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 convenience

Posted from the cornfields...

I have been thinking of multiple alternative monikers for the United States during my week here, and one of those is "land of convenience." I was thinking of this as I ate my dinner this evening: a sweet potato (a.k.a. yam) with cheddar cheese. It didn't even take me five minutes to prepare this dinner.

First of all, the sweet potato was easy and convenient to obtain. I got it at a large grocery store in Omaha, but even the two little grocery stores here in David City sell them. I suppose it's possible that yams are sold in Morocco, but I've never seen them, and I'm guessing they would only be sold in Rabat and Casa, both several hours away from Ifrane. The cheddar cheese nearest to Ifrane is at the Label Vie in Meknes (an hour away), and it is so rarely purchased that one must check it over for mold before buying any. Some people in rural America may have to drive to the nearest city to get "specialty" groceries like chickpea flour, tempeh, or chard, but generally, in the U.S. these days, one can find just about any grocery item one wants.

And virtually every community in the U.S. has grocery stores and "super" stores (like Super Wal-Mart) that provide "one stop shopping," something that is definitely not the norm in Morocco. To buy everything you need in one shopping trip seems almost impossible in Morocco, but to do it, you would need to go to several different vendors at the marché, to Label Vie, to Marjane, to the bakery, etc.

Another aspect of the convenience of my meal was that I barely had to wash the sweet potato because it was so clean. In Morocco, when we buy foods that were grown in the ground, they look like they were grown in the ground! Those of us who buy and eat fresh food spend a surprisingly large amount of time just cleaning it, something that isn't necessary in the U.S.

I haven't had a microwave oven since moving to Morocco, so if I somehow found a sweet potato there and wanted to eat it, I'd have to plan at least an hour ahead so I could bake it. Here, I cooked my sweet potato in three minutes.

On making couscous with Hafida

Posted from the cornfields...

Hafida and me

Last Thursday, the day before I left Ifrane, Hafida showed me how to make couscous. I was initially stressed by the thought of adding "cook a big meal" to my to-do list for the day before leaving the country, but it turned out that, by the time we were ready to start cooking, my bags were packed and I had very little to do anyway.

Those of you who have cooked with this semolina product before may be wondering, "What's there to show you? You just add some boiling water to the couscous and let it soak up the water and then do whatever you want to do with it." That's what I thought before moving to Morocco. I quickly learned that I had been doing it wrong all along.

When Moroccans talk about "making couscous," they are talking about a complete dish that consists of seasoned, stewed vegetables (traditionally onions, turnips, carrots, pumpkin, zucchini, and cabbage, plus chickpeas) and (usually) meat served atop couscous that has been thrice steamed above the stew using a couscoussier. This method makes the couscous light and fluffy as well as flavorful, since it absorbs additional flavor from the stew.

Moroccan society, compared to society in the United States, is still very traditional, so virtually all Moroccan families have couscous as the large midday meal on Fridays. Couscous is prepared in a very particular way, too, and I was lucky that Hafida was willing (although not entirely happy) to 1) make a vegetarian version and 2) leave out the tomatoes so a friend of mine with a tomato allergy could join us for the meal.

We didn't talk a lot as we cooked, but I still enjoyed the time with Hafida, and I enjoyed learning from her. I thought about how she must have begun cooking couscous with her mother when she was a very little girl, and that if she had a daughter (she has only one child, a son), she would teach her daughter in the same way. I thought about my relationship with my own mother, and about the things I wish I had taken the opportunity to learn from her when I was a young girl. Living in Morocco has helped me to become more aware of both the reasons why I appreciate the flexible norms of my own culture and of the things that can be lost as a result of that flexibility.

Just as we were finished preparing the couscous, our friends Lynn and Karen stopped by. We convinced Hafida to stay and eat the meal with us. She helped me serve the couscous Moroccan style, on one large platter from which everyone could eat. It was a great way to spend my final afternoon in Ifrane.

T was there, too; he took the photo.

Soon after I got to Nebraska, I tried to prepare couscous for my parents. I tried not to make too many changes, but I left out the pumpkin and chickpeas and tried using vegetarian "chicken." Mom and Dad said it was fine, but I thought it wasn't remotely as good as the couscous I had made with Hafida. I think this is due only in part to my lack of experience preparing the dish. What contributed to the deliciousness of the couscous I made with Hafida was the newness of the experience as well as the companionship. My theory is that couscous cooked alone is not as tasty as couscous cooked with a family member or friend.

