Dining With Strangers

In the Peace Corps, the name of the game is “Talk to Strangers”, particularly in the first few months in your site. Lucky for us, Moroccans are renowned for talking to strangers despite the dichotomy of often being shy. One must be careful however, because a simple greeting in Morocco can and will quickly turn into an invitation for tea. Amber and I have been invited for tea numerous times since arriving in Morocco and most of the time we except regardless of how much teeth decaying tea we have already consumed (note: Moroccan tea is so sweet and minty, its like drinking toothpaste. Still though, it can be enjoyable and the coffee w/milk is fantastic with sugar or without). Most of the time, in fact, the invitation will come before or in lieu of a salutation. Amber and I: Hello, how are you today? Moroccan: Come to my house and have tea and bread! Its only once your shoes are off and you are eating their homemade bread that they ask you how you are doing and if you have a name. For a shifty-eyed, standoffish American like myself, this can be a bit hard to get used to. Still though, we have been taking every opportunity to meet our community by excepting these invitations whenever we have the time. Last week, one such invitation caught us off guard when we visited our local post office to open a post office box and were ushered through a magic door into a plush back room. The man doing the ushering was the local post master who actually lives in the house connected to the post office. As a result, the magic door had taken us into his living room, which was complete with mahogany furniture, gold-guilded cups, and a green velvet tablecloth. Waiting for us in the room were the director of the local high school and a teacher who is the president of one of the local Associations. Somehow they all spoke English and were very excited to meet us. Soon tea had arrived accompanied with fancy plates of nuts, cookies, and pastries, and fresh picked mint sprigs to add to our glasses as needed. As we ate, more people arrived; another school director from our duwar, our nurse and counterpart at the hospital, and eventually, one of our new language tutors who works at the cyber owned by two of the men previously mentioned. When the tea was gone, we all got up and started saying our goodbyes, but before we left, the postmaster gave us a tour of the rest of his house (not the post office part). We thanked him again and made our way to the door, but then awkwardly asked, “is it okay if we finish getting our post office box before we leave?“. One of my favorite Moroccan experiences occurred on a walk from Tanant to my training village of Ait Majden. Along the path between the two towns, there is an old building where olive oil is made, hidden in the trees like something out of Hansel and Gretel. One day while walking by, we noticed a man standing outside the hut. We said hi, and he motioned for us to come to him. With a grin, he proceeded to show around the dim shack to each stage of the oil making process. When we had seen the whole process, he grabbed an empty coke bottle from the floor, knelt to the ground and carefully filled the container with fresh, first press oil from a box in the ground where the oil gathers as it is pressed. He handed me the bottle and refused payment. “This is a gift“, he said as he motioned us back onto our path. Not all encounters have been this pleasant however. Last Friday I had one of the strangest experiences yet. Friday in Morocco is a holy day of celebration, which generally means people will be more likely to go to the Mosque for the special Friday prayer, and that they will probably eat a traditional couscous meal. Though my host family is unique in that they do not eat couscous on Friday, they do eat lunch at roughly the same time as other families which falls around 1:30 or 2pm. On this day, I found myself unwittingly walking home alone (Amber was at home feeling under the weather) at around 1:15pm, trying to make it home in time for lunch just as the midday mosque service was getting out. This meant that I looked particularly foreign walking through all the white robes, and that I probably looked like a man without a home in which to be served couscous. Having passed the majority of the group, my thoughts turned else ware until I heard an old man yelling behind me. I assumed at first that he was talking to somebody else until he said “Bonjour”. I turned to see what he wanted and said “Salaam“, to which he gestured for me to walk back to him. When I got near him, he invited me for tea and bread, and though I tried every way I could to tell him I was already running late for lunch, he would not take no for an answer. I literally would have had to have turned my back on the old man with the white robes and pious hat and walk away while he called to me to come back. Instead, I bit the bullet and prepared myself for a glass of toothpaste. His house wasn’t far off the road, and when we entered his eating room, he shooed his wife (or daughter maybe?) into the other room and offered me a seat on the rug at the knee-high table. A few moments passed by with some incoherent utterances, and then his wife/daughter arrived with a huge platter of couscous. This is not tea?! I thought, but it was too late and he pointed to a crusty spoon, which had been on the table when we got there, and said “Eat”. Luckily, his wife reappeared long enough to bring two fresh spoons before disappearing again. The man offered me my choice of spoon and we began our feast. Moroccan couscous is made with a generous bottom layer of the grain, which is then piled with well-cooked vegetables and crowned with meat in the center of the dish. Then juice from the cooked vegetables and meat are drizzled over the top. Traditionally, it is eaten with the hands, but this is a skill that takes years to master, so spoons are used by foreigners and the less adventurous locals. The meat in the middle is saved until everybody is done with the rest of the food and then it is dispersed by the head of the house to the people eating. As I ate the couscous and vegetables (which were excellent), I couldn’t help but notice the unfamiliar shaped hunk of meat sitting in the center of our meal. I still don’t know what it was! When I put my spoon down, the old man collected the meat from the middle, and with a knife, carefully cut equal chunks to disperse between the two of us. It looked like skin, but it was thick and chewy, and had a mild fishy taste. It also reminded me of a foot, but I can’t actually say why. In any event, I ate two chewy bites before offering the rest back to the communal center. I insisted that I was full, which was enough for the old man, but didn’t stop his wife from bringing a plate of sliced melon and banana. The truth was that I wasn’t full, so I enjoyed some fruit and tried without luck to make small talk with my host. When the fruit was done, he asked if I wanted tea, and when I refused, he said “okay, you can go now” and we both stood up. I thanked his wife, said goodbye and the door was soon closed behind me. In all, the encounter took about 30 minutes, and though I was a bit late, I made it home just in time for lunch. Lucky me right!?