Morocco

Excursion

2009-03-02T02:31:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! Sorry it's been a while since the last post but the group on an excursion around Morocco and I haven't been able to get to a computer.

The trip was incredible. Within 8 days we saw Morocco's biggest and most touristy city, Marrakesh, and also spend a night camping in a Berber tent village in the Sahara. Even within one day, we drove through green grasslands, through snow-capped mountains and then into the dunes of the Sahara on 4x4 jeeps. Although the long drives were tough, I'm glad we chose to take a small van for the trip. The drives between cities were unbelievable- no cars, only mules, farmers riding on plows pulled by animals and shepherds with their herds of sheep. It was unlike anything I've ever seen, completely untouched by modernization.

There were many highlights of trip. Without a doubt the most memorable was the night we spent in the Sahara (Erg Lihoudi Dunes). First, we had lunch at the home of a leader of a nomadic tribe (this may sound like an oxymoron but his sons are still nomadic and return to the house to fill up on supplies). Then our 4x4 safari-like jeeps took off into the Sahara, which is exactly like you may picture it- rolling sand dunes as far as you can see in every direction. We stayed in tents next to a small Berber village (by small I mean 3-4 tents and a heard of camels). As soon as we got there we got on camels and caravaned into the desert to watch the sunset from the top of the dunes. It's hard to describe how amazing it was- totally surreal. At night the local people put on a musical performance dressed in traditional Berber costumes, long white robes, white slippers and white caps for the men and very bright, patterned dresses and scarves for the women. Later, our group was playing the guitar and singing by the fire and the men came to join us and we were all singing along together, mixing Berber music and our music- it was a lot of fun.

A small highlight of the trip was in a pottery village we visited near Amzrou, in the Sahara. The local people had been producing pottery for several centuries and we went on a guided tour and saw demonstrations. At one point my friend, Susanna, and I stayed back to watch the potters a little longer and some of the local kids saw how fascinated we were so they took us into one of the empty shops to make our own pots. We had to sit below the ground and use our feet to spin a huge wheel that would then make a wheel on the ground spin. It was so much harder than it looked but the kids were able to shape my blob of clay into a small pot, which I treasured for the rest of the trip. The kids were so kind to us and were really proud to show us their families' craft. In general, this is pretty characteristic of the Moroccan people- friendly, very patient with us not speaking their language and willing to go out of their way to help us.

Later in the week, on the drive from Fes to Chefchaouen, we stopped at the site of an ancient Roman city, Volubilis, near the city of Meknes. The ruins date back to the 3rd century B.C., which is unbelievable considering the shape they are in today. You can still see depictions of Roman mythology in the tile work of the floors. We walked down the main street where they expect 20,000 (not positive of this number) people once walked. The site is listed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site and you can see pictures if you click here.

My favorite of the towns/cities we visited was Chefchaouen, which was where we stayed the last night. It is a small, charming town nestled in the mountains in northern Morocco. The walls of the buildings inside the medina are painting in a beautiful light blue wash. There is a Spanish influence because it is the North, so most people were fluent in Spanish, French, Arabic, and some English (for the tourists). We spent a morning exploring the medina and visiting museums- and also hunting for their famous goat cheese.

We also visited a silversmith in an old Jewish village, ate lunch at a few gorgeous resorts in the desert, spent two nights in Fes, visited a women's organization that helps women out of domestic abuse situations. We stayed in a kasbah (castle) that had been turned into a hotel, saw the famous leather dyes in Fes and visited Ouazzane, where the head of my school in Rabat has a house and lectured to us about Sufism.

