing a headscarf.
I wish I had taken a picture. It was priceless.
January 22, 2008
Another potential project: building bathrooms for several schools. I didn’t realize that at least two if not more schools have no bathroom facilities at all for the students or teachers. We’ll see if this happens, but it seems like a real possibility.
January 28, 2008
It’s been a busy few days.
Qe had a quarterly meeting with the Delegation of the Ministry of Health at the provincial level on Friday, which meant that I spent both Thursday and Friday nights at one of my friend’s houses. Thursday morning, I helped my nearest friend do a birth control lesson at her sbitar, and was shocked, again, to see the differences between sites. Every time I visit someone, it makes me realize how unique my experience is because of linguistic, tribal, size, amenities, weather, transportation, landscape, quality of counterpart, friendliness of people, presence of good associations or communes to work with… and the list goes on. My friend who lives in a mountain town has to lug her water from a public fountain and has no cell phone reception and just got electricity this summer. Some volunteers have internet and satellite television in their houses.
Even though my friend’s site is only 8 or 10 k away as the crow flies, our experiences are night and day, which was clear when I helped her with her lesson. The two of us traveled to another friends’ site an hour and a half from the provincial capital so we could make it to the meeting in the morning. Budget cuts mean that we no longer get reimbursed for hotel stays, but, in all honesty, other than the lack of a hot shower and western toilet, it was just as comfortable at her site.
I was up all night Thursday with food poisoning, so I wasn’t in top shape for the meeting and it took a few minutes before I could get out a word of French. The Delegue representative was very complementary towards us, and it was the smoothest (and quickest!) meeting so far, which I appreciated, because in the past, I’ve felt like our group was disorganized and unprepared.
Because I only had about three hours of sleep the day before and was running a low-grade fever, I fell asleep at nine on Saturday and missed out on the bulk of the Democratic primary debates that one of my friends had on his computer. I woke up a few times to hear my friends talking about issues and really wanted to participate, but my body just shut down. I’ve been fine since then, lHamdullah… it’s just every two months or so I get a terrible case of food poisoning that keeps me up all night, and in the last two weeks, it’s happened three times.
Sunday, I had a few of my regular girls over for henna and syringe discussion again. I was impressed: when I asked them why the henna syringe is okay to use, but the syringe from the sbitar is very dangerous, they were all able to accurately articulate what I had taught them in December. I was psyched. There was no need to review it, but we had fun doing henna in any case.
Jan 31
I'm typing this at the cyber now... it's been a fantastic few days working on the incinerator project. I've been promised the 25% community contribution for the project and both my counterpart and president of the commune are on board and supportive. Now, it's just coming up with the budget, finding a specialist to build it, and getting it done (and more funding for the other two sites in my province: 3 of us are working together).
Fantastic. Will elaborate more next time, enshallah. :)
From before...
I’ve been remembering my dreams a lot recently. I’ve been typing them up sporadically over the past few months, but the last three days, I’ve remembered and been able to type up multiple dream scenes, if that makes any sense.
I never have had a recurring dream, but I have had recurring themes. The worst are the nightmares that involve tidal waves or airplane or helicopter rides and either accidents or near-accidents and, over the past two years, forgetting that I’m signed up for a biology class and failing out of school because I’ve missed too many classes/assignments (mostly this is a high school freshman biology class even though that was over ten years ago).
In the last three or four months, there have been a lot of recurring themes that are relatively new:
Shopping malls/new clothes
People popping up from high school
A video rental store popping up in Tamazitinu
Visiting home but forgetting to tell Peace Corps and getting kicked out
Other random people who have popped up in my dreams recently:
My sister (but she went back in time and was reborn as a girl named Bethany)
Robin Williams (as a sleezy, sloppy cop)
2 of my 9th grade teachers
A nurse from my old job (turned flight attendant) (M?)
Someone who was “channeling” the spirit of my college choral director
A bus named Marie
A tidal-wave causing giant
President Bush
Chris Martin from Coldplay (singing the Pirates of the Caribbean song)
People employed by Google that sail a magic Google boat that goes on water and on sand (their newest project)
CIA agents that turn into mops and assault me in an elevator
An owl-cat with Mickey Mouse markings that sings along to Disney songs
I rather enjoy this remembering dreams business, except when I wake up convinced I’ve been kicked out of the Peace Corps.
Books I’ve read since May 23, 2007:
*** - Fantastic
**- Good
* - Probably a tolerable fluff read
:( - Terrible!
The Alchemist *
Kingston by Starlight (Christopher John Farley) **
East Is East (T. Coraghessan Boyle) ***
A is for Alibi (Sue Grafton) L
The Sum of All Fears (Michael Grisham) :( :( :(
Where There Is No Doctor (David Werner) * (good as a reference, not as light reading)
Slave to Fashion (Rebecca Campbell) :(
A book that was so mediocre I forgot the title: from early 1900s, two books in one about a girl growing up :(
Daughter of Earth (Agnes Smedley) ***
A novel about a woman imprisoned in Shanghai in the Cultural Revolution **
Love Medicine (Louise Erdrich) :(
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J.K. Rowling)***
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hussaini?) **
Mountains Beyond Mountains ***
The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver) **
My Sister’s Keeper (Jodi Picault) **
The Glass Castle **
Running with Scissors **
This I Know Is True (or maybe I Know This Much Is True) ***
The Kiss of the Spider Woman **
Peace Pilgrim **
Eat, Pray, Love ***
The Namesake**
Dadda Atta and His 40 Grandsons (David Hart) **
Life of Pi ***
Girl With a Pearl Earring **
Rule of Four **
Specimen Days (Michael Cunningham) ***
The River King (Alice Hoffman) *
Christianity and World Religions (Adam Hamilton) :( (simplistic)
God in the Alley (Greg Paul) :( (contrived)
Tender at the Bone (Ruth Reichl) *
Resistance (Anita Shreve) *
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (Fatima Mernissi) *
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers) **
The Space Between Us**
Dance Dance Dance (Haruki Murakami) ***
Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami) ***
Small Island (Andrea Levy) *
The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields) *
Long Way Gone (Ishmael Beah) ***
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera) ***
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Hello!
My computer is dead. Well, more likely, my computer charger is acting up, but for all intents and purposes, my computer isn't usable right now, so my blogs will be shorter and less coherent.
It has been an interesting week or so though: a friend came over, I've started baking in my brand new butagaz oven (bagels, zucchini bread, baguettes, bananna bread, and a disasterous chocolate pie...), and even hosting six of my friends from my town as they randomly showed up at my house.