But at least I got to eat my couscous with family.

Mom, Dad, and Pierre, ready to try my couscous (served in the tagine I brought with me from Morocco)

More on the Moroccan desert

What ideas did you have about Morocco before you started reading my blog? If you imagined deserts, sand, camels, and nomads and their tents, you weren't alone.

As I hope my blog has illustrated for you, though, Morocco is a geographically diverse country. I didn't see any camels until I had been here for a few months, and my recent trip to the desert was the first time I saw a landscape that I thought might be described as "stereotypically" Moroccan or North African.

The transition to a desert landscape really begins south of Midelt. The mountains are always close by, but the land slowly becomes dustier, and the vegetation becomes more sparse and scrubby.

There was an unexpected number of hotels along our route from Midelt to Merzouga. Some of them were shockingly (and, we all agreed, too optimistically) grand. As we drove by these hotels, we saw that the vast majority had virtually empty parking lots.

We had originally made reservations at such a hotel (although not nearly as new as the one pictured to the left) in Erfoud. It was such a depressingly outdated and empty place, though, that we quickly ditched it for a smaller and grubbier – yet less deserted and more comfortable  – hotel.

The way people look changes, too, as one approaches the desert. Skin gets darker, and by the time we got to Erfoud, we hardly saw the faces of any women, most of whom were covered from head to toe with abaya-like black garments, some with brightly colored embroidered patterns on them. The Rough Guide to Morocco says that Erfoud gives one "a first, powerful sense of proximity to the desert, with frequent sandblasts ripping through the streets." We arrived in this normally dusty town during a time of unusually strong winds, and the coating of grit that quickly accumulated on my body, along with a  constant sense of impending danger to my eyes, made me immediately understand the benefit of full body coverage.

In a nutshell...

...a tiny, oversimplified nutshell.

Things I forgot to say in my previous post

I was in such a rush last night to get pictures of our trip to the Cascades d'Ouzoud up on my blog that only later did I realize I hadn't written about half of the things I had intended to. So here are some of those things, in no particular order:


- Even in places in Morocco where the landscape looks familiar (T and I have, on multiple occasions, been reminded of Wyoming and Montana), there are frequent reminders that I am in a foreign country. No matter how remote a road seems to be, there will always be pedestrians, hitchhikers, and people on donkeys traveling along that road. I often wonder where they're coming from and where they're going.

In remote locations, one is also likely to encounter people trying to sell things. When we got onto the mountain roads not far from Ouzoud, we started seeing people along the road holding up little bundles of fresh herbs and making a variety of mysterious gestures which we assume meant something like, "Please buy these herbs! I really need money. Don't you feel sorry for me?" And we did; we felt sorry for them.

Many of these people – many more than I would have guessed – were children, often very, very young children. As we drove, we discussed the pros and cons of stopping to buy some of the herb. (I think it was some kind of mountain thyme, but I'm not sure.) I imagine they couldn't have been selling the little bundles for more than one or two dirhams each, and I wonder what could possibly have been the maximum amount of money someone might bring home at the end of a long day of standing by the roadside. Seeing these people was a reminder both of how difficult the job situation is here (it's unimaginably worse than in the U.S., I guarantee) and of how hard people try to come up with ways of having even a tiny income.


- I should have taken the opportunity yesterday to spend a little more time explaining exactly what a riad is. Basically, a riad is a large, multilevel house with a central area that is open to the sky. Most of the riads I have stayed at (many have been converted into somewhat upscale bed and breakfasts) have had some form of covering on the rooftop terrace to provide some protection from the elements to the central patio/garden, but this is not always the case.

In the United States, indoor and outdoor spaces are usually carefully separated from each other; "indoor" and "outdoor" are mutually exclusive categories. This is not true in Morocco, and riads illustrate well the lack of a clear distinction between the two. As I mentioned in my previous post, the riad we stayed at has a full-sized orange tree growing in the middle of it. Above the orange tree, at the level of the rooftop terrace (another characteristic of a riad), a clear plastic tarp has been stretched to provide some protection from the rain (although there are a few inches on all sides that are not protected by the tarp, which means that one can get rained on while standing in certain places on the ground floor). At the center of the tarp is a large plastic tube that goes down to the base of the orange tree, so that when it rains the water follows the tube and waters the orange tree!

This lack of separation between indoor and outdoor means that, when the weather is nice, a riad is a lovely place for hanging out and relaxing. But when the weather is cold, the riad is also cold; many owners go to great lengths (and, I'm sure, expenses) to try to bring their riads up to Western standards of comfort regarding winter temperatures.

