Day four (morning)

Drip...drip...drip...drip...drip...drip...

Patterpatterpatterpatterpatterpatterpatterpatterpatter

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...
 
Aaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Day three

This is day three of rain in Ifrane, and the forecast calls for more of the same for the rest of the week.

Those of you who live in rainy parts of the world might be thinking, "So what?" Maybe I should explain what it means to rain in Ifrane. Once the rain starts, there will be no hint of the sun or of blue sky for days. The rain never stops. The lake between the University and Centre Ville floods. And the rain is accompanied by wind that would put to shame that in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And, of course, it is cold. Think about the fact that many residents of Ifrane are pedestrians (being unable to afford their own cars) and that they live in unheated homes. We do much of our shopping in outdoor spaces. Add to all of that the fact that many ceilings and windows leak (including ours)*, and you might begin to understand why the rain is so miserable here.

I find weather like this to be extremely unmotivating. Somehow, T and I managed to make ourselves go down to the taxi station yesterday, take a taxi to Azrou, and walk around Azrou to go Christmas shopping. But now that I'm back in my apartment, I may not leave until the rain does. Especially now that… I have someone else to do my laundry for me! That's right; the only (non-literal) ray of sunshine on this gloomy, rainy day is that I have finally managed to hire a "maid" (an entry on my feelings about that word, and about the experience of hiring someone to do my laundry for me when I am perfectly capable of doing it myself, will come later). Today, I didn't have to drag my laundry through the cold rain.



*I have had leaky ceilings before, when I lived in the States. In the past, that sort of thing drove me nuts. But when I got up this morning and found the peeling paint on our ceiling and the wet spot on the carpet below it, I just calmly grabbed a towel and a bucket and called T to ask him to submit a work order. Living in a foreign country really is changing me. :-)

Moroccan greetings

A typical greeting of two American people goes something like this:

"Hello."

"Hi. How are you?"

"Fine. How are you?"

"I'm well, thanks."

That's pretty much it. At this point, the two people will go their separate ways, or their discussion will move on to something else.

And here, based on my experience in Morocco, is a typical greeting between two Moroccans (translated into English for your convenience):

"Greetings!"

"Greetings!"

"How are you? Are you well? Are things good?"

"I'm well, thank God. How are you? Are you well? Are things good?"

"I'm well, thank God. How are you? Are things good?"

"I'm good, thank God. Are you well?"

"I'm well, thank God. How is your husband?"

"Very well."

"Thank God!"

"How are your children?"

"They are well, thank God."

"Thank God."

Okay, that's pretty much how it goes, except that the people are usually speaking Darija, and they don't really take turns speaking; they both talk at the same time, so that, in Darija, the discussion sounds like a jumbled repetition of ssalam, la bes, b-kher, and l'hamdullilah. 

I love it.

Chefchaouen

Chefchaouen is a beautiful city nestled in the Rif Mountains. If you want to, you can take all day to get there from Ifrane, but if you drive straight from Ifrane to Chefchaouen, it will take about 3 1/2 hours. I think this drive is completely worth it, despite its potential for car sickness (and death).


View Larger Map

We arrived in Chefchaouen last Thursday evening and left on Sunday morning. We had to do a last minute hotel hunt that first night, but the hunt ended well. We stayed in a clean (but very cold) hotel. The next two nights, we stayed at  Dar Gabriel, an upscale medina hotel.

This was our hotel room at Dar Gabriel. The room is decorated with a lot of "typical" Moroccan stuff. Notice the painted wood and the sequined wall hanging. I think the bed cover is made from cactus; I bought something similar to it (but in completely different colors) in the medina.

I think this is a typical Moroccan hotel bathroom. Rather than an enclosed shower, there's just a showerhead and a drain. This means you have the whole bathroom in which to take a shower! Nothing could possibly go wrong!

Happy Thanksgiving

Most of my readers (if there still are any) celebrate a holiday today.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Volubilis

Last Thursday, T and I headed out of Ifrane with our friend LW and her two daughters. Our ultimate destination was Chefchaouen, a town in the Rif Mountains, but we allowed ourselves to take all day on Thursday to get there. Our first and main stop that day was Volubilis. Just a few kilometers outside of Meknes (which, in turn, is only an hour's drive from Ifrane), Volubilis was, according to The Rough Guide to Morocco, the "most remote" outpost of the Roman Empire. The town was well-established back in 45 A.D. Roman rule withdrew from the area in 285 A.D.

But I'm not as interested in giving you a history lesson as I am in sharing some cool pictures:

Something to keep in mind if you go to a grocery store in Morocco the day after Eid Kbira

All of the people in town who can afford to will be bringing their sheep carcasses to the grocery store butcher to have them cut up, ground into sausage, etc. They will load the skinned and gutted carcasses from their cars into grocery carts, where the skinless legs will be sticking straight up into the air. They will then mob the meat section of Label Vie, and it will be impossible for you to turn in any direction without seeing a whole, upside down sheep carcass. It will also be impossible to get to the alcohol section, which is where you were trying to go. Finally, you will leave the grocery store wondering whether you were putting your groceries into a shopping cart that had previously been carrying a sheep carcass.

The big holiday

If you look at your calendar, you might see that this coming Wednesday, November 17, is labeled as "Eid al Adha." Here in Morocco, this most important Muslim holy day is called "Eid Kbira." "Kbira" means "big," so basically Moroccans call this "the big holiday."

Come Wednesday, this sheep will probably become a former sheep.

The purpose of this blog post isn't to give a religion or history lesson, so those who want details about this holy day can look here or here. I will note that the day is marked by each family slaughtering a sheep, goat, or even cow. An important part of the celebration is participating in and watching the slaughter.

