Tuesday, December 31, 2013

A very German Christmas

People warned us that if we weren't intentional about celebrating Christmas, everyday life in Morocco can make it seem as if Christmas doesn't even really happen.  Not wanting to miss out on Christmas goodies---- and, at the same time, wanting to take advantage of our close proximity to Europe--- we spent Christmas in Germany with good family friends.  We are incredibly grateful to the Mann family for their love, their home, their food, and their hospitality. 

What have we always said is the most important thing?  Family.  And breakfast.
Ursula and Klaus picked us up at the airport with a "Welcome Pete and Britt!" sign and had a champagne toast waiting for us at the house.  That's just where the hospitality began.  The next day, as Ursula whipped up a delicious feast (including many pork-related treats that are hard to come by in Morocco) while Klaus took us on a tour of a nearby mountain, castle, and Roman bath ruins

Pete and Klaus explore the castle.


 
The view from the mountain.  Past the Black Forest you can see the Alps!
 
Klaus is a very good tour guide.
The next day, we took a trip into Frieburg to check out the local Christmas Markets and to exlore the beautiful Munster Cathedral.   Six years ago, I came to visit Ursula, Klaus, and their son, Ramon, and I spent most of my time in Freiburg with Ramon.  It was fun to be reacquainted with the city.



Just as lovely as I remembered it.


By Christmas Eve, the whole family was together.  We enjoyed a feast of raclette, opened presents together, and made our way to midnight mass (thankfully, at the reasonable hour of 10pm).  Pete and I felt so lucky to be part of the family on this special holiday. 

Henna is still going strong!

 
Ramon and grandma, looking adorable.

Typical Christmas scene.

The ladies sporting their artisan-made Moroccan scarves from Zajal Designs!

All in all, if we had to be away from our families, there was no better way to do it.  Being in Germany with these wonderful people made Christmas feel just as it should: a season full of love and joy, peace and hope.   We hope yours was just as lovely.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to our favorite Germans!




Saturday, December 21, 2013

Henna Party

In a few short hours, we will leave Morocco and head north.  For Christmas, we're trading couscous and tagine for brats and spaetzle, and we're excited to have the opportunity to spend the holidays with some of our favorite Germans.

In true Moroccan fashion, no big trip out of town is complete without a henna session.  So last night, me and the girls gathered and covered our hands in pretty designs.  This isn't my first round of henna, and it certainly won't be my last.  Plus, this time, even Pete got to get in on the action a bit.

A sample of henna: circa Halloween 2013

Henna application is a laborious process.  First, you have to sit still while the henna artist draws designs swiftly across the tops and the palms of your hand.  Then, after the henna dries a bit, someone else takes cotton and dabs an oily blend of olive oil, garlic, and lemon juice all over your hands.  This is supposed to help bring out the henna's best colors, I think, plus it makes you smell like pizza (which I'm all for).  After a while, the wet, semi-sticky henna is covered in cotton (this time, from cotton padding ripped right out of a diaper).  Next, it's best to slip socks over your hands---- this ensures that you will look like an insane person while you comfortably sleep all night and let the henna soak into your skin.  


Sock hands!
And pudding cups---- when frozen, it almost tastes like ice cream.

The next morning is the hardest part.  Squatting over the turkish toilet (it's easiest to clean up all the henna crumbles this way, I promise), you have to rub the dried henna off of your hands and arms.  In some places, it scrubs off fairly easily.  In other spots, it's sort of like pulling a sticker off of your arm--- a sticker that is caught on every single little arm hair. 

But the final result is lovely and vibrant, and the henna usually lasts about 2 weeks.  Check out some photos from our holiday henna party.  Note the pro-Raja henna---- there's a big soccer game tomorrow!






As Christmas approaches, I hope you are able to make time for whatever rituals help best get you into the holiday spirit.  Watching It's a Wonderful Life?  Chain-eating Candy Canes?  Playing Sufjan's Christmas album on repeat?  Gathering up the ones you love and swapping stories over cranberry nut bread?  Do it, do it all, and know that we miss you.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Outdoors-ing in Morocco

It was during our two-year stint in Berkeley, CA that our love for hiking really blossomed. The redwoods were practically in our backyard, and we took advantage of all the regional, state, and national parks that dot Northern California.  After a super-fun summer family vacation to Grand Teton National park, I decided to audit an undergraduate environmental biology class at Cal Berkeley (because grad school just isn't busy enough).  Honestly, the professor spent more time chatting about the protests over public school funding that were raging across campus that year than he spent lecturing about watersheds and carbon footprints, but I was still smitten.  Leaves! Bovines! Nature!  A welcome break from Durkheim, Weber, and my other sociology of religion friends (whom I still adore, but sometimes it's more fun to read about insects).  Once we were back in Texas, I enrolled in the Cross Timbers Master Naturalist program and eventually earned my official certification.  Pete and I pulled invasive species from local parks on the weekends (why oh why do people insist on planting privet?!), and I got to do fun things like lead wildflower hikes for families during the Fort Worth Prairie Fest.