So overall the trip was amazing and made me want to explore Morocco so much more. I'm even considering staying for the summer and finding a job teaching English!(sorry, Mom)

Oh, but there was one downside of the trip- I left my camera in a taxi in Marrakesh, which is why none of the photos I'm posting are my own.

exploring Rabat

2009-02-09T04:41:00.001-08:00

So for the past two weeks I've been exploring Rabat and spending a lot of time with my family and also with some friends in the group. The souks (markets) of the medina are endless and there's also a huge part of Rabat outside the walled part of the city. There's a big cafe life here as in Europe so it's always interesting to sit outside with coffee and watch what's going on (the weather is finally sunny and high 60s!). We found a few fun places to go out at night and often go out for some food American food before (we really miss pizza and cheeseburgers).

Spending time with my family is always entertaining. Eating for an example is an experience in itself. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day and most of the city returns home from work for 2 hours for lunch and a rest (the government is trying to eliminate this lunch break). All 10 of us sit around a table and eat from a big communal plate in the middle, which is usually some combination of veggies and spices on top of a small portion of meat. We rip pieces of bread from large flat loaves of bread and you use your thumb and adjacent two fingers to scoop the food from the plate using the bread. You save the meat for last and my grandmother usually rations out the meat. The family also drinks from a communal water glass(it's the one tradition I avoid) and has no problem swapping half eaten food. The food is often served on a dish called a tagine, which is a clay dish that has a large dome top to keep the heat in. Moroccans also eat couscous on Fridays for lunch, which is a nice treat. We have a snack (bread and butter usually) around 7 and eat dinner around 10:30 every night.

In Moroccan homes they call the TV part of the family and it is literally on 24 hours a day. After dinner, the family usually stays in what is equivalent to the family room and watches TV until at least 12:30 together. In general the family sleeps on the "couches" in the family room with a lot of blankets (there's no heat in Moroccan homes). My mom, dad, grandma and younger brother all sleep in the family room together. It is also part of the Moroccan culture that it is demeaning for women to have to leave the home, so my sisters and mother seldom venture out. I have only seen my grandma leave twice since I've been there and never without male company.

My family has a lot of energy and is always doing something crazy. Saturday all of my siblings put underwear on their heads and ran around calling themselves ninjas. They even put underwear on grandma's head (don't worry, I have pictures). Saturday night I actually decided not to go out with my friends and my sisters and mom taught me how to oriental dance...it's still a work in progress. Yesterday I went out exploring by myself and took a lot of pictures. Within about 5 minutes from the Center is an old castle along the beach and it's always nice to relax in the Andalusian garden at the castle.

The classes aren't as good as I expected but I'll manage. It's just very hard for me to sit in a classroom and learn about Moroccan culture on a beautiful day and not go out and see it for ourselves. Arabic is also much harder than I expected and we have 2-3 hours a day of Arabic Monday-Thursday.

This Saturday we leave for an 8-day trip around Morocco with the group- Fes, Meknes, Marrakesh, Chefchaouen and a night camping in the Sahara. I'll keep trying to upload pictures but it hasn't been working well!

Never eating milk soup again

2009-01-29T04:19:00.000-08:00

So I got food poisoning. After throwing up for 8 hours straight and finally throwing up blood (sorry for the details), my family took me to the hospital and I spent Tuesday there. The health care was great and I was in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm within 5 minutes (and didn't even stop to ask me for an insurance card!). There were always doctors and nurses next to my bed asking how I was doing. It was hard to communicate because my sister wasn't allowed to stay in the room I was in and English was scarce at the hospital. Our conversations were a mixture of French, Spanish, Arabic and English. They put me under full anesthesia and stuck a camera down my throat to look at my stomach. They let me go home later that night and I slept the rest of the night and pretty much the whole next day. My family was great taking care of me and had to clean up after me, which I feel terrible about, and have been cooking me special meals. At least it was a good story!

fun weekend

2009-01-26T06:05:00.000-08:00

This weekend was amazing. Friday afternoon my family planned an outing with everyone but my father and Asmaa's husband to Chella. We walked for at least 45 minutes along the river where they're doing construction but it was beautiful. Chella is an old walled city on a hill that has all the remnants from a Roman village that was built thousands of years ago. The the hamam, cemetery and a pool of eels surrounded by cats (a little creepy). When you walk to the bottom of the hill, you look up and there are hundreds of giant white storks nesting in the trees on the hill (my camera died at this point but we're going again soon). Our family had a picnic on the lawn in front of the castle and then walked home through the city.

