New Projects

Remember how, many moons ago, I mentioned that our assigned workspace was closed?  And how we were filling the days trying to integrate into our community?  Well, that's been fun, but it's also been a little boring and little "what's-the-point-of-being-here-if-we-aren't-doing-anything?"-inducing.  Especially since the center is still closed.

So we decided to take action.  About three months ago, I had my first conversation with a Moroccan friend regarding an excellent film on girl's eduction and my desire to show the film at our local Dar Taliba.  The Dar Taliba is like a dorm for female students who are from the mountain villages around our town.  Since their small towns don't have a junior high or high school, they move to our town during the week to attend classes and then return home on the weekends.  My friend, Sana, thought it was a great idea.  For the past few months, we've been working on getting permission from local authorities to work at the Dar Taliba.  It's the same in the US: you can't just show up at any junior high and say, "Hey!  I wanna do a project here!  Let me into the classrooms!"  But it takes a little longer to get the ball rolling here.  Sana has been a great help, and I couldn't do it without her translation skills (she speaks perfect English) and sense of humor.

My friend, Sana, and I in a picture that captures our relationship well.

This past week, we visited the Dar Taliba to meet with the girls for the first time.  I introduced myself (in English and Darija), and we showed one chapter of the film.  I was mega-nervous.  My Darija is pretty terrible, and I wasn't sure how the a group of thirty girls, ages 10 to 20, would react to me.  But, after the film and a short discussion, a few girls were eager to introduce themselves and practice their English.  "Hi!  My name is Hadija," one girl said after raising her hand. "I'm sixteen years old.  And I love you!"  My nerves melted away.  These girls are cool.  I plan to go back a few times a week to help them with their English homework.  And, once a week, Sana will help me show one more chapter of the film and engage the girls in a conversation about the importance of girl's education.

I've also enlisted the help of fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Sarah, who's done wonders with the artisans in her nearby town.  She came to visit us last week to help us chat with local women are engaged in artistic endeavors.  Through world of mouth, we found our way to the headquarters of Couscous Omnia, a local couscous co-op run by a small group of women, all widows and divorcees.  The women meet daily to make couscous by hand.  We chatted with them a bit about their goals (sell more couscous!) and how their co-op works.  Project one: I'll be lugging 30 kilos (did you catch that? I'm learning the metric system!) of couscous with me to a Peace Corps Thanksgiving gathering this week in hopes of selling it on behalf of the co-op. 

Hey girl, thanks for all of your help!

Tell me:  how is it possible that I live down the street
from a couscous co-op and never knew it??

In addition to the fabulous couscous ladies, I also met Fatima, the most famous carpet weaver in town.  Her rugs are handwoven with wool that she dyes herself, and she determines the size by the length of her forearm ("This rug is 5 arms by 3 arms," she said, crawling down on the floor to demonstrate.  "I can make bigger and smaller, whatever you want.  Just tell me how many arms.").  Each rug takes between one and two months to make depending on the size and intricacy of her design.  I'm already imaging what sort of rug I might commission from her to take back home to the US.  You can see more images of her work at the brand new (still under construction!)  Facebook page for Zarabi Art (Zarabi means rug in Arabic, and Fatima's lovely daughter helped us come up with the name).

Just one of many. What an artist!

Fatima (my friend), me, and Fatima (the rug weaver).
For fun, we pluralize their names and just call them "Fatimat."

Like the gals at Couscous Omnia, Fatima would like to sell more carpets.  Currently, all parties sell to groups of tourists that come through town.  This means their sales are inconsistent at best, and they have limited exposure to outside markets.  Wait, are you catching all this fancy business talk?  I'm really putting my MBA, err, I mean, my MA in the sociology of religion to use.  Sarah assures me that simply knowing how to use the internet and balance a checkbook is enough to make me a knowledgeable teacher of business skills.  We'll just see how that plays out.  In the meantime, a blog post Sarah wrote about the artisans in Amizmiz has already garnered the attention of prospective buyers, so my crash course in Business 101 just moved up in priority!

