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.)

How I came to be walking down the streets of Meknes with a woman holding a plastic jar with pieces of my stomach in it

This blog entry contains some personal medical information. Although I am providing this information for the purpose of illustrating what I think are interesting cultural differences, if this sort of thing makes you uncomfortable, you can skip reading it. Rest assured that, despite the provocative title, nothing dangerous happened to me today, and my health is relatively stable.



I have hinted in previous posts that my health has not been at its best since coming to Morocco. I haven't written much about it because…well…I didn't think it was really that interesting.

But in some ways, I guess it is, and maybe writing about it is relevant to the purpose of this blog. Definitions of and attitudes toward health and sickness are culturally bound. (An example with which many Americans might be familiar is the changing stance of the American Psychological Association on homosexuality.) The procedures used for identifying and treating illness – from how one makes a doctor's appointment to options for laboratory work – also change from culture to culture. The theoretical frameworks from which doctors approach diagnosis and treatment may be different, and the social roles of doctors and "patients" are also culturally defined.

I am someone who has always found medical systems difficult to understand and navigate, even with parents who are nurses, even in my own culture, even communicating with people who speak the same native language I do. As I wrote about previously, all of those things that cause difficulty for me in the U.S. cause more difficulty here.