One of many trees we've hugged.
I've provided this background information so that you can fully understand how elated we are to be living where we live in Morocco.  Our little town of 12,000 is nestled in the foothills of the High Atlas Mountains, and there are plenty of trails criss-crossing the area.  Sure, it was 110 degrees in the summer and we hid in our home whilst binging on television and young-adult fiction.  But those days are behind us, and the season of exploring the outdoors is here!

About once a week, Pete and I hike up to a place called Tizikhoran.  I don't know what that means, I just know that it's a 40-minute hike that provides a lovely bird's eye view of our town.  There are logs to sit on, shade-a-plenty, and giant yucca plants.  




This fall, our English class has also been eager to hike up into the mountains.  A few weeks ago, we hiked up to Ait Ourit, a place we've visited before.  The hike takes about two hours, and we did it with backpacks full of vegetables, soda, snacks, and a tagine and a teapot.  We filled the afternoon with games, food, and music (turning anything and everything into a drum).




No Moroccan outing is complete without tea!
Trekking home after sunset.

This past weekend, we headed into the mountains again with our English students.  And, just this week, we showed off the hiking trails to our good friends Sarah and Mustapha (she took a lot of great photos, so be sure and check out her blog!).  Seriously, we just can't get enough of the outdoors now that the weather is cool and crisp.

Hiking with some of my favorite English students.
They understand my terrible Darija better than most.

Headed for the mountains.

Firdous diligently watches over the snacks.

Pete and Khalid take in the view from the top.

I feel like I end nearly every blog this way, but I'm going to say it again: this is not easy.  Living in a new place, learning a new language, waiting for our workspace to open, and adjusting to new expectations--- these are hard things.  But having mountains and having friends helps, and we are grateful for all the time we get to spend with people and in the outdoors.

Who needs a fancy toddler backpack?  Malika shows us how it's done.





Monday, December 9, 2013

Make Your Own Fun

Thanksgiving came last week and like most of the world, we found ourselves in the race for second place. This is what the all-time undefeated Turkey Day world champions were up to:
Defending their title in the bouncy castle.

But luckily for us, Peace Corps Morocco staff threw a really nice get together, inviting all the volunteers in country to Rabat on the flimsy pretext of mandatory vaccinations, and since we were in the neck of the woods, a turkey dinner potluck for 200+ volunteers, staff and hangers-on.

We came up via train with our friend Sarah, backs nearly broken from hauling 30 kilos of couscous on behalf of the Omnia Women's Co-operative, which we sold in short order to some generous PCVs. I guess they had a Black Friday itch. 
Bombs away, Sarah.
Even in my most elemental element, I wilt at the prospect of trying to socialize with 200-odd people. Never mind that I only ever speak English to one person anymore, and she and I have developed our own cloistered twin-language, and we were already pretty weird to begin with. But I had fun, in part because I landed at a really good table full of serious eaters -first group through the line, and frequenters or the dessert table- and in part because I hid out in the lounge and looked at the free bookshelves any time it got too hot for me.
The food was a surprisingly good mash-up of classic American and Moroccan dishes (though no actual mashed potatoes, to my great sadness). Couscous works well for soaking up turkey juice and cranberry sauce.

The next day we got our shots, three shots for me in fact, and caught a bus with our PCV friends Leah and Carly to Carly's site, a tiny town between Ouazzane (which Carly ironically calls "Land of Dreams") and Chefchaouen (which she earnestly calls "Land of Dreams"). 

There, we did typical PCV things like eat stuff from Carly's care packages, watch movies and youtube videos, play games at the Dar Chabab and walk around in the pretty countryside. We also took advantage of our Jewish contingent (and us, the Judaism enthusiasts) to celebrate Hanukkah.
Carly and Leah sang prayers in Hebrew.
We ate delicious latkes and applesauce, with plain yogurt subbing for sour cream.
That's a Frisbee Menorah. The world's first?
Carly's site is out of control pretty.
Looks an awful lot like northern California
At the Dar Chabab. The guy in the middle kept slapping our legs in this hilarious game/Three Stooges sketch.
After that we headed to to Chefchaouen, which we knew of only as the funky city with the blue and white medina and a heavy Rasta influence. The guidebooks have oversold those aspects. Yes, there's blue everywhere, and yes our waiter tried to sell us drugs at the dinner table. But Chefchaouen's real charm comes from the dramatic green mountains it's nestled against; the cleanliness of the streets and low-key hassling of tourists; the incredible fact of the presence of goat cheese. We were dazzled. Our new favorite city in Morocco.

A taxi to a bus to a train to a taxi to a bus later we were back in site, getting ready to teach an English class. Homesickness is pretty much a fact of daily life for us here is Morocco: we got a good home waiting for us back in the U.S. Thanksgiving and the holiday weekend, though? We made our own fun. No time to be homesick when you're too busy getting motion sick.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

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.  

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

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.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

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.