I'm also looking for a teacher, maybe 5th or 6th grade, who is interesting in doing a photo exchange with an elementry class in my town. My idea is to give disposable cameras to some of the children and tell them to take pictures of what is important to them, get the pictures printed, and then exchanging so that the other class can learn about life in the other town.
All right! I've gotta run. Have a fantastic week :)
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Christmas, a Festival, and New Year’s a la Rural Morocco; a quandary about living arrangements
December 28, 2007
Merry Christmas!
Christmas in Morocco was fantastic; again, a group of us got together a centrally located (for us) apartment whose owner was generous enough to let us use his internet, satellite television, and space while he was back home for the holidays. I was going to go to Marrakech for New Year’s, but decided against it because it would mean taking a dizzying mountain pass in a big bus on a potentially icy road. Instead, I’m staying in-site, though nobody does anything to celebrate. Maybe I’ll have some young friend over and we’ll party until midnight. Most likely, I won’t.
But Christmas was a lot of fun. We ended up doing the same thing that we did for Thanksgiving: tried to recreate as authentic of a Christmas meal as possible. I was in charge of the stuffing, which wasn’t all that great, but was a lot of fun to cook and prepare for and was such a comfort food that I made it for breakfast the next day. I’ll put my “Peace Corps” stuffing recipe at the end of this update, just for fun.
As most of us had been in and out of the apartment all day, taking showers at the public shower downstairs or going to the supermarche for things, eating lunch at the local Peace Corps hangout: “the patisserie;” nobody went with me to get the stuffing ingredients. It ended up being quite an adventure trying to get stale bread. I probably went to eight or ten hanuts before I procured the two stale rounds of bread.
Me: Hi, how are you?
buHanut: Fine how are you?
Me: Great, thanks, do you have bread?
buHanut: You speak Tashelheit!
Me: A little. Do you have bread?
buHanut: No, but the guy down the street does. Where are you from? France?
Me: No, I’m American.
buHanut: Do you know _____? Or ____? They speak Tashelheit too.
Me: Yes, I work with them. May God protect you.
buHanut: Amen.
Until I find a place with bread. Repeat conversation up to the part where I ask for bread:
buHanut: Yes, we have bread, how many do you want?
Me: Well, do you have any bread from yesterday?
buHanut: *blank stare*
Me: Bread that was cooked yesterday… is there any?
buHanut: We get fresh bread every day. They cooked it yesterday, they cooked it today, they’ll make some tomorrow.
Me: Yes, but I want bread that’s not new (I was having a forgetful day and forgot the word for “old”). Bread from yesterday but I want it today. *I pantomimed breaking it and it being hard and stale.*
buHanut: No.
Me: Okay, thanks.
buHanut: Wait. Why do you want old bread?
Me: It’s a holiday in America today and I’m making special American food with old bread. It has onions and carrots and old bread and bullion and butter.
buHanut: Oh. Okay. *blank look* No, I don’t but you might be able to get some over there.
Me: God bless your parents.
buHanut: My parents and your parents.
I finally got two stale rounds of bread. One guy offered me four-day old bread that would have been perfect if it wasn’t from a cardboard box sitting out on the street. I was tempted though, that’s how much my mindset has changed. Another man ran a few blocks away to a bakery and brought me one back. That sort of thing is common here. So, after probably half an hour of bread procurement, I was able to make my stuffing.
Before eating dinner (which was really at around dinnertime, not early like in the States), earlier in the morning, we had a White Elephant gift exchange. I brought a “Night at the movies:” two DVDs that are going around the PCV network, a mug, a small jar of my Mexican Hot Chocolate mix (chocolate powder, milk powder, sugar, hot pepper, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves), a serving or two of unpopped popcorn, and a Twix bar from the supermarket in town. I received a large American Flag tray and a package of ramen noodles. I know it sounds like a kind of pathetic Christmas present, but I’ve been needing a tray for two months now and just don’t want to lug it around or spend the money on it, so it was perfect. I actually fought people off for it.
The sad part was that it came from a member of our group, from my stage, who is ETing (Early Termination: going home). Given the circumstances, it makes sense for him to go, but I had really just started to get to know him at the Thanksgiving and Christmas parties and really enjoyed his company and spirit. We were exact opposites, which intrigued me, and he was just a lot of fun to be around. I was glad to get to see him and say goodbye, at least, instead of just hearing through the grapevine that he left, but it was a sad day.
We had Christmas music (the only thing that made it feel remotely like Christmas), and at night, had a pseudo-dance party with glow sticks someone got in a package from home. Four of us took a night-walk in the dark on the road up to one of my friends’ sites. Other than the howling of dogs that were a bit intimidating, it was a fantastic walk.
All the days are melding together in my head: I got there the 23rd and left on the 27th, so my apologies for getting things out of order a bit, but the day after Christmas, a group of us went on the same walk that we did at night, but we went further. There’s a touristy place that we were going to stop at for tea, but instead, walked down by a river for a few minutes, and then explored an old Kasbah that still had families who lived there. It was glorious: perfect weather in the sun, beautiful wooded fields, a small river, and the crumbling mud walls of the Kasbah.
I got a second shower in the morning that I left, and had more time to kill in my souk town than I wanted to in the afternoon. This meant that I had the opportunity to download some podcasts from NPR and I relished listening to them last night. Sometimes, I think about buying a satellite TV just to keep up on news. I have no idea what’s going on in the world, or at home. I get Newsweek on a semi-regular basis, but it’s the Global version, which, normally, I’d love, but part of me just wants to know what’s going on at home. The podcasts were very narrow in scope: one was an interview with a movie director, one talked about kids in Iowa translating Dr. Seuss books into Arabic for kids in Iraq, one was on the history of Champagne and Alton Brown talking about egg nog, and another on alternative energies. The only thing that really talked about news was about the campaign trail. It should be interesting to see what happens in these primaries. I must make a habit of downloading these, as it helps pass the time when I cook, clean, and get ready for bed.
December 29, 2007
It’s amazing to me how important water is to life, and how little we think about it.
Since coming back, the water has been off more than it’s been on in Tamazitinu. They’re in the middle of re-piping the tap water here, so it’s to be expected, but to say it’s annoying would be an understatement.
Yesterday, I lived off of only the water that was in my kettle. I was able to cook some and stay hydrated, but not wash anything or flush my toilet. Now, if the water had been out for longer, I could always bring buckets from the irrigation ditches which are probably half a mile away, and boil them, but I’d rather not lug water that far, and it came on this morning with no problem. But it made me think about it. I lived for a day off of less water than one toilet flush in the U.S., most likely.
***
Something I’ve learned today: how much people love printed photographs.
