Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Observations

Moroccans invented the fourth meal, not Taco Bell. They often eat anywhere between 9:30-12 at night. Most meals take a long time to cook. Couscous, tajine, the pressure cooker and even rice sometimes will take a good two hours to be ready. By 9pm, most if not all the family will be asleep, exhausted from the day’s activities and yet they still insist on eating ridiculously late. I’ve noticed that by 8 or 8:30pm the girls in my family are cranky and tired. That’s when we have most of the tears and arguments. You can see the tiredness in their faces. Simplest solution would be to have dinner earlier, but this either is too much of a tradition, too much of a routine, I don’t know. I understand that around dusk is when most people are out and about, sitting outside and socializing. So dinner won’t be prepared until after this, around 8 or so. It’s unfortunate because half the time the girls refuse to be woken up to eat dinner (who would blame them) but they are awfully small for their age. We eat lots of carbohydrates. Yesterday we had bread, bread, tea, couscous with some vegetables, bread, tea, and rice with milk. Change comes slowly and Moroccan has definitely showed that to me. I consider myself to be a pretty laid back and patient person, and I have even been tested. Hopefully with some more time, I can help instill a better sense of a well balanced diet. People here are not overweight or obese, but there is something to be said to have a nutritious meal.

1. Moroccans have a “Last Comic Standing” type of show out of Rabat, and it looks exactly like the one we have. They also have dance shows with dance groups competing against each other, as well as the table of judges that act and speculate like the ones we have in the US.

2. There is a huge discrepancy between the city and the country. The people look, act and of course speak different languages. What is painful to watch is to see how some of the people from the city acts towards their countryside neighbors. They look down at them, claim and celebrate their culture as their own but do not respect them.

3. There was a ton of trash in Ouaouizaght because it was much more of an affluent town and people had money to spend on candy and snacks and would throw the trash on the ground afterwards. The people of Tizguine have little money and there is little trash here, thus the area is much cleaner and prettier. Ouiouazaght even had a trash service.

4. Little girls are the same across the board. They play house and giggle. They can be mean to each other and exclude each other, they can be catty and deceptive.

5. Big girls are the same across the board. They size each other up. Gossip about each other and at the same time can find a great sense of comfort from each other.

6. I have watched more original episodes of Looney Toons than ever before. Voice dub-overs are hilarious. Somehow Smurfs have also made an impression in Morocco. Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles, Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony are also popular, it’s like I’ve gone back in time to the early 90s.

7. I don’t know when people bathe but my family is getting ripe… yet, I feel like an asshole when I ask for hot water for my one bucket bath a week.

8. We wash our hands before most big meals, with warm water. After the meal we use the soap. I don’t understand it either. Yet, for the most part, people seem to be healthy. At the same time, access to regular healthcare is unheard of. The father of my current host family passed away three years ago from cancer. It was too late by the time he went to the hospital in Marrakesh. I also see lots of lazy eyes, crossed eyes, clubbed feet, bad teeth, etc.

9. The dentist is someone in town with a pair of pliers. No medicine, no local anesthetics. Most people are out of work for a week or more. Most people are terrified to go to the “dentist,” I know I would be too. Lots of times the tooth gets to be so bad that it is the last resort. My first host mom had all of her teeth removed. It is an expensive process. They had the money for it. She now wears dentures and I am pretty sure she has somehow managed to start rotting them out too. You should have tried her tea. It was syrup. The outside of the glass would stick to your hand after she was done pouring. It was a little disgusting to say the least. She watched me brush my teeth everyday, I told her about it. Then she showed me her gums and I shut up. That was scary too.

10. So grandma put something into the water jug that we all drink out of. In the summer, they wrap an old, sewn-together sweater that they keep damp, around the outside of the jug. It keeps the water cool. She shows me a vial of red liquid and I smell it. It has the odor of barbque sauce, no joke. A little sweet, a little spicy. I thought it was going into the couscous. Once she opened it and poured some into the jug, a rich almost metallic odor wafted up to me. I have no idea what the stuff is but it makes the water taste terrible. They call the jug their “berber refrigerator” and insist that I drink from it. I thought I was doing good drinking buttermilk, I think I will abstain from the special water.

11. I haven’t used toilet paper in the past three months.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Taxis

On my way into Ait Idir this morning at 5am to help with a health lesson with a fellow volunteer, I sleepily took into account of my surroundings and made a few mental notes:

Most taxis are in the same shape… 5 minutes away from breaking down. The grande taxis are usually a sedan (Mercedes) or station wagon with additional seats in the back. A taxi isn’t full until there are three people sitting upfront (including the driver) and four people squeezed in the backseat. The station wagons can squeeze an additional three people in the very back seat. Kids don’t really count as people and they usually sit on the laps on the adults.

Taxi drivers remove the handle to roll the windows down, sometimes they have the handle upfront and you can ask for it to roll the window down. This is rare. Seatbelts get in the way so they are often removed. There is a misconception that the air makes people sick and so they keep the windows up, despite the soaring temperatures. Often the speedometer is broken, and you can guesstimate the speed (usually ridiculously fast). The dashboards are colorfully decorated with rugs and fringe and stickers. Usually prayer beads or a cd inscripted with passages from the Koran hangs from the rearview mirror.

