On celebrating the Fourth of July in America

There are a lot of things I've wanted to write about over the last week and a half, but time is really getting away from me. So I guess I'll just start with the present: the Fourth of July, Independence Day in the United States of America.

The day isn't over yet, but my celebration of it is. And today I had the most traditional celebration that I can remember for years. It involved hot dogs and hamburgers and chips and potato salad and pie as well as people wearing red, white, and blue.

I celebrated the day with several members of my "cohort" here in Kentucky. It was quite different from my slightly ironic Fourth of July celebration last year, when I went out for hamburgers in Ifrane with a group of fellow Americans (although I didn't have a hamburger, of course).

We were all expatriates there. Here, I don't know what I am. I am trying to move back to the United States, but it's more because I want to find out whether or not I still want to live here than because I know I want to live here.

I'm lucky to have a friendly and inclusive group of classmates, but the truth is that I often feel left out, or out of place with them. I am experiencing more disorientation and culture shock than I thought could be possible after only two years of living overseas.

I am experiencing this at every level. Grocery shopping takes me forever. I'm shocked by the lack of pedestrians or bicyclists in this town (and I don't think it's just because the temperature has been in the 100s [Fahrenheit] over the last few days). I'm irritated by the number of rules related to safety (today the pool in my hotel is closed because the pH is off). I'm saddened by the ridiculous political divisions. I'm angered by the unnecessary costs of healthcare. I'm disgusted by all the unhealthy food. I'm bored by conversations about smelly armpits and leg hair. I don't know what this Magic Mike movie is, and I don't know when "frozen yogurt" became "fro yo.” I don't know when everyone in the country got a smart phone and a GPS and stopped being able to read maps.

I’m left now with a lot of open-ended questions and very little time to reflect on them (which is another disorienting aspect of being here). So: situation normal.

Happy Independence Day, everyone. May you be free to discover and celebrate your own definition of freedom.

On cooking in a foreign land

Ask someone living in a foreign country what he or she misses about home, and the most common answer you're likely to get is, "the food." A certain computer-animated rat excepted, we humans are (as far as I know) unique in our relationship to food. It doesn't just nourish us; it is an integral component of cultural, and personal, identity.

If you move to a foreign country, then, food is not going to be the least of the things you must adjust to.

Done it all

Yesterday, T and I took the new tram in Rabat. I think this means that we have now used every mode of public transportation available in the country of Morocco (with the exception of intra-country flight, which seems like a fairly rare way of getting around within Morocco, and in any case we have used flight to go to and from the country). We have used petits taxis, grands taxis, the bus, the train, and the tram. Many times, these modes of transportation must be used in combinations that can be exhausting. (Yesterday, for example, we used everything but bus to get to, around, and back home from Rabat.)

If you are from or have lived in a big city like New York or Tokyo or Hong Kong, you're probably wondering why this is worth noting on my blog. You have to understand that I grew up in rural Nebraska and didn't even ride a city bus, subway or taxi until after I was out of college. Until these last couple of years in Morocco, public transportation remained a novelty – and a bit of a mystery – to me.

Many people have told us we might be happier if we had a car here. It's true that, as "nature lovers" more than "city people," T and I sometimes find it challenging to get to the places that would be most interesting to us because they are off the beaten path. Nevertheless, I am glad, for many reasons, that we have chosen not to try to get a car while here. Not only has it been cheaper, but it has been a wonderful learning experience (for me, especially) to figure out how to get around the country without a personal vehicle. (And in the times when we have really needed a car, we have been lucky enough to have wonderful friends who have lent us theirs.)

Another downside

The white screen of death

I'm pretty sure my MP3 player died today--just a few minutes ago, actually. It's really not a big deal. I had some playlists on it, but they weren't that impressive, and everything else is also saved on my computer and backed up on an external hard drive. It was just a Sansa Fuze. Not a big deal.

No, not a big deal...but a bigger deal than it would have been, say, 14 months ago, when I was still getting a paycheck in dollars (or any paycheck at all). Fourteen months ago, I would have just gone online and ordered myself a new one. I think it would cost me, maybe, $60.