During l’Eid, I went around and, with permission, took some pictures. In my souk town, I got some printed out and gave them to my host family. I also had a few of neighbors, so I took some of them around and they loved them. I’ve never seen anyone get so excited about pictures before. It’s a nice way for me to give back, I guess.
And speaking of giving back, I’m not sure if I’ve made a mistake or not. There’s a festival in my friend’s site right now: three days and tomorrow is the last day. My friend is in a big city for New Year’s, and I really don’t want to go by myself. I walked around today, hoping someone would invite me to go with them, but a lot of the women don’t go because it costs 15 Dh round-trip. This is $2.
While my hostmother was baking bread in the mud oven, her next-door neighbor (and my good friend) was there too and I asked if they were going. “We don’t have the money,” but it seemed like they wanted to go.
I offered to pay for them if they’d come with me tomorrow. It’s only $4, and these people have fed me multiple times, and my hostmother had me live in her house for two months. Not a big deal, I thought, paying for them to come with. It means I’ll get to go and have company, and they’ll get to go when they wouldn’t have been able to before.
They acted like it was a lot of money, so I said that family had just sent me money for our “eid,” (holiday). I don’t know how I feel about doing this. I wanted to go, and I can go by myself, I know, but it’s so much better to go with people… I just hope the town doesn’t talk about it or get the wrong (or right) impression: that I’m made of money and willing to give money to people or buy people things because I’m a rich foreigner.
I think it’ll be okay: I bought this other friend of mine a 10 Dh phone card one day because she has a secret boyfriend she hadn’t talked to in a long time and if she didn’t recharge her phone, she’d lose her phone number. I asked her not to spread that around, and nobody has mentioned it to me. And, as I said, I’ve had more lunches and dinners and tea and bread over at peoples’ houses without knowing how best to reciprocate.
I like the idea of reciprocating with family photographs though. It makes me happy because it’s easy and inexpensive for me but not something that a lot of people can do easily on their own, and it’s something that people will keep for a long time and be able to show people and look back on. Watching my host mother flip through the pictures of her daughters and giggle and smile, laughing and pointing, “Look at her hair!” “Look at her smile!” really made me happy.
My friends next-door to her house really want me to make them pizza someday. I don’t know if they’ll like it, but if I buy an oven, I’ll do it. I’ll even make meatballs with it, because kefta (ground beef) is only available in my souk town, so it’d make it even more special.
I just got a text message saying that my monthly living allowance is in the bank. We just got bank accounts, and this is the first time we’re getting money that way. I hope it works out. It’s ironic to me that I didn’t get text messages at home when I made deposits in my account, but here, in my waterless mud house, I do.
It’s been a good morning. It’s cold, so I finished the Murakami book Dance Dance Dance while still curled up in my sleeping bag. He has to be one of my favorite authors ever (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a book that I read in a very Murakami-esque way, and then I was able to read Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the Universe and Kafka on the Shore before leaving for Morocco), and at the Christmas party I got hold of Dance Dance Dance and Norwegian Wood. It’s strange: I feel like every Murakami book I read is the same, but they are so gripping and intriguing that it makes me want to read all of his works. They’re not the same, but there’s something unique about the style, the magic realism, and the attitudes and intrigues of the characters that make them feel familiar and unsurprising, no matter if there is a plot twist (KP!)… You’d have to read one to understand (I’d recommend starting with Wind-Up Bird), but all of the unexpected, surreal things are just as normal and expected for me as they are for the characters: the single solitary male character, the intriguing but attractive and dark females, the places that aren’t real, the shadow, the attitudes towards work, relationships with young girls who are wise beyond their years, the attention paid towards food…
January 1, 2008
Happy New Year!
Wow, what a crazy few days it’s been.
Two days ago, I went to the festival that I was talking about. As agreed, at 9 am, I headed over to my friends’ house. It ends up my host mother wasn’t allowed to go. Her husband said she couldn’t because he needed to eat lunch and if she was gone all morning, he wouldn’t have lunch.
Sometimes, I’ve become used to the gender relations here. There are situations that would anger me at home that I’ve just accepted here, like people wanting me to wear a veil, or people turning away from the television when people kiss, or saying that premarital relations are bad. I’ve even, to some extent, become okay with not having close male friends here.
But when I heard that about my host-mother, a grown 27-year old mother of two, it hit hard. It also hit hard that my 30-year old unmarried friend had to ask her father for permission to go.
It was just going to be said 30-year old friend and I then, and we started walking towards where the vans went to and from the festival. It’s at my friend’s site which is about 15 or 20 k away, and vans were coming and going all day. On the way, my friend’s aunt greeted us and my friend asked if she could come with us instead because “she knows the festival.” Sure. I like this woman a lot; she’s one of the people who took me around with her for l’Eid and she’s very warm and genuine.
Before a van came, my newly married friends’ father-in-law (the man with two wives) came by in an empty car, so we all rode with him through my friends’ site to an outer neighborhood. The gendarmes greeted the man with a salute. I had no idea he was so well-connected (have I ever mentioned that there are police/gendarme checkpoints at least once or twice each time I go to my souk town? They’re not scary or a big deal, just interesting.).
The festival was fun: at first, it just looked like vendors, and indeed, that was the bulk of the activities. We stopped at several “Dirham” tables where everything was a dirham and my friends said I should buy my mother a dirham plastic ring as a gift. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that my mother most likely wouldn’t be caught dead walking around in a pink metallic cheap painted ring, so I bought a necklace and said it was for my sister.
The older friend (probably in her mid to late 40s) showed me where all the deals were and I went a little nuts. It was good that I had friends with me because if not, I might have spent even more money. I bought two small ponjs that can’t really even be described as ponjs but almost like very thin floor pads. It’ll be good for when the neighborhood girls come to color and they were only 30 Dh each ($4). I also bought a 2-serving tanut (which, to everyone’s amusement, I persist on calling a taHanut: store): a two-piece couscous cooking pan with a large soup-pot like bottom and a shallower dish for steaming the couscous on top with holes. I haven’t made couscous yet, but the pot is great for soups (25 Dh). I bought a large tye-dyed scarf for a whopping 3 dirhams and would have bought more if I hadn’t felt bad spending money in front of my friends, and a beautiful but slightly gaudy turquoise stone necklace for 20 dh. If I re-string it with real silver beads in between, it could be a really nice chunky piece of jewelry.
At the edge of all the vendors was a ferris wheel and a tilt-o-whirl. I really wanted to ride on the ferris wheel but my friends were afraid to and I didn’t want them to wait for me.
