I have my camera cord now so here are some pictures!! Just a sampling of my travels in Morocco!
Hello! I am sitting in Café Arab drinking fresh orange juice and using their wireless internet! I thought I wouldn’t have that much of interest to share this weekend because I’m not going anywhere, but I was wrong!
Friday started out great! I had chocolate cake for breakfast! My mom insisted, after I ate two huge pieces for breakfast, that I take another piece with me for after class. Instead of going to our usual Darija class in the morning all the students on my program met and took the bus to our academic director’s university class he teaches. We went to his cross-cultural studies class and had small group discussions with the students about feminism, fundamentalism/Islamism, and Amazghism (Native Moroccans trying to be recognized as a valued part of Moroccan culture). The students were so enthusiastic and the discussions actually got really heated, so it was an exciting morning! I had told my mom I was going to be home at noon for Friday couscous. Unfortunately, the students talked SO much that I didn’t get home until 1. She was really worried about me! So they had already eaten most of the couscous so I quickly took my spot at the table and started finishing it off. THEN my mom comes from the kitchen holding this plate piled high with couscous!! She had saved me an enormous portion! So I ate probably two full couscous meals! Of course later that night for dinner I was the one responsible for finishing off the huge plate of pasta! SO MUCH FOOD!!! I’m excited for independent study time when I can portion my own food, but of course I will be sad without delicious home cooking!
On Friday I also made friends with some migrants! I’m so excited! There are two young men who fix shoes right outside of my house. We only spoke briefly, but I’m excited to get to know them more and find out where they’re from! Maybe I can get some valuable information for my independent study project!
Almost every Friday there are big protests outside parliament, or other locations in Rabat. The protesters are usually jobless college graduates protesting for government job creation. The riot police is often present at these protests, which is pretty intense. I’ve seen police with their riot gear and batons chase screaming people a few times. Of course I only witness this for the amount of time it takes me to get away from the situation!
Saturday was a nice quiet day. My sisters went to school and my mom was working so I was home by myself in the morning. I got some homework done and got to watch a great tear-jerker, The Bridges of Madison County. I was glad no one was home so I didn’t have to explain why I was crying so much! After lunch I went, in the rain, to a café outside the medina. This is a popular spot for our program as it has wireless internet! They have wonderful fresh-squeezed orange juice! After spending a while at the café I came home and spent time with my family. Like I said, a nice quiet Saturday.
Sunday was definitely the best day of the weekend! I knew I was going to have a skype date with my family in Spokane, so I was already excited, but then my mom told me that we were going to the hammam (public bath)! After getting a REALLY slow start we finally packed up everything and headed out! We brought a big red bucket with all of our bath products and two stools and mats in it and also a big bag packed with towels, bathrobe, and a change of clothes. It might not sound like a lot, but we were loaded down with stuff! I was also still in my pajamas! I asked if I should change and they said it was fine…so I walked to the bath in my pjs! You walk into the hammam and there’s the first room where you undress, leave your stuff and get your buckets. Then you enter heaven! There are three rooms with increasing heat levels. It was SUPER busy when we were there so we had to stake out our spot in the first room. Basically you lay out your little mats, get out your stools, and start filling up your buckets. After filling our seven or so buckets we constructed a little wall with them. The first step is to use this gooey soap stuff. After soap, you take this really rough, sandpaper-like black mitt and scrap off LAYERS of dead skin! It’s wonderful! That takes about maybe 20 minutes. Then you wash your hair, which takes about 5 minutes. Then you spend the next 2 hours or so repeating that and just sitting pouring hot water over your head! Yeah, it’s wonderful! So we spent a few hours there, making me late for my skype date, but luckily everyone was still there when I did get to the cyber café!
Now I’m just settling into the second to last week of classes and getting really excited for our week-long excursion to Spain. Right now the only thing I really know about it is that we go on a route North, stopping in a few different places in Morocco, eventually ending up in Spain for a few nights and then back home. Should be fun! Right now my sister is putting chocolate crackers in her tea and mashing them up with her spoon…apparently it’s delicious, but I think I’ll keep my crackers dry!