Season of happiness

I'm a fan of "happiness" season– mostly because it's more grammatical than "relax" season. I am, however, a little confused about how it lines up with the more traditional seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter. The scarf suggests that this is more of a cold-weather chocolate, but the bright green color on the scarf suggests spring. (It also suggests that the packaging designers couldn't be bothered to come up with a new layout for each of their limited edition flavors.)

Any guesses about what season will come next?

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.

Heidelberg

On New Year's Eve, AC's mother brought us fortune cookies. AC and IC had typical fortunes, bland and vague statements, not specific about the future, which I have completely forgotten.

But my fortune made me nervous. It said something like, "An adventure is coming." I got even more nervous when T read his fortune, something about "you will know the right way." I read these in combination to indicate that T was going to lead me on some crazy adventure, and I wasn't quite feeling up to an adventure at the time. Maybe it had something to do with the cold I had developed on our second day in Germany, or maybe it was related to Africa fatigue… I don't know.

The next day, T and I started to feel like our hosts needed a break from us, so we suggested that, on January 3, they could send us off somewhere on our own via public transportation. Instead, though, they loaded us into IC's car along with her TomTom and sent us off to Heidelberg. After a bit of a rough start (the TomTom led us to the center of town, where without a real map or any tourism information, we were a bit disoriented), we had an enjoyable day on our own.


View Larger Map

View of the town and the Neckar River from the castle

I went to Heidelberg knowing exactly two things about it: An American military base is located there, and the city hosts a colony of wild ringnecked parrots (and if you know me, you know which of these two things I was most excited about).


The town is very popular with tourists (but not, I think, due to its military or psittacine residents). When we first got there, I was hearing more English than German around me. I was happy to see a lot of Asian people (who don't often come to Morocco) and Asian restaurants. Thai food for lunch was an unexpected treat.

Rüdesheim and Eisenach

On our first day in Germany, after picking us up at the Frankfurt-Hahn Airport, AC took us to the town of Rüdesheim, a popular tourist destination and UNESCO World Heritage Site along the Rhine River. (On the map below, point A is the airport, point B is Rüdesheim, and point C is AC's house.)


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Famous "narrow" street in Rüdesheim (which doesn't really compare to the narrow, winding streets of the Fez medina!)

We didn't spend much time in Rüdesheim, but it was a good introduction to Germany, as we just walked leisurely around the town and then sat in a café with a view of the river and the sunset, drinking the biggest lattes I'd ever seen in my life.

Fondue, glass pickles, fire bowls, and other German things

During my senior year of high school, I was friends with a German exchange student, AC. After that year, I always thought it would be neat to visit him in Germany. This was a casual wish, though, with Germany on a long list of other places I "wanted" to visit, including Australia, India, and Hawaii. I don't think I ever really thought it would be possible for me to visit him, and I never had a strong sense of why I wanted to go to Germany or what I would even do there.

That was until I moved to Morocco. Now Frankfurt is just a 3 1/2 hour plane ride away (plus a couple of hours in a car). So at the end of December, T and I finally visited my friend AC in Rosbach, Germany. We spent close to a week with him and his wife IC and their two young children MC (boy) and MC (girl).

MC is just about ready to go to bed.

One of the great things about staying with a German family is that we got to learn some details of German culture we may not have been aware of otherwise. For example, because they took us to a New Year's Eve party with several of their friends, I now know that fondue is a fairly common New Year's Eve meal. It also seems that virtually everyone in the entire country sets off fireworks at midnight– a lot of fireworks. And while I thought staying at a New Year's Eve party until 3:00 AM was quite late, when we said good-bye at that time, we were the first ones to leave the party – probably because AC and IC's little girl had refused to be cared for by her grandparents and ended up accompanying us and thus needed to get home at a "reasonable" time. (Don't worry, she slept for a good portion of the party.)

SingStar fun

Another wonderful thing about visiting Germany (for English-speaking people, anyway) is that many Germans, especially those in the younger generations, are very comfortable with English and can easily switch back and forth between it and German. Virtually everyone at the New Year's Eve party knew English. At first, though, people seemed reluctant to speak to us, perhaps because we were strangers and because everyone (I think) is more comfortable speaking in his or her native language. As the night went on, though, more people were kind enough to talk to us. They were surprised to learn that we were not visiting from America, so the topic of how one ends up living in Morocco helped keep up the conversation.