Pete is staying busy as well.  In addition to carting around couscous and measuring rugs, he's doing most of the lesson planning for our English classes.  Our classes meet between two and three times a week depending on a plethora of factors outside of our control.  Our English students are our closest friends here, and spending time with them both in and out of class is a treat.

As I read over this post, I realize the title might as well be "New Friends," not "New Projects."  A lot of things haven't worked in our favor since we arrived, namely our assigned work space being closed.  But friends?  That's something we are not lacking.  

Language Learning

It was a warm October day when we told our ESL students in Fort Worth, a collection of refugees from around the world, that we would be leaving the following January to serve as Peace Corps volunteers in Morocco.  "We'll be learning Arabic and then teaching English," we explained with excitement.  Our Iraqi students chucked in amusement.  "Morocco?! You won't be learning Arabic.  Not any sort of Arabic anyone else can understand, anyway."   

When we arrived, we jumped into learning Moroccan Arabic, sometimes called Darija (which just sort of means colloquial Arabic), different from the Arabic you might hear in Egypt or read in a newspaper.  In fact, all those forms of Arabic are different.  Newspapers and official documents are written in Modern Standard Arabic, though that language isn't really spoken in daily life.   Moroccan Arabic, on the other hand, is pretty much completely oral.  It is not written nor is it formally taught in schools.  Moroccans we know frequently watch TV in Egyptian Arabic, a dialect they understand but may not  be able to speak fluently.  It's a jumble of worlds and letters and sounds, and I'm still trying to understand this big, complicated world.

A complicated world, but also a lovely one.  Our town, looking fine.

Moroccans we know may watch TV in Egyptian Arabic, speak Moroccan Arabic, and write in Modern Standard Arabic, but that's not where their language skills stop.  Students diligently study French in school.  When we are out in public, most people assume we are French tourists and pepper us with "Bonjour"s" and "Ca va?"s.  I didn't mind it at first --- it's sort of fun to have people think you are European!--- but it's started to get old.  In addition, a lot of young adults are learning English by watching TV.

My friends, if only the language story stopped here.  You could imagine Pete and I madly studying Arabic script, engaging in simple conversations with friends that become more complicated as our language skills improve, and charming people with our language blunders.   See the video below and watch for yourself as my friend tries to teach me how to pronounce the Moroccan Arabic words for "roof," "rain," and "dance."

Instead, we arrived in our town and slowly realized that people seemed to be speaking something different than what we had been studying.  As it turns out, our community is a Amazigh community (also known as Berber), and the people here speak Tashelhit, not Moroccan Arabic.  While a majority of people also speak Darija, elders in the community frequently only speak Tashelhit.  Tashelhit is the preferred language in people's homes, so when we visit a family for lunch we usually don't have a clue what they are talking about.  If you want to hear a few words in Tashelhit, take a look at this helpful site.

Peace Corps has been as helpful as possible.  In August, we travelled down to Ouarzazate along with about 50 other volunteers for a 10-day intensive language training in Amazigh languages.  We've picked up enough Tashelhit to understand when we hear people say things like, "How are you?" or "What are you doing?"  I can also charm people by saying "arrgazinu," which means "my husband," and pointing to Pete.  Or "ymik," which means, "a little," when people ask if we speak Tashehit.  One of my favorites to throw out is, "ur sng walu."  That means, "I don't know anything," and it usually makes people laugh and then leave me alone.

The Amazigh Alphabet

Not too long ago, Morocco declared the Amazigh language one of the official languages of Morocco.  Because the language has such distinct dialects by region (the Tashelhit spoken in our town is different from the Riff spoken in the north and the Tamazigh spoken in the east, but they are all part of the same language family), folks have been working on creating one standardized language.  From how I understand it, this official language is sort of like Modern Standard Arabic: something to be used for writing and for formal purposes, but a language that differs from how people actually speak.  Language in Morocco is a diverse, complicated story, and our experiences are just a sliver of all that is out there.

At this point, I don't expect to be fluent in either Moroccan Arabic or Tashelhit by the time we are finished here.  But I do feel that our efforts are appreciated, and I'm grateful for that.  Our friends are patient and generous with us, and we try to be the same with ourselves.