But now $60 is a lot more to me than it was then. I've been thinking about this a lot lately since T and I have been seriously talking about returning to the States for a month. I'm having to seriously face the fact that wages which allow us to live a pretty comfortable (if not extravagant) life here would put us on food stamps there. We're doing great as long as we don't need anything that comes from an American or European economy. But as I have been pondering what I'll do while I'm back "home," I have inevitably and consistently come up against the wall of economics. The things I want to buy, the things I want to do, will all cost dollars, which I'm not earning anymore.

I know this makes me sound awfully materialistic. It may also sound like I'm throwing a pity party for myself, but I'm not at all. I'm just working right now on a mental shift, which is always difficult. I will be in the States (incha'allah, as we say here), but I won't be part of the U.S. economy (which is pretty much true for a lot of people living there, come to think of it). I will have to prioritize the things I want to spend money on (tofu or haircut? vitamins or clothes?) and will have to "make my own fun," as the saying goes.

And, if I can't get it working, I'll have to learn to live without my MP3 player.

Weekend in London

This may sound crazy to someone living in the United States or New Zealand, but T and I went to London for the weekend (we left Ifrane at 4:45 PM on Thursday and were back at our apartment before 9 PM on Sunday). A few weeks ago, we found out that T's sister and her family would be in London for a few days. We decided that London is so close (about a three hour plane ride) that we had to go see them, even if it was only for two days.

Before we went there, T's sister asked what we would want to do in London. Knowing that our main focus would be visiting with family, we decided to forgo any of the usual sightseeing and focus on three goals:

1. Have a beer. (have I yet said anything about the beer in Morocco? Morocco has only three beers: Stork, Flag, and Casablanca. I am being generous when I say that these beers are somewhat uninspired. I am not the first nor last beer snob to be a bit devastated by the dearth of good beer.)
2. Eat Indian food. (By the way, Indian food is so ubiquitous in London that I got quizzical looks from the locals when I told them this was one of the goals for my visit.)
3. Go grocery shopping.

In case you're wondering, I accomplished these goals. I had Indian food two nights in a row, and I came home with a suitcase full of frozen tofu, vitamins and herbal supplements, Ziploc bags, PG tips, rice wine vinegar, sriracha sauce, and other goodies.

I also realized during my two short days in London that I was experiencing double culture shock. First of all, I had the obvious culture shock of going from a small town in a developing African country to an almost unimaginably enormous urban area in a developed country. T's sister took me to Tesco for grocery shopping, and I froze up a little when I got to the long aisle that was dedicated entirely to yogurts. I was impressed by many mundane things – pedestrian crosswalks, wheelchair accessibility and accommodations in many places, restrooms with toilet paper and soap and working hand dryers. Everything seemed so incredibly clean, organized, and orderly! In addition, I had trouble adapting to the prices of things. One day, T and I bought an "inexpensive" sandwich to share for lunch, and I realized that our shared sandwich was the same price as about 35 baguettes here in Morocco. On Sunday, on our bus from London to the Stansted airport (it was much cheaper to fly out of Stansted than Heathrow), the bus driver announced that we should buckle our seatbelts because we would be on the highway. I couldn't help but laugh, knowing that once we were back in Morocco, we would be taking a grand taxi over mountain roads, dodging donkeys and pedestrians and bicycles and motorcycles, and we almost certainly would not even have seatbelts.

London is also different from the United States, which is sometimes easy to forget because we do (basically) speak the same language. But same language does not equal same culture. I should add here that somehow I had gotten the idea that people in London would be...well, if not unfriendly, a bit reserved. I found everyone to be quite friendly, helpful, and accommodating to our occasional cluelessness about things like how to scan our credit card at the grocery store.

It was very hard to leave family members after spending only two days with them, but I was also concerned about how I would feel coming back to Morocco. On the plane to Fez, and on the taxi ride from there to Ifrane, I engaged in a little introspection. I was a bit surprised and relieved to find that I didn't feel any sense of dread or disappointment or depression about coming back here. All reservations I had related to one factor: all of my significant difficulties here have to do with the language barrier. It became very clear to me this weekend that if I am going to stay here and be able to function, I need to make an attempt to learn Darija or French. I don't know when or how I'll do it, but I need to try.