Well, we all survived the village stay! There were definitely ups and downs, but overall I enjoyed it a lot!
We left on Saturday morning and drove about three hours to the town of Boujaad. We met with a local NGO there doing major development work in the town and the surrounding villages. They’re actually doing a lot with youth engagement so I’m going to contact them again to chat about our project in Sierra Leone and what advice we can get from them. After meeting with the NGO we headed to the village! It’s located in the Middle Atlas Mountains, really beautiful rolling foothill/small mountains- absolutely gorgeous. We got out from the bus and waited for our families to come pick us up. My mom came to get me- very elderly woman, very hard to understand her Darija, but she was great. We walked through the fields up to the top of one hill where my house was. The houses are mud brick houses. There are a few rooms built off a little open courtyard area, then outside the courtyard gate there is the enclosure for the sheep and goats, another for the chickens, turkeys, and pheasants, and also the room for the donkey.
In my family there was my very elderly mother, Rahbia, her daughter, Haddou, and her two sons Aziz and Mustafa. Haddou had a five year old son, Omar. All of our families in the village were somehow affected by migration. Aziz worked most of the year in Casablanca building houses and Mustafa lived in Valencia, Spain December through August building houses. Because of the money coming into this community from the migrants, most houses had electricity- solar power now, but soon electricity from the main station will be coming in, some houses had running water, and in mine we always had cookies or yogurt from the town. Of course this was surprising as we were all expecting to be living without any of these things.
When I first got there my mom made mint tea and we sat for a while in one of the rooms. The two living rooms were just a room with some tied carpets laid on the floor and then you sat with a pillow behind your back. At night they laid down a few blankets for extra padding. So I had some tea and homemade cookies. We weren’t supposed to drink any of the water since it was well water, but boiled tea was fine, which is a good thing because they make you drink so much tea! After drinking tea I just sat around and played with Omar. He appears cute at first, but really is the most ill-behaved child I have ever met! I’m quite disappointed because I hardly took any pictures while I was there because Omar would have an enormous tantrum each time I even went near my bag- my bag which had to be set on top of the highest cabinet out of his reach so he didn’t go through the entire thing! He was fun to play with, but he was so exhausting and just threw fit after fit when he didn’t get his way. I just kept reminding myself that I had two sweet sisters to return to in Rabat! For dinner we had harira. After eating I went walking with my mom and Omar up another hill to sit in the olive tree field. It was so beautiful and peaceful, especially right before sunset! After our walk we came back and sat for a bit then went to bed. I slept fairly well for being on such a hard surface. Unfortunately, I woke up about 3am and was SO sick! It was absolutely awful! Luckily my mom and sister took such great care of me. I felt bad because they stayed up and sat with me all night. They were saying a lot, but I could only understand when they felt my skin and said “she’s hot.” They also poked and prodded my stomach a lot, but it was actually really nice and an interesting experience to be cared for by these village women. Because I was so sick I pretty much spent most of Sunday laying in bed, it was okay though because my mom did the same thing! I did gather the strength to go get water with my sister. We walked, with the donkey carrying the water jugs, about 15 minutes to the well- a five foot across hole built with stones, completely open to the air. I watched Omar spit and through trash into the well and I can’t imagine he’s the only one, not to mention all of the donkeys, dogs, and wild animals passing by everyday. It was a tremendous show of strength on the part of my sister! Pulling water up from the well was SO difficult and she just did it like it was no big deal, it was amazing. The village women really were all SO strong, it was astounding! I guess they don’t really have a choice when so many of the men are leaving to work elsewhere in Morocco or abroad. That was the other thing I did on Sunday- we had an organized conversation between us and the village people. Basically we gathered in this little building and had a few hours to just ask questions back and forth, about life in the village or America, or migration, or whatever we wanted, with Badr, our program assistant, translating. It was really interesting! We talked about everything from village life and politics, the American school system, the impact of migration on the village, and of course the U.S. election!