Wedding Season

In my former life I was a wedding coordinator, and it’s fair to say that I’ve seen over 200, maybe closer to 300, weddings.  Glowing brides dressed in white, nervous grooms, pushy parents, and many, many unity candles.  I did not attend the receptions; I was merely the agent that held open doors, dismissed bridesmaids, and made sure that the bride and her father made it down the aisle.  And I’ve got stories to last a lifetime.  Like the time the groom and all the groomsmen were stuck in an elevator at a fancy downtown hotel.  Or the time a bride ripped her dress right down the back and my fabulous intern sewed her right into it (“I’m an airline pilot,” the bride said.  “If I can fly to Europe without going to the restroom, I can make it through this night.” Rockstar).  Or the multiple times that brides tried to convince me that a Kelly Clarkson song counted as “sacred, traditional music” required by our chapel rules. 

But nothing prepared me for weddings in Morocco.  It’s been said that the best way for a Peace Corps Volunteer to survive a Moroccan wedding is to simply not go to a Moroccan wedding.  That sounds mean, and I don’t want to disrespect Moroccan culture.  But as an outsider, Moroccan weddings are difficult: I can’t understand what is happening, they start late in the evening and continue until dawn, and people make me dance all night—making me feel like a monkey performing in a circus.  By 3 am, my body is spent and my brain is mush, but the party continues. Plus, gender rules require Pete and I to be separated from the moment we arrive, so I don’t have anyone to make jokes/commiserate with through the evening.

Typical wedding garb: a Moroccan Kaftan

By the time I see a bride on her wedding day, she has spent the past few days getting pampered.  She’s been to the hammam (public bath) with her female friends and relatives, and she’s also had beautiful henna drawn on her hands and feet (though sometimes this is done at the wedding).  During the wedding night, guests typically eat a two-course meal late in the evening, around 10pm, of wedding chicken (fried and delicious) and then a beef and prune tagine.  Then, for the rest of the night, a band plays loud, traditional music, females dance together, and the bride changes her outfit up to seven times.  Sometimes the bride and groom are together, and frequently she is on display alone.

At least they don't put me in one of these.

Once, I had to the chance to see exactly where that beef and prune tagine came from.  The day before a large wedding with some 500 guests, a local family slaughtered a cow in the neighborhood streets.  Women gathered in the streets to sing as the cow was killed.  By watching the video below, you can see the singing, the chanting, and the death of the wedding dinner.  If you are uncomfortable with seeing a cow die (it’s not up close, but you can still see some blood and, um, chopping), don’t watch; just listen to the women chant in thanksgiving to God.

Another time, our host mother called us over to talk about taking a trip to another city to see our host cousin, who had gotten married the weekend before.   We would leave the next day.  I felt bad about missing our cousin’s wedding, so it seemed worth the 3-hour trip to see her in her new house.  When we arrived, we were soon served wedding chicken and then a beef and prune tagine.  There were lots of people there, and more trickling in by the hour.  I started to feel suspicious.  Then, I was dressed in a caftan.  Slowly it dawned on me: we were at a wedding, this one for the groom’s family to see.  TRICKED.  Peter and I spent the evening apart, and I was forced to dance and dance and dance.  By 3 am, I was exhausted.   By 4 am, I realized my host mother had no plans for resting.  By 5 am, I realized that the time had changed and it was actually still 4 am and our host mother planned on keeping us awake all night and then catching a 7 am bus back home to our town.  The music played through the morning hours, and I shuffled my feet with women who pulled me up by my tired arms to dance with them.   I wish I had the language skills to say, “I feel like you tricked us into coming to a wedding and staying awake all night,” but instead I played the part of obedient host-daughter-monkey on the longest night of the year.

Dressed up in someone's kaftan and someone else's Sahara headpiece.
 And dancing, always dancing.

Next time we receive a wedding invitation, I have a new excuse: I don’t like to go to weddings because I feel like people pay more attention to me than to the bride, and that just isn’t right.   When we show up at weddings, we are a novelty.  People want to dress me up and take their picture with me.  It’s exhausting for me, and it’s unfair to the actual woman who should be celebrated that day.  Besides, I’ve seen enough weddings to last me a long, long time.