Friday night I brought my brother Mohammad out with a few of my friends to a couple bars and the disco tech. He taught us all how to dance tectonic and we had a great time with him. He's a lot of fun and has become friends with the group.

Saturday the group met up and went to the kasbah, an old castle and village right on the ocean. We walked out to the end of the pier and were sitting on the rocks enjoying the view when a 10 foot wave soaked all of us so we decided to go in the ocean while we were already soaked...it was freezing and was really a terrible idea. That night we went to an Italian restaurant that was all in French but in the middle of Morocco (pretty much sums up the culture here) and I got a decent steak for what came out to $11 U.S. dollars. Everything is so cheap here!

Sunday afternoon my brother took me and a friend down to the beach and we played soccer with some local people which was amazing. We came home and ate snails and anchovy pizza for dinner and Mohammad put on a dance performance that I'll try to post.

trip to the public baths

2009-01-23T03:42:00.000-08:00

So my big adventure yesterday was a family trip (along with 2 friends from the group) to the public baths, or hamem. This may be the most un-American activity I've seen yet. Moroccans pay about a dollar once a week to go to these public baths with the women of the family or with friends. Before we went, my sister put a concoction of avocados, eggs, oil, yogurt and bone marrow in my hair to condition it. Basically, you strip down and sit in a sauna for 3 hours until your fingers are so pruned you can't feel them. It's a big room and you put down a mat that the whole family sits on and you scrub this black soap all over your body. Then you use this glove, similar to a potato scrubber, to scrub a layer of dead skin from your whole body. And the best part, the mother of the family scrubs all those hard to reach places for you! As my sister Asmaa describes, "black spaghetti" comes off of your skin. Then the mother of the family puts henna all over your body which stains a little and I'm not sure exactly what the purpose is. When you're so hot you think you're going to pass out, you lay down for a few minutes and then change into the cleanest, more comfortable clothes you have. It's all very relaxing and I can say I've never felt this clean before. Many people here don't shower but rather go to the hamem each week. My family dressed me in a jilaba (traditional Moroccan robe/dress) and wrapped a hejab (veil) around my head to walk home in and thought this was hysterical. They say I'm a Moroccan now.

As for the soap opera of my family...no big events last night but I'll catch you up on the past couple days. A few nights ago, we're eating dinner (bean soup to be specific) and all the sudden the whole family jumps up and starts screaming in Arabic at the top of their lungs. Apparently, Soued, my sister, responded when a male neighbor said hello to her, and her husband was so angry he packed a suitcase and was moving out. Everyone was crying/screaming and I was sitting there trying to get the baby to stop dumping soup all over the table. The men I have seen here (I am over-generalizing for sure) are quite protective of their wives, for example, Saaid told Soued she cannot get a job and is not allowed to talk to other men or go out with friends. My sister Asmaa's husband, Adeel is what she calls "open-minded" and she still must ask for permission before going out with my group and must ask him for money.

The food at the house is decent, however, nothing near what the chef at the school made us during orientation. Lots of beans(the one thing I haaate), some turkey liver, some lamb, some pasta, potatoes and a lot of mint tea. And the one thing that I have a hard time with is that you don't use utensils, you use bread and eat from a communal plate. You end up consuming a loaf of bread at every meal. Bread for breakfast, bread for snacks, bread bread bread. The family also drinks from one communal cup. The house is always loud and there's always a lot of activity, which can be a lot of fun. The family often breaks out into singing and rapping and dancing and everyone's always laughing (often at how bad my Arabic is).

This is a picture of my oldest sister, Asmaa, and he daugher, Lena, on my first weekend here.

This is a picture of a suk, not the one I live in, on the outskirts of Rabat.