Although I really didn’t do that much, I really did enjoy the village stay. The other program has a week-long stay which would have been great, as two days is really not long enough. At the time of course I didn’t want to stay since I was miserably sick, but if I hadn’t been sick a week would have been wonderful! It was definitely an experience that is rare to come by and I tried to seize it as much as I could. I even enjoyed just laying with my mom for so long, there was nothing I could have done to change the situation so I just enjoyed the time to relax!
I am so happy to be back with my family in Rabat! No more pesky Omar! I really love my family here and miss them so much when we have excursions. It will be really hard to leave them in December. It’s crazy because we only have three weeks of classes left, including this week! Then we have a week-long excursion to Spain, following the migration route. Then four weeks for our independent study projects, a week to present them in Rabat, then I come home! It doesn’t seem like very long, but really I have so much left to experience! Everyday brings new things. I try to write about and remember as much as I can! I have to go write my account of the homestay experience in Darija!
So I thought avocado milk was the absolute bottom…oh no, it gets worse! Buttermilk!!!!!!! We had it last Friday with Friday couscous and my mom assured me it wasn’t milk since she knows that I don’t drink milk, so she poured me a glass. I took one tiny little sip and was pretty much in shock! it was terrible! and now I know what my great grandmother enjoyed so much everyday for all those years!!
Here are a few pictures of the henna I got done. I took them with my computer’s camera so I could post them!
Mubarek l-eid! I just had an exhausting session of teaching my sisters the names of fingers in English. “Ring Finger” was particularly difficult, but we had so much fun and now they won’t stop saying them. I didn’t know the name for the finger between index and ring finger so they just say, “thumb, index, don’t know, ring finger, pinky.” They love learning English and I really don’t mind since I am learning incredible amounts of English from them! I keep thinking about how my Darija translates to them and how completely ridiculous I probably sound to them! We also had a great yoga/stretching session! I taught them lots of great moves! It made me miss the gym back home a lot! Some people have joined a local gym here, but I know I am nowhere near motivated enough to actually work out during my semester abroad! Yeah right…I’ll just come home and work off all of the bread! I don’t know if I’ve made this clear, but we literally use bread as our utensils! If we have a tajine (stew cooked in a special dish) we each have a piece of bread and break chunks off and scoop up stew from the communal dish. We also are guaranteed to have bread at breakfast, usually either with Laughing Cow cheese or Nutella! Except the Nutella recently ran out and now we have something a little different, not nearly as delicious as Nutella, but still chocolatey sweets for breakfast!
I guess that brings me to the beginning of Eid today. We got to sleep in and woke up around 9:30. We had a breakfast of mint tea, bread with chocolatey spread, this layered fried bread called r’geef, pancake like things soaked in sugary sauce, and a plate full of cookies! We had a few random neighbors and friends come visit briefly during the morning and my mom went over to the neighbors for a bit. Then we had lunch- another interesting meal! It was an olive tajine- so basically green olives, preserved lemons, some sort of meat, in an olivey sauce. The tajine was topped with a huge pile of…French fries! And of course we ate this with bread! Oh and can’t forget the Coca Cola! Then apples for dessert! After lunch we just hung out, I went out for a bit, then came back for another meal. This was another cookies and bread meal similar to breakfast. After eating we had yoga and English lessons. We laughed A LOT!!! It was great bonding time with them! After that we ate our final meal of cream of wheat, dates, shebbekiah, and bread. Now we’re just getting ready to go to bed. It was a great holiday, lots of time to bond with my family!
