Well, I was hoping to write real blog entries about my time in Morocco so far, but since I am clearly failing at that I will just list some of the highlights for now. Hopefully I will eventually get to write full entries for some of the bigger things. I have been keeping up a list of things to blog about eventually, so for the most part I will just post that, but I will flesh it out a little bit to make it more interesting than just a list. Since I just wrote it as I thought of things to write about, it does not follow the most logical order, but I think I am going to stick with it. My last post ended with my arrival in Meknes, so I am very far behind. I will pick up now with the short version of my life since this point, and yes, I am aware of how long the short version is. And now that I wrote it all, I am going to take out three things and give them their own posts so I apologize if there is any discontinuity because I don’t have time to read through and fix stuff. On to the update:
-My family: I already mentioned a little about Majda, my host mom, and Mamoun, my 10 y/o (about to be 11) host brother. Also in the home are Mustafa, my host dad, Amin, another host brother, and Amina and Aziza, the two girls who live here and cook and clean for the family. Mustafa is a surgeon and Majda is a nurse, so they are the unofficial ISA medical team. If I get sick, I am in good hands! Amin is Mustafa’s son from a previous marriage. He is much older than Mamoun, is blind, and is a music teacher. He will also be getting married in April (to Majda’s sister) and Michelina and I get to dress up for the wedding! Amina and Aziza are both around the same age as Michelina and me and are a lot of fun, even though we can barely communicate with them. It was weird for Michelina to get used to having them here, but my family in Costa Rica had Rosa, and the dynamic of it there was kind of bad while here it is great, so I am happy about that. Life at home can be kind of crazy, but I love it! Mamoun has endless energy and there are always people over for tea and/or dinner.
-Getting lost and finding my way: Michelina and I got lost a few times in our first couple of days here, and then I got lost a few more times on my own after she got sick (more on that in a bit). The streets here are not all in a grid like we are used to, so we got turned around a lot. It also didn’t help that the ISA director who showed us all how to get home from school is new and didn’t know where the homestay was! By now, I think I have the hang of it, but I am still not always sure exactly which way is the quickest to get somewhere, but at least I (usually) know where I am. Of course, this only applies to the little part of our neighborhood and small bit of two others in Meknes. My neighborhood is called the Ville Nouvelle or Hamria. It is the new part of the city. In contrast is the Medina, which is the old city. Every big city in Morocco seems to have a European style Ville Nouvelle and an old Moroccan style Medina. Nowadays, Medinas are mostly filled with shops selling things ranging from artisanal items to produce to meat. The streets turn and wind all over the place, so I only know how to properly navigate a few parts of ours. The other neighborhood I kind of know is Zitoun, which is where my university is located.
-Classes, Moulay Ismail University, grande taxis: While here, I am taking Beginning Arabic 1 and 2, two content classes (Three Religions, Three Peoples, and Peace and Conflict Resolution), as well as a short 5 week course on the local Moroccan Arabic dialect of Darija. They are all interesting and I am enjoying them, even though there are the occasional misunderstandings and bumps in adapting Moroccan teaching styles to work with American students. The university itself is very nice. It is a small campus, especially compared to UCSD, but there are always students around so I often run into people I know there. Also, students here will go to the campus to hang out even when they don’t have class. Students who have already graduated will even come hang out on campus with their friends. Lastly, the options to get to school include walking, busing, petit taxis, or grande taxis. The walk is about 45 minutes and is along a big road so the air is very dusty. Since I already have some issues from my allergies which hit me as strong as they do at home, I don’t walk very often due to the dirt in the air. I took the bus once with my friend, Nita, and a Moroccan student who we met at the taxi stand. There were no taxis and we were late so we took the bus through all sorts of parts of Mkenes that we had never seen. It takes a while a costs more than the grande taxi though, so I haven’t done it again since. Petit taxis work like our taxis, except they only hold 3 people and will sometimes pick up other people so that they have 3, but only if you are all going in the same direction. Now, grande taxis. They are all big Mercedes Benz cars that, by our standards, hold 5 people. Here, they hold 7: the driver and 6 passengers. They work kind of like shuttles, so they taxis wait in certain places and you find one going the route you want. I take the one from Hamria (the neighborhood I live in) to Zitoun (the neighborhood where the university is). The taxi waits until 6 people are crammed in and then starts driving to its destination. However, you can ask the driver to stop anywhere along the way, and if there is room, you can flag one down and get in along the way too. They took some getting used to, but now I just think they are very useful.
