Exciting News!

Amber I found out where we will be serving for the next two years! Drum roll please…..We will be serving in the province of Ouarzazate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazat) known as the gateway to the Sahara and the pearl of the Moroccan Desert. It is located at the southern base of the High Atlas Mountains and is often considered the Hollywood of Morocco because of the many movies that are filmed in the region, among these are “Gladiator” and “Lawrence of Arabia”. If you’ve seen these movies, you should have some idea of the type and variety of scenery we will be encountering. I've been told by locals ere that our site will be rich with ishdign d tiyani (flowers and dates). Also, according to the guidebooks, we are very near to a plethora of magnificant casbahs, hiking trails and mountain biking (Peace Corps provides very nice bikes). Our site is not too far from the large metropolis of Ouarzazate and it is likely that we will go there often for internet and shopping as well as meeting with other volunteers. The other three volunteers from "Tarabut Hussein" have been placed in the province of Tisnit very near the ocean and just south of Agadir. We will miss them dearly in Ouarzazat, but ensha' allah, we will enjoy visiting them and surfing on the beaches near Tiznit. Meanwhile, we have just finished a language compitancy test and have only one more day of official language training. We still have this weekend in our current sites and then a few days for swearing in, but we should be headed to our new sites in less than two weeks! Can’t wait to let you know more when we get there!
P.S. If you happen to be a friend or relative who works in the film industry, you should consider working on movies filming in my area.

Taxis and Politics

A week ago, Tarabut Hussein traveled to the sizable town of Azilal and met up with other groups from our staj for a full day training on adult education techniques, behavior change mechanisms, and presentations/Q&A with some experienced currently serving volunteers. For our first break, volunteers scattered from the hotel entrance and found various snack stands and pastry stores before returning hands full to catch up with long lost friends from way back in Beni Mallal during our first week in country. The fare for that meal was most often nuts; either almonds, sugar-covered peanuts, or sometimes cashews, with the occasional sack of dates or raisins. Some people got coffee, and a few die-hards ran to the nearest establishment serving our new favorite reason to come to Azilal; the Avacado/Banana/Apple smoothy! This pale green, magical drink runs around 8-9 dirhams (about a dollar) and is served in a heavy glass mug which of course, you can take out of the store with you and return any time. That morning Amber and I skipped the smoothy and went with 5 dirham worth of sweet peanuts, which were weighed out and shoveled into a paper cone made out of 5th grade Arabic math homework. Literally, this cone was straight out of a workbook, complete with scribbled in answers and colored pencil drawings. I guess its good there giving away a little math lesson with each purchase. At lunch, we made our way to a cafe we were told would have turkey sandwiches. When we arrived and saw kafta (ground meat) in the display case with none other than a giant bottle of catsup and a small plastic toy hamburger, we promptly disregarded our turkey and ordered kafta sandwiches all around. As it turns out, what we received was not at all like the burgers that we had all been imagining. Instead, we got flat bread sandwiches with ground meat, onion, egg, tomato, sliced green olives, and melted American cheese. I ate the whole thing, but to this day I can’t decide if it was good or not. No bite was the same and only a few were delicious. Still I appreciated the experience and the ground meat. After another few hours of training, we headed over to the taxi stand which seemed different from usual. For some reason, all of the taxi drivers were way off on the side of the taxi lot in a group, while a large collection of confused passengers formed around the “kurtis” (these are the men that take the money and dole out passengers to the taxi drivers as seats fill up). The kurtis seemed stressed and tension among the passengers was growing rapidly. A trickle of taxis left the lot, but the further from Azilal your destination was, the less likely you were to get a ride. We watched in awe as one of the volunteers that has been in country for two years argued with kurtis and drivers over the ridiculous price tag for a seat to Marrakech. Despite her impressive language ability, she was still looking for a ride when we left for home. Luckily we didn’t have far to go and as it turned out, our driver just happened to live in our town so he was more than happy to take us there as his last ride of the night.
The next day, we found out that all the negative vibes at the taxi stand were due to a budding taxi strike in response to sweeping government mandates regarding taxi safety and regulations. Now this is based strictly on hearsay and snippets of French news, but it seems that some Moroccan government official (who may or may not have studied in the states) thought it appropriate to make significant changes to the codes and regulations that taxi drivers must abide by, including much harsher punishment for accidents and regulations banning taxis that are deemed too old. These regulations are probably in response to the lack of safety on Moroccan roads and may be very effective in saving lives and improving the development of Morocco, but needless to say, taxi drivers (most of whom own their own taxis which are often quite old) were not ready to augment their careers this drastically. In fact, the strike has been adopted by 19 transportation unions including buses and transits. Now, 9 days later, the country of Morocco has experienced the economic damage of vacant roads. Souqs and tahanuts across the country are deficient with no way of transporting produce and goods. The limited availability has increased prices and quality among produce in many places is dismal. This is especially tragic in a year which has seen one of the highest outputs of produce in Moroccan history. In response to the problems, unions and the officials today agreed on a 15 day hold on the strike to allow for negotiation. N’sha’ Allah, that will be enough time to settle on a compromise that saves lives and the economy too. Wish us luck!