We had to wait two hours for a van to take us back. After dropping my purchases off with an old woman from “ighrm” (town) who was going to just sit in the shade until the van came, the three of us went to a tent for tea. There was a non-Moroccan woman wearing a fleece jacket who was working at the tea tent. Strange. At my friends’ prompting, I said “Salaam u aleikum” to her. She didn’t seem to want to talk, so I just followed my friends and a man from Tamazitinu bought us lunch and tea.
I was really curious, watching this woman wiping down tables and washing dishes, then sitting in the sun. “Talk to her!” everyone urged me. I finally did.
“Vous parlez francais? Espanol? English?” I asked her.
It ends up she spoke English and was from the Netherlands, had fallen in love and was engaged to the son of the restaurant-tent owner. She lived maybe 30 k away and didn’t have a job or speak Tashelheit very well. “How do you speak such good Berber?” she asked. I might see if I can copy some information for her or something and help her out. She seemed really nice, but it was random to see a Dutch woman working at the festival. Probably just as random as it was for her to see me walk in the tent speaking Berber to my friends. I forget how strange my life is sometimes. Beautiful, but strange.
We finally ran to the van, cutting it off before it got to the waiting area, and four of us (me, my two friends, and a younger girl) piled into the front two seats. We took a back dirt road to my site and I saw some beautiful villages. I took a few pictures from the window, but I love seeing new places here, especially so close to home.
When I got back, I had a message from my teacher friend from Marrakech who speaks English. She invited me to spend the night on New Year’s. My heart soared. I was psyched.
New Year’s Eve came around and I headed over, bringing over ingredients for a celebratory “Mocktail.” She had baked a cake that had “everything” in it: coffee, orange, chocolate, eggs, vanilla… and frosted it with an “08” and even melted chocolate and let it cool in strips to decorate the edge of the cake. We hung a tangled light strand over the window in a big festive clump, and had little teacups full of pink “flan.”
It was a subdued night for the two of us and a friend of hers, except when we danced unabashedly to Enrique Iglesias, she sang along with a televised New Year’s concert, and I sang my heart out to a jazz version of “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” that she played as background music. The nurse came over and shared cake and fruit salad with us—the first time I’ve been somewhere where a male came over with unmarried females! My friend dresses less conservatively than I do, never wears a headscarf, and I guess has men over and it’s not a problem. I still don’t know if I’d do that, but she doesn’t behave “badly” by any stretch of the imagination.
I thoroughly enjoyed counting down in Arabic with the television: “Ashra! Sa3ood! Tmnya! Sb3a! Sta! Khamsa! Rb3a! Tleta! Juj! Wahad! Happy New Year!” And there you have it. A much better New Year than I anticipated.
Icing on the cake: I showed her a curriculum I want to teach in both Tamazitinu and her neighborhood and she said she’d help me with it and even seemed excited. We’re going to try to find a place, and then, maybe, we can teach this class together. It’s amazing curriculum for women; it talks about menstruation, the science of pregnancy, how to take care of yourself during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and basic nutrition and health information with visuals in a very scientific way. I’ll really feel like I’m doing work if we get this off the ground.
The most flattering was yet to come. I’m confused as to how I should proceed, so please send me good thoughts for guidance in this decision. My friend and I are both somewhat lonely here. We do well, but I know I end up sitting at home alone a lot, typing long blog entries or watching DVDs on my laptop… or… horror of horrors… playing the games on my computer (I’d never beat advanced level on Minesweeper in my life until last month). She also has friends in her neighborhood (45 min walk from my house), but women here don’t generally talk about politics or philosophy or things outside our town. She invited me to move in with her, and I have to tell you, I’m really tempted. If she was in my douar, I’d move in tomorrow, but it’s really far from most people I’ve gotten to know over the months here, and I know I’d also speak more English than I do now. She’s an outsider too, so it’s not as if I’d be moving back in with a family, but I really like that area and I like her a lot.
I may try to move in with her and pay half-rent with my own money (it’s really, REALLY cheap… like disgustingly cheap), but keep the house in town just in case it doesn’t work out and just see how things go. It’s almost bizarre being with her though; we have a lot in common, but she’s a lot less “rural Morocco” than I’ve become. She has a blow-dryer, a computer, and walks on the dirt roads in town with corduroy pants and high-heeled boots.
Okay. I have some of my little girls coming over tomorrow, so I have to come up with a lesson of some sort and clean some. I have to do laundry like nobody’s business. Time for me to get to work and stop celebrating… but Happy New Year!
January 2, 2008
I’ve now had about six or eight sessions with this girl’s group, which is composed of about 16 girls who don’t all come at the same time. I’ve never had a problem until today.
Well, that’s not entirely true. One of the kids told me that another girl stole some of my colored pencils last time, so this time I only brought out crayons and was on guard. Or so I thought. I counted 26 crayons beforehand. It didn’t look like any were missing after the first group of six girls, but later in the afternoon, two others came in that I didn’t know as well.
They gave me funny feelings, like they didn’t want to be here, but they wanted me to let them in and talk to them, so I did. I asked their names again. Melika and Nedia, they said, though later, I could have sworn I heard one call the other another name. When I asked, they said they were talking about someone else.
Before they left, they asked if they could each have a crayon. I said no, because I have to share with the other girls who come in to color and have short health lessons. They seemed to accept this….
Until about ten minutes after they left, when I looked at my crayon cup. It looked emptier. I counted. 18 crayons. The brightest colors were gone.
I was livid. I couldn’t prove anything, because I didn’t count after the first group of girls, but I was almost positive it was these two. I sat and stewed. It hurt. I know I shouldn’t let something stupid like this hurt, but I really enjoy being with these girls in this atmosphere: having them come over, trying to get them to taste new healthy snacks… but adults in town warned me that the kids might steal things. They don’t sell crayons in Morocco, not that I’ve found anywhere near me at least. I didn’t want to punish every little girl by not letting them come over and color, but I need them to make visual aids too. And, really. If they want to color something, they can just come over and use them.
So, after ten minutes, I decided to go confront the kids. I walked out and found them playing maybe a 5 minute walk away and asked Nedia and Melika.
They said they didn’t take them, and to ask one of the other girls who came over earlier because they thought it was her.
Furious, but not believing them, I walked back. My neighbors (including the mother of the girl who the others accused of stealing the crayons) were out and they asked where I had gone.
I explained the situation. She said she thought it was the two girls this afternoon, and called them by other names.
“No, it was Nedia and Melika who came over this afternoon.”
I knew then that they were the culprits. They gave me false names. I was even more livid that not only had they stolen them and played dumb, but blamed someone else, a little girl who I am quite fond of but isn’t as rich and gets picked on some. People here tend to call the poorer kids dishonest. To add on, my neighbor said she saw them putting something under their sweaters and giggling on the way out.