Many of the Americans I know who live here seem to be a bit disturbed by this holy day. I think this is because, while most Americans greatly enjoy eating meat, "animals" and "meat" are generally two separate things in their minds. (I think it helps a little bit that in English – and, I'm sure, in other languages – the words for many animals are different from the words that are used to refer to the meat that comes from those animals. When you're eating a hamburger, you are probably thinking about eating "beef," not "cow.") Most Americans get their meat from the grocery store, where it doesn't look much like the animal that it came from. In contrast, many Moroccans buy their meat while it's still alive! They watch the chicken transition from a living, feathered thing to food on their plate. They participate in that transition. So the idea of watching their kids play with a sheep for a few days, then slaughtering and eating the sheep, is completely natural and in no way disturbing.

At least these sheep look happy right now...

As a vegetarian, I actually admire this. One reason I don't eat meat is because I know that I could not kill an animal. And I don't want to watch someone else do it.

I have been told that the streets literally run with blood on the Eid, and I will not go out on that day. If a Moroccan were to invite me to his or her home for the Eid, I would turn down the invitation. This means I miss out on a significant cultural experience. But I guess I'm completely okay with that.

Videos of Morocco

Here are some videos I came across that can give a fuller sense of Morocco to those who are interested.

The first is a music video of a Chemical Brothers song. I don't really know that much about the Chemical Brothers, but I think their video, filmed near Marrakesh, does a good job of depicting Morocco.

The second video is of the Fez Medina. It's a bit long, but at least watch the first three minutes, up until the point at which the host very aptly describes the smell.

The third video is of Chefchaouen. I haven't visited this town, but again, the video captures certain aspects of Moroccan life that are difficult to describe in text and even photographs.


The Chemical Brothers - Do it again
envoyé par truemozzer. - Regardez la dernière sélection musicale.

Tarmilat

Yesterday evening, T and I went with a group of members of the University Christian church and a few sociology students to the nearby village of Tarmilat. Not more than a ten minute drive outside Ifrane, Tarmilat is really just a collection of houses (like the one pictured at right) in which about 24 families live.

Apparently, these families were brought there decades ago to be sheepherders for the rich families of Ifrane. While some of the villagers now have their own flocks of sheep, they still have no legal rights to the land on which they live – they're basically squatters.

Members of the church became interested a few years ago in helping the villagers of Tarmilat. To make a long story short, the village women were taught how to make rugs, blankets and other handicrafts out of the wool of their sheep.

Soon after we arrived in Tarmilat, with the rock-covered hills all around us covered in gentle rose-colored light from the setting sun, the women of Tarmilat laid out their handicrafts for us to look at and, they hoped, to purchase.

These are the blanket that T and I purchased.

When it grew dark and cold, we were invited inside one family's home for a meal. As you can probably tell from looking at the pictures of these houses, they are extremely simple. A person of normal height can only stand up in the middle of the house. The house we entered had no furniture except for a china hutch at one end. Next to the hutch was a tall pile of wool blankets. The floor was covered with rugs. T asked someone what the families do in the winter, and she pointed out a place in the ceiling where a hole could be made. The families build fires under those holes and use pipes to carry the smoke out of the houses. Most of the homes don't have electricity, although some families are using the money from selling their wool blankets to install solar panels. The community also now has a couple of literate women and even a schoolhouse.

I wish I had taken pictures of the meal they served us. It seemed incredibly extravagant, especially given the surroundings. It began like a traditional ftour meal, with dates, melwi, and chebakia. That was followed by whole roasted chickens, which, I was told (and I had to take people's word for this) were delicious. After that, the women brought out giant plates of steaming couscous and pumpkin. Everything was served on small, round tables, around which people gathered, sitting on the floor. We all ate from the same dishes, with our hands. It was the closest T and I have yet come to eating a traditional Moroccan meal, Moroccan style. (For those of you worried about the idea of a bunch of poor Moroccan women feeding rich Moroccan students and Americans, please note that we paid the women for the meal.)

After the meal, we put our shoes back on and exited the house. We were greeted by a breathtaking autumn night. The sky, unobstructed by buildings or trees, undimmed by electric lights, was the clearest, most beautiful night sky I have ever seen.

I left Tarmilat wondering how best I could cognitively represent or conceive of the lives of its people. The common responses of pity or romanticization are clearly too simplistic. What are their lives really like? How do they feel about living in their rock and tin houses, cooking their meals over open fires? What dreams do they have for their sons and daughters? And with a university with great wealth so close by, what is the responsibility of this university community to Tarmilat? These are the things I wondered about on the van ride home, in the dark.

Rockin' the Casbah...in Rabat

T and I spent the past weekend in Rabat, the capital city of Morocco, with our friends Brian and Sara--they are Americans and former Peace Corps volunteers. We had a great time, and I learned a lot. Some highlights of what I learned:

-A Peace Corps volunteer's definition of a "good hotel" may not be the same as my definition.
-When you pay for a "room with a shower" in Morocco, that's exactly what you're paying for--a room with a shower. Your room won't necessarily have a bathroom, and it won't necessarily have a toilet.

The shower in our budget room at Hotel Central.

Another thing I learned? It's worth paying the extra dirhams, no matter how many, so I have a full bathroom (with toilet) in my hotel room and don't have to use a communal toilet. (That's what I did the second night we stayed in Rabat, when we moved to Hotel Berlin.)

-Towels are not standard. You can ask the hotel staff for towels, and you might get some. They might be clean.
-Don't assume that the presence of a toilet (even a western-style one) means the presence of toilet paper. (This is true in all public places in Morocco, not just in hotels.)