This is a picture of the wall that surrounds the medina (walled city) of Rabat. Traditionally, being by the ocean was a weakness so instead of expensive ocean-front property, there's a wall and then a huge cemetery that wraps around the city and then the poorest families have run-down houses just inside that.

ahhhhhhhhh

2009-01-22T04:23:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! so I decided to make a blog because I want to tell everyone about Morocco and it's hard to email/facebook everyone so I'll post it here instead.

Basically, I love Morocco. It is nothing like I expected...it's pretty big, there is a market that stretches for miles across the gated part of the city that I live in. I actually walk through a bathrobe shop to get to my house, which is also right next door to a mosque. Normally non-Muslims aren't allowed in the mosques so it's really neat to be able to see in it every day- not so neat to be woken up by the call to prayer at 5am everyday. The people (with very few exceptions) have gone above and beyond to make us feel welcome. On my second day here we were dropped off alone around the city and we had 2 hours to find our way back to the school. I obviously got lost and without knowing one Arabic word (except enshahallah, which is not all that helpful)I stopped to ask these 2 women for help and they brought me to their neighbor's whose husband knew some English. The women gave me tea, raved about Obama and took their shoe off to throw it at Bush. They then walked me for 30 minutes back to the school and asked if they could take me out for couscous and exchanged numbers. That is just one example of how hospitable everyone is.

As for the school...It is in a beautiful, old Moroccan building complete with tiles, balconies and 2 roof-top terraces that look out to the Atlantic two blocks away, the river, and all of the medina of Rabat.

And now for the family...all I can say is that I need to record their activities to make a soap opera, but I really have started to bond them. Yesterday I came home from school and I told my older sister that my friends were waiting outside and I was going to go out with them for a while and she said are you crazy making them wait outside tell them to come in! I brought 10 of my friends, including 2 boys (which is not usually allowed) into the house and they greeted each one of them, brought them tea and cookies and sat and talked for quite a while. My father told the group that I am now his daughter. Another story, the other night I needed to buy notebooks (and sneak off for a gigantic chicken club sandwich that I really had a craving for) and I came home 2 hours after class ended, but I assumed as long as it wasn't late and I didn't miss dinner it would be okay. Turns out it wasn't and my brother was about to go look for me at my friend's house and the whole family started screaming at me in Arabic. My mom took her shoe off and smacked my hand (not hard, don't worry). I explained, they laughed and gave me popcorn and told me they missed me and were worried about me.

Here's the family line up:

Houria: Mom, hilarious, laughs all the time, screams really loud, hates how bad I am at Arabic, mediator of the family, sells underwear and tablecloths and tried to get me to buy them...

Ahmed: Dad, has one tooth yet tries to teach me pronunciation..., very friendly, always smiling, always makes me feel welcomed

Asmaa: oldest sister, 26, has a 1.5 year old daughter, Lena who I am obsessed with, married to Adeel who all live in the house with us, fascinated with America and the West in general, very good at English, could not be sweeter (last night she told me she loves me so much at night she worries about what God will think of me at judgment time and hopes he wont punish me for not being Muslim because she wants to be in paradise with me), calls herself Celine Dion and likes to sing her songs to me along with Kelly Clarkson, she has been my savior for speaking English and teaching me how to be Moroccan

Soued: 22 year old sister, rarely leaves the house, cleans a lot, not a word of English but her and I get along very well and we find ways to communicate...last night she actually taught me to read Arabic it was amazing, she just married Saiid 2 months ago who also lives in the house. She is an example of traditional Moroccan woman while Asmaa is very progressive.

Mohammad: 16 year old brother, hilarious, punches and kicks me like I'm his sister, very rebellious, he knows some English that he learned from watching TV (coming soon is his favorite line).

This is my niece, Lena, wearing the Lindt chocolate I brought the family.

These are the women that walked me back to the Center.

This is the view from the top terrace at the Center looking out over Rabat.

This is the view of the Atlantic from the Center.

This is the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning where I take classes everyday.