I stormed over to them.
“What is your name?” I asked one. “Nedia,” she insisted. I asked some of the nearby kids what her name was and they all seemed to not want to get involved.
“My neighbor saw you take them. I want my crayons.” Women were starting to look around. I asked one what the girls names were. They weren’t “Nedia” or “Melika.”
I went over to tell the women the situation, hoping one of them was a mother of one of the kids, and one of the girls disappeared. I finally approached the other one.
“I want my crayons. I need my crayons. I know you have them, people saw you with them.”
She fished four out of her pocket. “My friend has the rest.”
I did my best to make her understand that I was angry because it was depriving other people of coloring and that she tried to blame someone else, and tried to find the other girl. A woman pointed me out to her house.
I went in the wall and knocked on the door. My anger made it so that I didn’t feel strange knocking on the door of a complete strangers’ house.
Nobody was home. Someone pointed up on the hill and there were ten women staring at me. Neighbors that I didn’t know.
I explained the situation; the mother promised me to get me my crayons back, and I tried to explain that I wasn’t angry and didn’t want the girl to get in trouble, I just wanted to be able to have the other kids color some. It ended up being good because I got to know ten of my neighbors better, and they all seemed really sweet.
So, in some ways, I think it was a blessing in disguise. I got to know the one mother and the ten other people better and they said that I’m welcome to join them on their discussions on the hill any time. Fantastic. They didn’t think I was out of line at all for being upset.
But in some ways, I feel like I was out of line. Kids will be kids. Crayons are just cheap pieces of wax. In the long run, 8 crayons are a funny thing to get a 24- year old woman bent out of shape for. I understand the kids’ logic: here’s a funny rich foreigner who can always go out and buy more because she’s rich, and we don’t have any. But it hurt, for some reason. I was almost in tears. I felt so taken advantage of by these kids (11 years old!) who obviously knew better and who went so far as to lie about their names. It wasn’t my intent to get them in trouble, in fact, I gave them two opportunities before I told one of their mothers, which I didn’t want to do. I didn’t tell the other girl’s parents, the one who finally gave me “her” crayons, because she gave them to me. Fair enough. It was so sneaky though, so underhanded.
Stuffing a la Peace Corps:
A big chunk of butter or margarine (no measuring cups here!)
Two carrots, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
Medium onion, diced
2 large or 3-4 small chicken bullion cubes
Probably between 1-2 cups of water
Two large rounds of bread, stale if possible, torn to bits
Thyme, oregano, salt, pepper, fresh rosemary to taste
Heat oven. The only oven settings on these butagaz ovens are “big flame” and “little flame,” so put it on little flame. Bake torn bread until crispy but not burned.
At the same time, melt oven and sautee onion, carrots, garlic, and spices. When onions are translucent, add water and bullion and bring to a boil.
If you time it right, the bread will be ready as soon as the brothy stuff is boiling. Take off heat, add bread, toss through, and cover for five minutes. It should be ready to eat; if it’s too dry, add a bit more chicken broth.
And, just because I want to, a very simple and unhealthy Moroccan Recipe:
Udi (a type of butter)
Melt a hunk (at least a stick) butter over a stove, and add chopped green onions. Sautee until onions are crisp but not burned. Remove from heat, stir in salt and ½ tsp cayenne pepper.
Drizzle melted over (unsweetened) crepes, or pour in with boiled Jerusalem couscous (a large sort of couscous).
Merry Christmas!
Christmas in Morocco was fantastic; again, a group of us got together a centrally located (for us) apartment whose owner was generous enough to let us use his internet, satellite television, and space while he was back home for the holidays. I was going to go to Marrakech for New Year’s, but decided against it because it would mean taking a dizzying mountain pass in a big bus on a potentially icy road. Instead, I’m staying in-site, though nobody does anything to celebrate. Maybe I’ll have some young friend over and we’ll party until midnight. Most likely, I won’t.
But Christmas was a lot of fun. We ended up doing the same thing that we did for Thanksgiving: tried to recreate as authentic of a Christmas meal as possible. I was in charge of the stuffing, which wasn’t all that great, but was a lot of fun to cook and prepare for and was such a comfort food that I made it for breakfast the next day. I’ll put my “Peace Corps” stuffing recipe at the end of this update, just for fun.
As most of us had been in and out of the apartment all day, taking showers at the public shower downstairs or going to the supermarche for things, eating lunch at the local Peace Corps hangout: “the patisserie;” nobody went with me to get the stuffing ingredients. It ended up being quite an adventure trying to get stale bread. I probably went to eight or ten hanuts before I procured the two stale rounds of bread.
Me: Hi, how are you?
buHanut: Fine how are you?
Me: Great, thanks, do you have bread?
buHanut: You speak Tashelheit!
Me: A little. Do you have bread?
buHanut: No, but the guy down the street does. Where are you from? France?
Me: No, I’m American.
buHanut: Do you know _____? Or ____? They speak Tashelheit too.
Me: Yes, I work with them. May God protect you.
buHanut: Amen.
Until I find a place with bread. Repeat conversation up to the part where I ask for bread:
buHanut: Yes, we have bread, how many do you want?
Me: Well, do you have any bread from yesterday?
buHanut: *blank stare*
Me: Bread that was cooked yesterday… is there any?
buHanut: We get fresh bread every day. They cooked it yesterday, they cooked it today, they’ll make some tomorrow.
Me: Yes, but I want bread that’s not new (I was having a forgetful day and forgot the word for “old”). Bread from yesterday but I want it today. *I pantomimed breaking it and it being hard and stale.*
buHanut: No.
Me: Okay, thanks.
buHanut: Wait. Why do you want old bread?
Me: It’s a holiday in America today and I’m making special American food with old bread. It has onions and carrots and old bread and bullion and butter.
buHanut: Oh. Okay. *blank look* No, I don’t but you might be able to get some over there.
Me: God bless your parents.
buHanut: My parents and your parents.
I finally got two stale rounds of bread. One guy offered me four-day old bread that would have been perfect if it wasn’t from a cardboard box sitting out on the street. I was tempted though, that’s how much my mindset has changed. Another man ran a few blocks away to a bakery and brought me one back. That sort of thing is common here. So, after probably half an hour of bread procurement, I was able to make my stuffing.