Tonight is the last night of fasting! I’d never had Cream of Wheat until I came here- that’s what we had for dinner tonight in place of harira! Of course there’s tons of sugar in it so it’s nice and sweet! I don’t think I’ve ever had so much sugar in my life! The regular Coke (in a glass bottle meaning it has real sugar!) we have every night with our 11pm meal doesn’t even taste sweet to me anymore! Tomorrow is the Eid, which is the end of Ramadan and a day of feasting! I guess in the morning there will be all sorts of goodies for breakfast and then there will be a few meals scattered throughout the day. It should be fun. I really like my family because it’s so small so we have nice small celebrations together. I know this because recently it was the “Night of Destiny.” This is the night that the Q’uran was revealed to the Prophet, thus it is a night of celebration. The first thing my mom did was spread incense throughout the house; the smell was so delicious! Then my sisters and I put on makeup…well, I put makeup on my sisters and then did myself…well, I put it on them tastefully and then they added about ten times more intensity so they looked pretty done up! It’s interesting, at birthdays I think they get all made up and then sit in these special chairs wearing what looks like adult clothing that just flows all the way down the chair to the floor. I’m really not sure the reasons behind this, but they make for interesting pictures of miniature, eight year old adults! After we got all made up we just danced, the three of us, around our living room for about an hour. It was crazy! After completely exhausting ourselves we collapsed on the couch and took silly-face pictures with my camera. We look pretty ridiculous, especially since we’re all sweaty and red-faced from dancing! I’m really excited to have those pictures to look back and remind me of them! After that we ate a couscous dinner and went to bed. Like I said, fun, but nice and low-key!
The next day we continued the festivities by going and getting henna done! We went to this little square right outside of the gardens where a bunch of women just sit and do henna for people. There were two women sitting on the first tier of these mini gardens and then another group sitting up a little higher behind us. I have no idea what it was about, but after finishing one of my sister’s henna and starting mine our henna woman ran over to the women behind us and was fighting with them. By fighting I mean pulling hair, spitting, and fully forcing their bodies against each other. Our woman would calm down a little and come back and do more of my henna, while still yelling at the others and shaking with anger, then she would run back into the fight. At one point my mom was seriously holding her back with all of her strength. I was worried my mom was going to accidently get pulled into it! There were a few police officers trying to calm everyone down! It was CRAZY! I guess during Ramadan tensions get really high during the afternoons because everyone is fasting and, like I said, I have no idea what their fight was about! I’m just lucky I escaped with beautiful henna and didn’t get stabbed by the henna tool or get henna spilled all over me! It was quite the experience! I was worried I was going to get smacked by the girl because at a few points I just couldn’t help but laugh because it was just so crazy! Like I said, though, we all escaped safely!
That was about it for the Night of Destiny celebrations, but I will have more after tomorrow’s Eid! I don’t think I have ever watched as many American movies as I am now! Maybe it’s just because so many of them are so obscure! I have watched a couple good ones, like Silkwood and Kramer vs. Kramer! Meryl Streep is so great! We do have CNN International at home, which means on Thursday I get to watch the VP debate! Hooray! I told my sister that I HAD to stay up and watch it! Luckily we have a little vacation because of Eid so we don’t have class again until Wednesday! There’s no class this Wednesday through Friday because of Eid. Then we have an excursion this weekend! We’re going into the Middle Atlas Mountains for our village stay and an NGO visit! I’m SO excited about the village stay! It’s only 2 nights, but it should be so great! No electricity, no running water, ONLY Darija, what could be better?? Sunday we have the entire day with our families and we just do whatever they do. It should be really interesting, of course I’ll tell you all about it! We’re also visiting an organization called Friends and Family of Victims of Clandestine Migration. They help migrants traveling under the radar through Morocco, mostly from Sub-Saharan Africa. This organization is a potential site for my internship for my independent study project! We’ll see!
This week we started new classes. We finished two sections of the seminar: Migration and the Mediterranean Space and Migration and Cultural Dynamics. Now we are starting Migration and Human Rights and Migration and Development. We’re talking a lot about Sub-Saharan African migrants and the human rights issues surrounding them, so I’m really enjoying these new sections! I should be getting a lot more specific about what my independent study project will be soon!
More on tomorrow’s Eid coming!