T and I have also made a resolution to go on more weekend trips to Europe. This may be the only time in our life that we have the opportunity to do that.

What the heck am I doing here?

I ask myself this several times each week. I never ask it when I am, for example, sitting outside a café in the sun drinking coffee with friends (the weather is still nice enough, even now in December, that we can still do this on warm days). I ask it when I am trying to solve a problem, such as a broken tooth. I ask it when I am trying to figure out how to get my textbooks here in time for next semester. I ask it when I realize that there is only one online Master's program in speech-language pathology that will even consider admitting me while I live in Africa. I ask it when I have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to send a few small packages to family and friends back in the United States. I ask it when I realize that the novelty of my living in Africa has worn off for both me and all of those people back home, and when I go days without hearing from any of those people. I ask it when I discover that the downstairs bathroom in my new apartment, which is supposed to be much nicer than the apartment I moved out of, smells strongly like sewage and I am told, "the faculty member who lived there before you never complained about any smell."

I need a vacation from my life. But even planning a vacation sounds like too much to me right now.

The gap between "says" and "is"

In this blog post (and, I suspect, in future blog posts) I will be making observations about Moroccan culture. I make these observations from my own limited point of view, and from my own limited experience in Morocco. If any Moroccans or anyone more familiar with Moroccan culture than I am reads this blog, I hope they do not take offense. If I have made any observations or claims in error, please, please correct me.

Three weeks ago, on the first day of yoga class (about halfway through class), loud dance music begin playing in the room next door. We completed our yoga practice listening to intermittent, booming night club music. It seemed to become especially loud during savasana, of course. After class, the instructor apologized and said, "The student activities office assured me that this would be a quiet place for yoga class."

I had to smile. My instructor had just found herself in the gap between "says" and "is."

The gap between "says" and "is" (a term dubbed by one of T's colleagues) has been– by far – the most difficult aspect of Moroccan culture for me to adapt to. Generally, in American culture, when we ask someone a question, we expect an answer that corresponds as strictly as possible with reality. In Moroccan culture (and I base this claim on what I have observed, what I have been told, and what I have read), you aren't nearly as likely to get an answer that corresponds with what most Americans would call "the truth." You are more likely to get the answer that the person thinks you want to hear, the answer that he or she thinks would make you happy, or the answer that he or she wishes were true.

I was warned about the gap before I came here. But I think my American upbringing kept me from completely understanding how wide, and how strange to me as an outsider, it really would be.

I'll give you some small examples of my experience with the gap between "says" and "is." When T and I were learning about the University, we read about a multi-kilometer forest path going around the University. T's dean even mentioned to him during our first week here what a pleasant walk it is. When I went looking for the path, I found that it did not exist. I thought I saw signs that it had once been present, but the path was completely overgrown. I quickly (meaning within about five minutes) had to give up. When we asked a few people about the path, they said that it has not been maintained for quite a while. It is essentially nonexistent.

Here's another example. There are a shuttle for faculty and a bus for students that drive back and forth between the University and strategic parts of the town. The grounds and maintenance office continues to claim that faculty (or other people) who wish to use the student bus must buy tickets. I have spoken with many people who have worked here for a few years, and none of them have ever bought tickets. Nevertheless, if you visit the University's website, you will see that it says tickets must be purchased for use of the bus.

What I realized, then, is that when people say "There's a nice forest path going around campus," what they really mean is "We used to have a nice forest path, and wouldn't it be nice if we still did?" When they say "You need to purchase tickets to use the bus," what they really mean is "We wish we could figure out a way to charge money for use of the bus."

The examples I have provided are just two rather small (and somewhat lame) examples. I experience this gap on a daily basis, so much so that I have gotten into the habit of assuming any answers I get to my questions to be inaccurate unless I get the same answer from a minimum of three different people.

I don't mean to suggest in any way that Moroccans are liars. I'm not an anthropologist, and I'm certainly not an expert on Moroccan culture, but I think this tendency to tell people what they want to hear comes from an essentially good place, from a place of generosity. When an American might be likely to "tell it like it is," it seems as if a Moroccan is going to be more likely to "tell you like it should be." Doesn't that take more imagination? Isn't it really more generous than the cold, hard truth?