Before eating dinner (which was really at around dinnertime, not early like in the States), earlier in the morning, we had a White Elephant gift exchange. I brought a “Night at the movies:” two DVDs that are going around the PCV network, a mug, a small jar of my Mexican Hot Chocolate mix (chocolate powder, milk powder, sugar, hot pepper, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves), a serving or two of unpopped popcorn, and a Twix bar from the supermarket in town. I received a large American Flag tray and a package of ramen noodles. I know it sounds like a kind of pathetic Christmas present, but I’ve been needing a tray for two months now and just don’t want to lug it around or spend the money on it, so it was perfect. I actually fought people off for it.
The sad part was that it came from a member of our group, from my stage, who is ETing (Early Termination: going home). Given the circumstances, it makes sense for him to go, but I had really just started to get to know him at the Thanksgiving and Christmas parties and really enjoyed his company and spirit. We were exact opposites, which intrigued me, and he was just a lot of fun to be around. I was glad to get to see him and say goodbye, at least, instead of just hearing through the grapevine that he left, but it was a sad day.
We had Christmas music (the only thing that made it feel remotely like Christmas), and at night, had a pseudo-dance party with glow sticks someone got in a package from home. Four of us took a night-walk in the dark on the road up to one of my friends’ sites. Other than the howling of dogs that were a bit intimidating, it was a fantastic walk.
All the days are melding together in my head: I got there the 23rd and left on the 27th, so my apologies for getting things out of order a bit, but the day after Christmas, a group of us went on the same walk that we did at night, but we went further. There’s a touristy place that we were going to stop at for tea, but instead, walked down by a river for a few minutes, and then explored an old Kasbah that still had families who lived there. It was glorious: perfect weather in the sun, beautiful wooded fields, a small river, and the crumbling mud walls of the Kasbah.
I got a second shower in the morning that I left, and had more time to kill in my souk town than I wanted to in the afternoon. This meant that I had the opportunity to download some podcasts from NPR and I relished listening to them last night. Sometimes, I think about buying a satellite TV just to keep up on news. I have no idea what’s going on in the world, or at home. I get Newsweek on a semi-regular basis, but it’s the Global version, which, normally, I’d love, but part of me just wants to know what’s going on at home. The podcasts were very narrow in scope: one was an interview with a movie director, one talked about kids in Iowa translating Dr. Seuss books into Arabic for kids in Iraq, one was on the history of Champagne and Alton Brown talking about egg nog, and another on alternative energies. The only thing that really talked about news was about the campaign trail. It should be interesting to see what happens in these primaries. I must make a habit of downloading these, as it helps pass the time when I cook, clean, and get ready for bed.
December 29, 2007
It’s amazing to me how important water is to life, and how little we think about it.
Since coming back, the water has been off more than it’s been on in Tamazitinu. They’re in the middle of re-piping the tap water here, so it’s to be expected, but to say it’s annoying would be an understatement.
Yesterday, I lived off of only the water that was in my kettle. I was able to cook some and stay hydrated, but not wash anything or flush my toilet. Now, if the water had been out for longer, I could always bring buckets from the irrigation ditches which are probably half a mile away, and boil them, but I’d rather not lug water that far, and it came on this morning with no problem. But it made me think about it. I lived for a day off of less water than one toilet flush in the U.S., most likely.
***
Something I’ve learned today: how much people love printed photographs.
During l’Eid, I went around and, with permission, took some pictures. In my souk town, I got some printed out and gave them to my host family. I also had a few of neighbors, so I took some of them around and they loved them. I’ve never seen anyone get so excited about pictures before. It’s a nice way for me to give back, I guess.
And speaking of giving back, I’m not sure if I’ve made a mistake or not. There’s a festival in my friend’s site right now: three days and tomorrow is the last day. My friend is in a big city for New Year’s, and I really don’t want to go by myself. I walked around today, hoping someone would invite me to go with them, but a lot of the women don’t go because it costs 15 Dh round-trip. This is $2.
While my hostmother was baking bread in the mud oven, her next-door neighbor (and my good friend) was there too and I asked if they were going. “We don’t have the money,” but it seemed like they wanted to go.
I offered to pay for them if they’d come with me tomorrow. It’s only $4, and these people have fed me multiple times, and my hostmother had me live in her house for two months. Not a big deal, I thought, paying for them to come with. It means I’ll get to go and have company, and they’ll get to go when they wouldn’t have been able to before.
They acted like it was a lot of money, so I said that family had just sent me money for our “eid,” (holiday). I don’t know how I feel about doing this. I wanted to go, and I can go by myself, I know, but it’s so much better to go with people… I just hope the town doesn’t talk about it or get the wrong (or right) impression: that I’m made of money and willing to give money to people or buy people things because I’m a rich foreigner.
I think it’ll be okay: I bought this other friend of mine a 10 Dh phone card one day because she has a secret boyfriend she hadn’t talked to in a long time and if she didn’t recharge her phone, she’d lose her phone number. I asked her not to spread that around, and nobody has mentioned it to me. And, as I said, I’ve had more lunches and dinners and tea and bread over at peoples’ houses without knowing how best to reciprocate.
I like the idea of reciprocating with family photographs though. It makes me happy because it’s easy and inexpensive for me but not something that a lot of people can do easily on their own, and it’s something that people will keep for a long time and be able to show people and look back on. Watching my host mother flip through the pictures of her daughters and giggle and smile, laughing and pointing, “Look at her hair!” “Look at her smile!” really made me happy.
My friends next-door to her house really want me to make them pizza someday. I don’t know if they’ll like it, but if I buy an oven, I’ll do it. I’ll even make meatballs with it, because kefta (ground beef) is only available in my souk town, so it’d make it even more special.
I just got a text message saying that my monthly living allowance is in the bank. We just got bank accounts, and this is the first time we’re getting money that way. I hope it works out. It’s ironic to me that I didn’t get text messages at home when I made deposits in my account, but here, in my waterless mud house, I do.
It’s been a good morning. It’s cold, so I finished the Murakami book Dance Dance Dance while still curled up in my sleeping bag. He has to be one of my favorite authors ever (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a book that I read in a very Murakami-esque way, and then I was able to read Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the Universe and Kafka on the Shore before leaving for Morocco), and at the Christmas party I got hold of Dance Dance Dance and Norwegian Wood. It’s strange: I feel like every Murakami book I read is the same, but they are so gripping and intriguing that it makes me want to read all of his works. They’re not the same, but there’s something unique about the style, the magic realism, and the attitudes and intrigues of the characters that make them feel familiar and unsurprising, no matter if there is a plot twist (KP!)… You’d have to read one to understand (I’d recommend starting with Wind-Up Bird), but all of the unexpected, surreal things are just as normal and expected for me as they are for the characters: the single solitary male character, the intriguing but attractive and dark females, the places that aren’t real, the shadow, the attitudes towards work, relationships with young girls who are wise beyond their years, the attention paid towards food…
January 1, 2008
Happy New Year!