It also helped when my friend AC broke out the PlayStation game SingStar. By the end of the night, even I had come out of my shell, and I was belting out Abba songs with IC as my teammate. Champagne seemed to loosen peoples tongues, and almost everyone was making comments about the game using English for our benefit.

Junk food

In one of my English classes on Monday, I wanted my two students to read a short (and, admittedly, pretty stupid and boring) passage from the textbook about the world's oldest woman who, at 109 years old, ate only junk food. I asked the students if they knew what junk food was, and they had totally blank looks on their faces. I started at the beginning, explaining the word "junk," and then gave examples of junk food, pointing out that many foods in this category are fast food and/or are high in sugar or fat. They still looked perplexed. I thought more examples would help, but each time I asked them about a food and asked if it went in the "junk food" or "not junk food" category, they got it wrong.

"Is fruit junk food?" They stared at me. "No, in the United States, we say it's not junk food. It's healthy food." I said. I did the same for hamburgers and pointed out that Americans consider just about anything from McDonald's to be junk food.

"Okay, what about fish?"

"That's junk food," one student said. Only if it's fried, I explained.

"Chocolate?"

"Not junk food," they agreed.

And then it hit me. What a ridiculous concept! (Yeah, I can be a little slow.) Food is what sustains and strengthens our bodies. The concept that some food is essentially garbage is bizarre and probably isn't culturally relevant in a country where many people are just happy to have full bellies. I remembered Michael Pollan's discussion in The Omnivore's Dilemma about Americans' weird relationship to food.

When I came home and told T about this, he reminded me that our Canadian friend Sarah, a kindergarten teacher at the K-12 school associated with the University, struggled for weeks to get the parents of her students to send "healthy" snacks to school. She spoke, with horror, of watching one child eat a snack consisting of chocolate pudding scooped out of the cup with Kit Kats. After my confused ESL lesson on "junk food," I wondered whether Sarah had been making false assumptions, like I had, that food can be objectively divided into transcultural categories of "good" and "bad," "healthy" and "unhealthy."

And I'm curious to know if any of you have had similar experiences when engaged in multicultural discussions about food.

Season of relax

My favorite season? Season of relax. And what better way is there to celebrate it than with Milka special edition "Season of Relax" chocolate?

Vegetarian Thanksgiving international potluck

 I became a vegetarian when I was 12 years old, and since then, holiday meals have generally consisted of a set of rather bland side dishes--vegetarian stuffing and gravy, green bean casserole, black olives, etc. (I don't even get to eat the mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie anymore, thanks to food allergies).

The food was eaten so quickly that I hardly had a chance to get a picture.

American, Canadian, Brazilian, Portuguese...maybe we can all get along!

But that wasn't the case this year! On Saturday, T and I hosted a vegetarian Thanksgiving international potluck dinner for a small group of vegetarians (and veg-sympathizers). This year's Thanksgiving dinner featured red lentil pumpkin soup, roasted root vegetables, spicy Indian chickpeas and vegetable korma (with precious basmati rice), curried lasagna, fruit cobbler and chocolate chip pumpkin bread.

Right now, I think I have what is traditionally called "the holiday blues," exacerbated by being so far from home and by a fairly high degree of uncertainty about my future. Because of this, yesterday's dinner was a much-needed opportunity for me to reflect on what I have to be thankful for. One thing I keep coming back to is the high quality of people I've had the great fortune to meet. I've written about this before, but it's worth reflecting on again. Every place I have lived, I've met remarkably intelligent, kind, generous, and interesting people. It's easy for me to dwell on how much I miss those I've left or who have left me, but I also need to be thankful for the wonderful people I have met here.

Before and after

Before

After

Soon after. Yum!

Melilla, Spain

Monday was Eid al Adha, or Eid Kbir, a big Muslim celebration which I wrote a little about last year (here and here). T had a few days off from teaching, and we decided weeks ago that we wanted to go somewhere that wasn't Morocco when the Eid break came. When I told my friend Michael this, he wrote (whether sarcastically or not, I don't know) that he was surprised I didn't want to stay and experience the Eid. The truth is, when called upon, I can drum up a great deal of respect, or at the very least tolerance, for a wide variety of cultural practices. But that doesn't mean I am interested in participating in or observing them. For goodness' sake, there are aspects of my own culture that I'm not interested in – like keeping track of celebrity marriages, divorces, and international adoptions, or watching American Idol. So if you're interested in reading more about Eid al Adha, you'll have to look somewhere else, like here.