Perhaps so. But I have a feeling that this aspect of Moroccan culture has been responsible for driving away more than one non-Arab foreign faculty member. I hope to adjust well enough that it doesn't drive me away.

What we talk about when we talk about love

No, this blog entry isn't about Raymond Carver's subdued short story. It's about the idea of "loving" a country. When we told people we were moving to Morocco, some said, "So-and-so went there last year and just fell in love with the country." Others said things like, "Oh, you'll love it there."

I have no idea what people mean when they say they "love" a country. I've never loved a country. I don't love the U.S. There are things I like about my home country, and probably things I'll come to appreciate more now that I'm not there, and there are also many things I greatly dislike about it. But I know people who "love" the U.S., and quite a few people who "love" Morocco. We have met an American couple working at the University who were in Morocco with the Peace Corps a couple of years ago and "fell in love" with Morocco. They've wanted nothing else since then but to figure out how to get back here. We know another American couple who want to own a second home in Morocco, and a third couple who knew the first day they got here that they loved it. What do they mean when they say they love Morocco? I'm really not sure.

As of right now, my feelings about Morocco on an average day, at their most positive, are probably best described as ambivalent. Especially after Ramadan, I kept waiting for feelings to develop. I kept waiting to fall in love (or not to). Anyone who has been reading my blog knows that I have carefully highlighted the positive elements of my experience here; nevertheless, I remain ambivalent. I'm not saying I think I should feel anything other than what I feel.

I'm just saying.

The little things

Before coming to Morocco, T and I did as much reading about it as we could. We had great advice coming from a lot of people, especially B, who worked at this University for five years. Even the University provides advice in the form of a fairly lengthy guide to settling in designed for foreign faculty. But what I have noticed in my first week here is that there are a lot of tiny but significant differences between the U.S. and Morocco. There are so many of these that no one can tell you about them. For example:

-No one gives you a detailed rundown of the money. The literature says, "Moroccan money is in dirhams." Right, just like U.S. money is in dollars. We also have cents, and Moroccan money has centimes. So you have to figure out which coins are centimes and which are dirhams. 

-Bathrooms. I'm still not sure if there are public restrooms around town, but even if there are, they won't be familiar. The public restrooms on campus that I've encountered look like this: 

Yes, I took a picture of a public toilet. Get over it.

Sometimes these bathrooms will have toilet paper, too, but sometimes they won't. There's an adjustment needed there.

-Lack of containers. Many foodstuffs, including herbs, spices, grains, pastas, and beans, are sold in bulk. When I bought my spices at the souk, the vendor wrapped them in bits of newspaper. Now they are sitting on my counter, wrapped in newspaper, in a plastic bag. I'm used to having a big spice collection, so at some point I need to figure out how to store all these spices.

-Speaking of plastic bags, you need to save all of them--grocery bags, any used ziploc baggies...everything. You need to save all jars and bottles.

-Fitted bedsheets. Don't have them. (Nor, apparently, are double beds common.)

-The water has super high mineral content. I have been boiling water to supplement our supply of Sidi Ali (popular brand of bottled water), and the boiled tap water has chunks of white mineral floating in it. My morning tea has a strange "skin" on top of it. How do people handle this? I don't know yet. It's too small to be mentioned in advice books.

You might be reading this list and thinking, "Why is she writing about this? These are really minor things. Boring, too!" That's my point. But there are a lot of them, and their accumulation contributes to culture shock. I'm sure anyone who has moved to a foreign country has experienced what I'm talking about. Heck, even when one moves to a new town, one encounters these little differences to some extent.

Finally, there are little things that I am missing, especially, right now, soy products.

Psst! Anyone who sends us a package is requested to throw in some soy milk and vegetarian jerky (of which Tofurky jurky [much better than Tofurky] is just one brand). I'll pay you back!

I am also keeping a running mental list of the things I wish I'd brought with me. I wish I'd shipped myself a big box of soy milk and jerky. I wish I'd brought more towels, a couple of board games, a pack of cards. I guess the key is not to dwell on it, but to say, "Next time I'll do better!"