Wow, what a crazy few days it’s been.
Two days ago, I went to the festival that I was talking about. As agreed, at 9 am, I headed over to my friends’ house. It ends up my host mother wasn’t allowed to go. Her husband said she couldn’t because he needed to eat lunch and if she was gone all morning, he wouldn’t have lunch.
Sometimes, I’ve become used to the gender relations here. There are situations that would anger me at home that I’ve just accepted here, like people wanting me to wear a veil, or people turning away from the television when people kiss, or saying that premarital relations are bad. I’ve even, to some extent, become okay with not having close male friends here.
But when I heard that about my host-mother, a grown 27-year old mother of two, it hit hard. It also hit hard that my 30-year old unmarried friend had to ask her father for permission to go.
It was just going to be said 30-year old friend and I then, and we started walking towards where the vans went to and from the festival. It’s at my friend’s site which is about 15 or 20 k away, and vans were coming and going all day. On the way, my friend’s aunt greeted us and my friend asked if she could come with us instead because “she knows the festival.” Sure. I like this woman a lot; she’s one of the people who took me around with her for l’Eid and she’s very warm and genuine.
Before a van came, my newly married friends’ father-in-law (the man with two wives) came by in an empty car, so we all rode with him through my friends’ site to an outer neighborhood. The gendarmes greeted the man with a salute. I had no idea he was so well-connected (have I ever mentioned that there are police/gendarme checkpoints at least once or twice each time I go to my souk town? They’re not scary or a big deal, just interesting.).
The festival was fun: at first, it just looked like vendors, and indeed, that was the bulk of the activities. We stopped at several “Dirham” tables where everything was a dirham and my friends said I should buy my mother a dirham plastic ring as a gift. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that my mother most likely wouldn’t be caught dead walking around in a pink metallic cheap painted ring, so I bought a necklace and said it was for my sister.
The older friend (probably in her mid to late 40s) showed me where all the deals were and I went a little nuts. It was good that I had friends with me because if not, I might have spent even more money. I bought two small ponjs that can’t really even be described as ponjs but almost like very thin floor pads. It’ll be good for when the neighborhood girls come to color and they were only 30 Dh each ($4). I also bought a 2-serving tanut (which, to everyone’s amusement, I persist on calling a taHanut: store): a two-piece couscous cooking pan with a large soup-pot like bottom and a shallower dish for steaming the couscous on top with holes. I haven’t made couscous yet, but the pot is great for soups (25 Dh). I bought a large tye-dyed scarf for a whopping 3 dirhams and would have bought more if I hadn’t felt bad spending money in front of my friends, and a beautiful but slightly gaudy turquoise stone necklace for 20 dh. If I re-string it with real silver beads in between, it could be a really nice chunky piece of jewelry.
At the edge of all the vendors was a ferris wheel and a tilt-o-whirl. I really wanted to ride on the ferris wheel but my friends were afraid to and I didn’t want them to wait for me.
We had to wait two hours for a van to take us back. After dropping my purchases off with an old woman from “ighrm” (town) who was going to just sit in the shade until the van came, the three of us went to a tent for tea. There was a non-Moroccan woman wearing a fleece jacket who was working at the tea tent. Strange. At my friends’ prompting, I said “Salaam u aleikum” to her. She didn’t seem to want to talk, so I just followed my friends and a man from Tamazitinu bought us lunch and tea.
I was really curious, watching this woman wiping down tables and washing dishes, then sitting in the sun. “Talk to her!” everyone urged me. I finally did.
“Vous parlez francais? Espanol? English?” I asked her.
It ends up she spoke English and was from the Netherlands, had fallen in love and was engaged to the son of the restaurant-tent owner. She lived maybe 30 k away and didn’t have a job or speak Tashelheit very well. “How do you speak such good Berber?” she asked. I might see if I can copy some information for her or something and help her out. She seemed really nice, but it was random to see a Dutch woman working at the festival. Probably just as random as it was for her to see me walk in the tent speaking Berber to my friends. I forget how strange my life is sometimes. Beautiful, but strange.
We finally ran to the van, cutting it off before it got to the waiting area, and four of us (me, my two friends, and a younger girl) piled into the front two seats. We took a back dirt road to my site and I saw some beautiful villages. I took a few pictures from the window, but I love seeing new places here, especially so close to home.
When I got back, I had a message from my teacher friend from Marrakech who speaks English. She invited me to spend the night on New Year’s. My heart soared. I was psyched.
New Year’s Eve came around and I headed over, bringing over ingredients for a celebratory “Mocktail.” She had baked a cake that had “everything” in it: coffee, orange, chocolate, eggs, vanilla… and frosted it with an “08” and even melted chocolate and let it cool in strips to decorate the edge of the cake. We hung a tangled light strand over the window in a big festive clump, and had little teacups full of pink “flan.”
It was a subdued night for the two of us and a friend of hers, except when we danced unabashedly to Enrique Iglesias, she sang along with a televised New Year’s concert, and I sang my heart out to a jazz version of “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” that she played as background music. The nurse came over and shared cake and fruit salad with us—the first time I’ve been somewhere where a male came over with unmarried females! My friend dresses less conservatively than I do, never wears a headscarf, and I guess has men over and it’s not a problem. I still don’t know if I’d do that, but she doesn’t behave “badly” by any stretch of the imagination.
I thoroughly enjoyed counting down in Arabic with the television: “Ashra! Sa3ood! Tmnya! Sb3a! Sta! Khamsa! Rb3a! Tleta! Juj! Wahad! Happy New Year!” And there you have it. A much better New Year than I anticipated.
Icing on the cake: I showed her a curriculum I want to teach in both Tamazitinu and her neighborhood and she said she’d help me with it and even seemed excited. We’re going to try to find a place, and then, maybe, we can teach this class together. It’s amazing curriculum for women; it talks about menstruation, the science of pregnancy, how to take care of yourself during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and basic nutrition and health information with visuals in a very scientific way. I’ll really feel like I’m doing work if we get this off the ground.
The most flattering was yet to come. I’m confused as to how I should proceed, so please send me good thoughts for guidance in this decision. My friend and I are both somewhat lonely here. We do well, but I know I end up sitting at home alone a lot, typing long blog entries or watching DVDs on my laptop… or… horror of horrors… playing the games on my computer (I’d never beat advanced level on Minesweeper in my life until last month). She also has friends in her neighborhood (45 min walk from my house), but women here don’t generally talk about politics or philosophy or things outside our town. She invited me to move in with her, and I have to tell you, I’m really tempted. If she was in my douar, I’d move in tomorrow, but it’s really far from most people I’ve gotten to know over the months here, and I know I’d also speak more English than I do now. She’s an outsider too, so it’s not as if I’d be moving back in with a family, but I really like that area and I like her a lot.