-Tour of Meknes: We drove and walked around, but I forgot to charge my camera before it so I didn’t get to take any pictures. We saw a gate in the medina (old part of the city), the old grainery, the mausoleum, and some great views of Meknes. I don’t have much to say about it because as interesting as it was then, the rest of Meknes that I actually live in is more interesting to me now :)
-Sounds guys make at girls on the streets: AKA street harassment, but honestly, nothing said to me here is as bad as the stuff I hear at home. The theory behind this is that all good Moroccan girls are at home at night, so if a guy wants to hit on her, he has to do it during the day and on the streets because the good girls will not be in the bars or clubs at night. Basically, imagine how guys act in bars and clubs at night and put them on the street during all hours. However, most of what they say here is a lot nicer and more complementary than what they say at home. Mostly I just get welcomed to Morocco and told how beautiful I am in multiple languages, with them hoping I’ll respond to one. The only thing here is how much more persistent some of them can be, and how much more often it happens. Sometimes we get followed for blocks or by cars, and I can’t walk more than 10 feet out of my house without guys making calls or saying things, but I have practice blocking them out from when it happens at home. What I find amusing is that the guys here use the same sound as the guys in Costa Rica to get female attention: Psssst, psssst, pssst!
-Jedi robes: So, there are these things called jellabas that people here wear a lot. They come in all sorts of colors and patterns, and both men and women wear them. I even bought a fleece one to wear in the house because electricity in expensive so they don’t really use any sort of heaters. Not only are the fleece ones super comfortable and warm, but they look like Jedi robes. Actually, they all look like Jedi robes, just some look like fancy ones. I still find myself secretly smiling at all the Jedi walking around Morocco :)
-Couscous and shirtless belly dancing, talking about taking a belly dance class with Majda and watching “Whatever Lola Wants”: Most families in Morocco eat couscous every Friday for lunch, including the apartments where the other ISA students live. However, and I don’t know why this is, my family here doesn’t eat it every week, and not always on Friday when we do. I wrote this particular one down because it was the first time we had couscous and it was on a Saturday. Another of Mustapha’s sons came with his family, including his daughter, Selma, who was about 3 years old. We also had a mini-belly dance party that included a moment when Majda pulled off her sweater revealing nothing but her bra underneath. Being in a Muslim country where people are covered wrist to neck to ankle in public, this was very surprising for us! However, once she realized that people in other buildings would be able to see into our apartment she put her sweater back on. We then talked about (or thought we talked about) taking a dance class with Majda, but it turns out she just meant dancing in the house and taking a lesson from her. These are VERY fun, but dance classes here are not very structured so Heather, a girl in my program who belly dances at home, has been teaching some more technical classes for us too. We also watched the movie, “Whatever Lola Wants” which was fun because it is Majda’s favorite movie and it is about an American girl who goes to Egypt and learns to belly dance. It also features a song from a musical I have been in :)
-Wedding, seeing the Riad in the Medina: So as I already mentioned, my host brother, Amin, will be getting married in April! Today, Michelina and I bought takshidas (hope I remembered that right) for the wedding! I don’t really know how to describe them right now, so you’ll just have to wait for pictures. On my first Saturday here, the family went to see the Riad in the Medina where the wedding (or at least part of it because it didn’t seem big enough for a wedding) will be and I went with them. A Riad is a traditional style Moroccan house. They are very plain on the outside because in Islam you are not supposed to show signs of wealth. This means that most of the buildings in the Medina all look the same on the outside, but then the insides can be amazingly beautiful and used as guest houses or event spaces like the one we saw.
-Squatty Potties and Bum Guns: This topic may one day get its own entry, but for now this will have to do. If you don’t want to read a small description of my toilet adventures here, skip to the next part. So I knew coming here that a lot of places outside of the big cities have squatty potties instead of “Western” style toilets, AKA a porcelain hole in the ground with grooved places for your feet. Without going into details, I will just say that I am getting pretty good at using them and actually prefer them to disgustingly dirty public bathrooms with Western toilets. Turns out squatting is a lot easier than trying to hover over a dirty toilet seat! However, I did not expect to see a hose next to the toilet in my homestay and not a square of toilet paper to be seen. Majda showed us a very basic charade so that we knew what it was for, but we were still bewildered and nervous. The solution to this is not as interesting as with the squatters: we just buy toilet paper. However, we did use the hose the first night until we bought toilet paper, but no, I did not use it to the point of not being able to use my left hand for eating. Which, by the way, is only a loose rule here in the cities and only applies to the hand that reaches into the communal dish. Tearing bread and actually putting food in your mouth with either hand seems to be fine, at least in my house.