Because I went to Spain.

Strange fruit

A significant aspect of experiencing a new culture is trying the new foods that come along with it. This is often something I miss out on because I'm a vegetarian with food allergies.

I often resort, then, to vicarious enjoyment of Moroccan foods. I will come home from the bakery with a new treat for T to try, and as he munches on it, I ask for reports on the flavor. I do the same thing when he eats a tasty looking tagine or bestilla.

The truth is, eating at Moroccan restaurants is not very exciting for me, as I usually get panini "fromage" (there's a reason why fromage is in scare quotes), mediocre pizza, a salad, or, if I'm lucky, lubbiya or bessara--both of which are satisfying but not particularly exciting.

If I want to try new foods in Morocco, I'm better off focusing on produce. I once had a rather interesting experience with desert "truffles" I bought on the side of the road outside of Rabat. (They were pretty tasty, but I found it impossible to get all of the sand out of them, which made for a texture displeasing enough that I decided trying them once was enough.) I've tried quince and some squash I don't even know the name of. I've learned how to cook fresh fava beans.

When we were walking around outside the Meknes Medina on Sunday, T and I saw several vendors selling some interesting looking fruit on sticks. We asked one of the vendors what the fruit was, and when he saw that his explanation meant nothing to us, he let us try it. The taste was pleasant enough, although not particularly impressive. It sort of reminded me of mulberries, but a little less sweet. Nevertheless, the fruit was something new to us, and it was cheap (one dirham for a stick), so we bought two sticks.

The fruit looked totally unfamiliar to me, but after we got home on Sunday, T was able to identify it in about five minutes. I don't think this fruit is cultivated in Morocco; my guess is that these trees are growing in people's yards or somewhere nearby their property, and since the fruit is edible, they're picking it and selling it when it's in season.

That's just a guess, though. In any case, it was fun to try something new, and finding that fruit was a reminder to me to keep my eye out for other new foods I can try.

Breakfast at the marché

Maybe it means that we are simple people, but T and I don't need a lot of excitement to be happy. One of the simple things that makes us happy is having breakfast at Café Igloo in the marché. We like going with friends, but we are almost as content to go by ourselves.

And we always order the same thing: I get nuss nuss (half coffee, half milk) and T gets atay. We both get meloui bsla (meloui with onions and "fromage," i.e. la vache qui rit). T gets an omelette, which is cooked in a tagine and comes with an entire loaf of fluffy white khobz. If we're feeling decadent, we will each get a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice. This breakfast will cost us about five U.S. dollars.

It's cheap. It's simple. And we both already know it's one of the things we will miss when we leave Morocco.

Road to Imilchil

In two previous posts, I mentioned a weekend trip to the towns of Midelt and Imilchil. Throughout most of the trip, I was very glad to be doing it at the same time that I thought I will never do this again.

One of the factors behind both of those thoughts was the road, specifically its length and quality. On Friday night, it only took us about three hours to get from Ifrane to Midelt. But on Saturday and Sunday, while we didn't have much distance to cover, our route was very, very scenic…and that means slow driving.

In fact, we were on such scenic routes that Google Maps doesn't even know they exist. The best I could do to show you our route was to place markers on a few of the towns that we drove through.


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Sven, Thea, Rachid, Abdul, and Josiah

In Midelt on Friday night, we stayed at Riad Villa Midelt, which I don't think is really a genuine riad, but it was nice anyway. The manager, Abdul, and his friend Rachid were very friendly and sat talking with us for a long time that evening as we had tea outside in the cool desert air. Later they served us dinner, and I had the best vegetarian couscous I have ever had.

The riad was in a quiet part of town. Rather than exploring Midelt on Saturday morning, we chose to have a leisurely breakfast before setting out for Imilchil.

All of the ceilings in the riad were covered with this intricately handcarved wood.

View of Midelt from our room at the riad

View of Midelt from the rooftop terrace

We set out for Imilchil a little after 10:30, and that's when things got really interesting.

From Nebraska

I haven't yet written about what T and I "did" for five weeks in Nebraska. That's mostly because we didn't do much that would be "blog worthy" or of general interest. But in case you're still wondering...

We "borrowed" our Senegal parrot, Mango, from the Nebraska Parrot Rescue. She remembered us immediately, and we had a great time with her.

 

This little dude, on the other hand, didn't seem to remember us at all. Sigh.