I may try to move in with her and pay half-rent with my own money (it’s really, REALLY cheap… like disgustingly cheap), but keep the house in town just in case it doesn’t work out and just see how things go. It’s almost bizarre being with her though; we have a lot in common, but she’s a lot less “rural Morocco” than I’ve become. She has a blow-dryer, a computer, and walks on the dirt roads in town with corduroy pants and high-heeled boots.
Okay. I have some of my little girls coming over tomorrow, so I have to come up with a lesson of some sort and clean some. I have to do laundry like nobody’s business. Time for me to get to work and stop celebrating… but Happy New Year!
January 2, 2008
I’ve now had about six or eight sessions with this girl’s group, which is composed of about 16 girls who don’t all come at the same time. I’ve never had a problem until today.
Well, that’s not entirely true. One of the kids told me that another girl stole some of my colored pencils last time, so this time I only brought out crayons and was on guard. Or so I thought. I counted 26 crayons beforehand. It didn’t look like any were missing after the first group of six girls, but later in the afternoon, two others came in that I didn’t know as well.
They gave me funny feelings, like they didn’t want to be here, but they wanted me to let them in and talk to them, so I did. I asked their names again. Melika and Nedia, they said, though later, I could have sworn I heard one call the other another name. When I asked, they said they were talking about someone else.
Before they left, they asked if they could each have a crayon. I said no, because I have to share with the other girls who come in to color and have short health lessons. They seemed to accept this….
Until about ten minutes after they left, when I looked at my crayon cup. It looked emptier. I counted. 18 crayons. The brightest colors were gone.
I was livid. I couldn’t prove anything, because I didn’t count after the first group of girls, but I was almost positive it was these two. I sat and stewed. It hurt. I know I shouldn’t let something stupid like this hurt, but I really enjoy being with these girls in this atmosphere: having them come over, trying to get them to taste new healthy snacks… but adults in town warned me that the kids might steal things. They don’t sell crayons in Morocco, not that I’ve found anywhere near me at least. I didn’t want to punish every little girl by not letting them come over and color, but I need them to make visual aids too. And, really. If they want to color something, they can just come over and use them.
So, after ten minutes, I decided to go confront the kids. I walked out and found them playing maybe a 5 minute walk away and asked Nedia and Melika.
They said they didn’t take them, and to ask one of the other girls who came over earlier because they thought it was her.
Furious, but not believing them, I walked back. My neighbors (including the mother of the girl who the others accused of stealing the crayons) were out and they asked where I had gone.
I explained the situation. She said she thought it was the two girls this afternoon, and called them by other names.
“No, it was Nedia and Melika who came over this afternoon.”
I knew then that they were the culprits. They gave me false names. I was even more livid that not only had they stolen them and played dumb, but blamed someone else, a little girl who I am quite fond of but isn’t as rich and gets picked on some. People here tend to call the poorer kids dishonest. To add on, my neighbor said she saw them putting something under their sweaters and giggling on the way out.
I stormed over to them.
“What is your name?” I asked one. “Nedia,” she insisted. I asked some of the nearby kids what her name was and they all seemed to not want to get involved.
“My neighbor saw you take them. I want my crayons.” Women were starting to look around. I asked one what the girls names were. They weren’t “Nedia” or “Melika.”
I went over to tell the women the situation, hoping one of them was a mother of one of the kids, and one of the girls disappeared. I finally approached the other one.
“I want my crayons. I need my crayons. I know you have them, people saw you with them.”
She fished four out of her pocket. “My friend has the rest.”
I did my best to make her understand that I was angry because it was depriving other people of coloring and that she tried to blame someone else, and tried to find the other girl. A woman pointed me out to her house.
I went in the wall and knocked on the door. My anger made it so that I didn’t feel strange knocking on the door of a complete strangers’ house.
Nobody was home. Someone pointed up on the hill and there were ten women staring at me. Neighbors that I didn’t know.
I explained the situation; the mother promised me to get me my crayons back, and I tried to explain that I wasn’t angry and didn’t want the girl to get in trouble, I just wanted to be able to have the other kids color some. It ended up being good because I got to know ten of my neighbors better, and they all seemed really sweet.
So, in some ways, I think it was a blessing in disguise. I got to know the one mother and the ten other people better and they said that I’m welcome to join them on their discussions on the hill any time. Fantastic. They didn’t think I was out of line at all for being upset.
But in some ways, I feel like I was out of line. Kids will be kids. Crayons are just cheap pieces of wax. In the long run, 8 crayons are a funny thing to get a 24- year old woman bent out of shape for. I understand the kids’ logic: here’s a funny rich foreigner who can always go out and buy more because she’s rich, and we don’t have any. But it hurt, for some reason. I was almost in tears. I felt so taken advantage of by these kids (11 years old!) who obviously knew better and who went so far as to lie about their names. It wasn’t my intent to get them in trouble, in fact, I gave them two opportunities before I told one of their mothers, which I didn’t want to do. I didn’t tell the other girl’s parents, the one who finally gave me “her” crayons, because she gave them to me. Fair enough. It was so sneaky though, so underhanded.
Stuffing a la Peace Corps:
A big chunk of butter or margarine (no measuring cups here!)
Two carrots, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
Medium onion, diced
2 large or 3-4 small chicken bullion cubes
Probably between 1-2 cups of water
Two large rounds of bread, stale if possible, torn to bits
Thyme, oregano, salt, pepper, fresh rosemary to taste
Heat oven. The only oven settings on these butagaz ovens are “big flame” and “little flame,” so put it on little flame. Bake torn bread until crispy but not burned.
At the same time, melt oven and sautee onion, carrots, garlic, and spices. When onions are translucent, add water and bullion and bring to a boil.
If you time it right, the bread will be ready as soon as the brothy stuff is boiling. Take off heat, add bread, toss through, and cover for five minutes. It should be ready to eat; if it’s too dry, add a bit more chicken broth.
And, just because I want to, a very simple and unhealthy Moroccan Recipe:
Udi (a type of butter)
Melt a hunk (at least a stick) butter over a stove, and add chopped green onions. Sautee until onions are crisp but not burned. Remove from heat, stir in salt and ½ tsp cayenne pepper.
Drizzle melted over (unsweetened) crepes, or pour in with boiled Jerusalem couscous (a large sort of couscous).
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