-Meals: Mealtime here is usually a very communal activity. Sometimes we all get our own plate of food to eat off of, but more often do not. For big meals when there are guests over, we start with mint tea or juice, and cookies. This is also what we have when guests come over who are not staying to eat a meal. After pre-dinner tea time is over, we move to the table and start with some salads and appetizer dip things. Khobs (bread) is central to most meals as it is often the main eating utensil. Salads are eaten with forks, but the other things are best eaten by scooping some up with a small piece of khobs. Using the index and middle finger to support the bread, you use your thumb to assist in the scooping process and make sure the food stays there until you get it to your mouth. After these are done, a large dish is brought out with the main course. Some people serve themselves a portion from the dish onto their plate, but others, like Majda, usually just eat off of the dish with a fork or their hands, both with and without some khobs. Sometimes it is like a feeding frenzy, but it is always a mini-adventure! After this comes dessert, which is usually fresh fruit. We used to have mostly oranges and bananas, but now we have started having more strawberries, and they are all delicious! At smaller meals, this is all just downsized a little, but there are usually the same number of courses involved.
-Communication via French, Arabic, Darija, English, Spanish, Italian, Charades: This started out with more charades than language, but with the help of Arabic and Darija classes plus some French tutoring at ISA and just picking up bits of language around the house, I am getting better at communicating with a nice variation of languages! Since I speak Spanish and Michelina speaks Italian, and both are similar to French and spoken by some people in Morocco, we are getting pretty adept at communicating with the people here. However, it is always an adventure, especially when trying to haggle in the Medina...
-Linguistics seems to be helping with the language stuff sometimes, especially with pronunciation since I am used to making sounds I don’t know. After some more time in Arabic class, this is confirmed. Or I just have a knack for languages. Apparently I set the record grade for the Arabic 1 midterm. Maybe I have a knack for languages that was then boosted by my study of linguistics?
-So cold I am wearing 3 pairs of pants right now. Update now that I am writing this: It is not that cold anymore. Once upon a time I wore 3 pairs of pants at night to keep warm while doing homework because they don’t use heaters in my house, unless company is over. Then I bought a fleece jellaba in Meknes’ color, olive green, that kept me nice and cozy. Now, it is getting to be springtime and is much warmer than it was before. Every now and then I still break out my fleecy, but for the most part, normal amounts of clothing are fine.
-Love it here Pretty self-explanatory :)
-On that note, kitchen dance party with Amina and Aziza after dinner was super fun
-Oh and that whole roommate sick with leptospirosis and malaria thing, mom visiting, etc. This has its own post now.
-I LOVE THE HAMMAM: This has its own post, too.
-Poetry Slam, Roxy: There was a poetry slam for Women’s Day at my university here because slam poet Roxy Azari is doing a Watson scholarship year of poetry workshops around the world. It was absolutely AMAZING. A lot of it was in English so we could understand it. The girls spoke about veiling (both wearing one and not wearing one), body image (“I love you body!”) and men (“I DON’T need a man!”) among other things. After the show, we talked to Roxy, who actually picked us out of the crowd as the Americans.
-The mysterious buzzing noise: There is a weird buzzing noise that seems to come from somewhere by the dining table, but we are not sure where and have no idea what causes it.
-I am studying abroad in Morocco and the most frustrating parts of my life have to do with Americans: I know it is cold, but please stop complaining about your heaters not working and just wear more clothes in your apartment. We do not use heaters in our apartment and we have been managing just fine. Electricity is expensive here so maybe this is a good time to try to ditch some of those American habits of consumption.
-Volunteer day: One of my professors partnered with ISA to plan this volunteer day. It was very last minute so we only had a couple days to figure out what we were doing. The basic plan was to donate goods to some Amazigh villages near Meknes, so we pooled money to buy food products and collected clothing and other goods from our group and the people we know here. We also partnered with some Moroccan girls (who happened to be mostly girls from the poetry slam) which made it a lot more fun! Michelina and I also invited our host brother, Mamoun, to come so that he could see how some other people live. When the day came, we loaded the bus with flour, sugar, tea, and rice, as well as bags and bags of other items to donate and some balls and coloring supplies we bought the day before. Daniel forgot the ISA camera so I became the official ISA photographer of the day. We drove to the first village with plenty of dancing and craziness on the bus. First we had tea and some snacks in one of the homes, and then we started distributing the goods and play with the kids. I was taking pictures the whole time so I was not that involved with the process, but I have two albums of pictures on Facebook! Unfortunately, though expected, some fighting broke out among the mothers trying to get goods for their families and we had to leave in a hurry. We stopped at a couple other villages before stopping for a barbeque lunch. After much more dancing, both after lunch and then again on the bus, we got back to Meknes.
-Why am I so much more homesick here when I actually feel much more at home than I did in Costa Rica? Second program? More exciting stuff happening with Isaac? Regardless, I am having an amazing time so a little homesickness is easy to get over with a nice Skype session with my family :)