Before we left this morning, the taxi driver kicked each of the tires to check their inflation, I thought this was quite humorous but kept my mouth closed. Taxis typically try to start on a downhill because the rarely start on the first time. It’s not uncommon to see a few men push a taxi to get it started…

I ate a mystery meat last night in the couscous. It was from the head of the cow, I found out later from the kids in my host family. . After my host mom had left to give the leftovers to our neighbor, I asked the kids what the meat was, and they burst out laughing. Mohammad was saying, “Ur-thili! Ur-thili!” meaning “It’s bad! It’s bad!” It was tough meat and had small white spikes on one side, so I thought it was the taste buds from the tongue. These spikes were hard to chew and so I swallowed the pieces whole and they kinda hurt. It was by far the most interesting meat I have had so far—the list keeps expanding, kidneys, heart, intestines, cartilage from cow ears…

Still alive :)

Beggings

I apologize for the delay. Unfortunately, I have had little opportunity to use my computer or access internet. Internet access can be difficult and slow. I haven’t wanted to pull out the computer for many good reasons during my homestay, not only does it scream “touch me!” to little hands, it also is a huge luxury (no matter what country you are in) and there are some things better left alone.

From the beginning, we landed in Casablanca and boarded two large travel buses from the airport, all 61 of us. Our stage has the oldest volunteer yet to serve Peace Corps, she is 84 years old and a great-grandmother. She is by far the sweetest lady in the world and incredibly nimble and quick for her age. We also have another volunteer who is in his early 60s who has served two previous terms for Peace Corps and was successful in both of them. He is a great resource and easy to talk to as well as always prepared (you never know what is going to happen). The majority of us are in our mid-20s, having graduated college and entered the workforce but wanted something more. We also have two couples serving, and it seems like an awesome thing to do with the person you plan on spending your life with, something that will forever be yours to reminisce. Our stage had two groups, Health and Environmental. The next group will come in September, they will be Small Business Development and Youth Development. The SBD and YD groups typically get placed in larger towns where the population would benefit more-so. Health and Environmental are placed in more rural areas, in small communities out in the country. At this point in time, the majority of PCVs serving in Morocco have running water and electricity. There are a few still that have to go to a local well and treat their water or have no electricity, but they are few and far between. My community is in the Gorges Dades, which tends to be a vacation hotspot for adventurous French tourists. It is a beautiful area that resembles parts of Utah and Arizona with its huge desert-like mountains but contracted with the river that cuts through the gorge. On either sides of the river are fields that are harvested, and sitting above them are the small communities. The road follows the river. Occasionally when it rains, there are landslides and the river floods the fields. This can be incredibly devastating to the communities that can be blocked by the hazardous conditions.

I originally stayed in Ouaouzight, a town in the Azilal province of approximately 14,000 people. We arrived in site, all 7 of us and our Language Coordinating Facilitator, Fatoum. Blake, James, Joseph, Falisha, Kaytea, Melissa and I were distributed out to our new host families! I was picked up by a woman smaller than me. Berber women tend to have a certain look: high cheek bones, dark, round eyes, and a caramel brown complexion. Depending on the region of the country (GENERALIZATION), the population gets darker or lighter in skin color. The people of Ouaouizight/Azilal seem to be fairer in complexion than the Ourzazate region (which is to the south). Of course, this makes sense seeing that the French and Spanish influenced the area closer to the coast while populations of middle Africa traveled through the Sahara to get to Morocco. There is some discrimination here regarding race. Darker persons are more discriminated than lighter skinned ones (influence of colonization?). The Berber people were the original inhabitants of Morocco, some were Nomadic and went from mountain to mountain grazing their livestock and some set up small communities. Some of the people in my community still have relatives that live in the caves above our site, it is fascinating.

As Peace Corps Volunteers, we too, are faced with discrimination. Typically if you are a young, white female you get “cat-calls” from guys everywhere you go it seems like. Mistaken as French tourists, we get a good number of sleazy “bonjour gazelle!” and the harassment varies depending on the situation. Of course, even the slightest things we take for granted are taken as reasons to talk to us. Women here cover their heads with headscarves and rarely let their hair show, some of the younger population will have it pulled back and wear a headband. Wearing your hair down and loose invites unwanted attention. Tight clothing is unacceptable, the looser the better, nothing low cut or in the least bit provocative. Wearing make-up is also mistaken as a desire for attention. Where I feel like we like to look a certain way, look presentable, or our usual selves, this is too much. I no longer wear make-up and am having to readdress my wardrobe. Its annoying but necessary.

PCVs are all shapes and sizes and from all different backgrounds. One night in Ourzazate after stopping by the Super Marche to grab a few things for the long ride to site the following morning, we ran into some friendly HCNs (Host Country Nationals), who started asking us where we were from and the like. After being introduced to Nini, a beautiful Asian girl, he starts yelling, “Jackie Chan! Jackie Chan!” and doing ridiculous karate-chop-like moves. He looked ridiculous and did not realize how incredibly offensive he was. Then he saw Naomi, a tall beautiful mixed girl and called her a “basket woman,” and continued making fun of the two. Luckily, together, they burst out laughing and started walking away, affectionately calling each other “Basket Woman” and “Jackie Chan”. My dear friend Falisha, from Ghana, and of Indian descent, has been harassed in a variety of ways, from being called “Hindu” to having people assume she is Muslim, her host mom even told her that she “could see the Prophet Mohammad’s face” in her face. I feel like their discrimination is more painful than ours sometimes, but I guess it all depends on the situation, how you are feeling, what’s been pressing on your mind, stress level, etc.