Sleep and Underwear

The other day after dinner, my host sister had a difficult time asking us if we wanted to go to sleep. Having endured a long day, Amber and I had turned off the part of our brains that listen to other languages, so we did not recognize the question “Is tram a tgnm?” After an overly drawn-out explanation, we understood what she meant, so she threw us a bone, “n Mirikan?” (How do you say it in America?). “That’s easy. We say sleep” we retorted, to which our sister began rolling on the floor with laughter repeating the word “Sleep, sleep!”. Once she was semi-composed again, she pointer to her hip indicating that “sleep” in Tashlhite means “underwear”. Again she through us a bone and asked “How do you say sleep in America” to which we replied “Underwear”. The American “R“ is difficult for Moroccans to pronouns, so our sister said “Shukran, Undewayw Ifulki. Undewayw ifulki byzzzaf.”, which means “Thank you, Underwear is pretty. Underwear is very pretty.” This had us rolling too. I can only hope she remembers to pull that word out occasionally with the next volunteer that comes this way.

Music, Noise, and Dance

Music seems like a venue driven purely by the soul. As a musician and listener, I am hard pressed to identify what it is about a song or style of music that makes me appreciate it. It just fulfills some primordial desire. It feels good. Sometimes I will even play or hear a new song for the first time and it will resonate with me as if it a song I have always know but forgot about years ago. Based on these feelings, I would assume that music appreciation is a subconscious, instinctual response derived from a universal human trait, similar the world over. Unfortunately, I believe now that I was mistaken. In fact, it seems that people musical likes and dislikes are much more influenced by culture than by the human genome.
A few weeks ago I went against my better judgment and brought my guitar back to town with me. (By the way, big thanks again to Jimmy for parting with your travel guitar for my sake). So I brought it home and of course, before long, everybody wanted me to put on a show. On the first night, luckily, there was no time to go from house to house so the audience was meager. I pulled out the guitar and started tuning. All eyes were on me, and I was nervous about making them wait while I tuned. They, on the other hand, thought that my performance had begun, and graciously lauded my act. I was pretty reassuring for me. I thought “Wow, if they are enjoying the tuning so much, they will love it when I start actually playing”. Not true. When my tuning act was over and I started playing what I thought was real music the audience was silent. Awkward! Turns out musical taste doesn’t travel as easily as I thought.
The next day, I was summoned by neighbors to bring my guitar over and play for a large gathering or friends and neighbors. I made the short walk with my heart deep in my stomach at the thought of such a large perplexed and unsatisfied audience. When I arrived, all eyes were eagerly watching my every move; the man with the guitar. Slowly I pulled out the guitar pale with fear, but in a moment of clarity I passed the guitar to a village boy sitting to my right. Good move! He was ecstatic, and I was pleasantly avoiding shame. More importantly though, I gained a better understanding of Moroccan music. The guitar was passed around to a lot of kids that night, and they all played the guitar as if it were a percussion instrument. There was little or no concern with fretting, but a strong emphasis on strumming. It was consistent, fast, and loud. At first, I thought it sounded awful. Even worse when they brought out a large metal plate and spoon as accompaniment. But then somebody started singing in Arabic, and the three broken pieces began to form a whole. Still loud and a bit abrasive, but beautiful…and impressive. They may have turned my guitar into a chunking percussion instrument, but they made music in three part harmony the first time they were ever even shared a room with one. I did eventually play some music that night, but nobody was impressed until I resorted to tuning some more (To this day, when my host-sister Houda plays, she picks with one hand and cranks the tuning pegs with the other). When everybody finally got tired of the guitar, they put on some traditional Berber music. This really drove home the lessons I had learned that night. The music was made up of a large percussion section, one shrill and rhythmic violinist, and the occasional penetrating singing. With this music came spontaneous Moroccan dancing, which is like belly dancing mixed with club dancing. Another impressive skill, which technically as a male, I shouldn’t witness. Usually the woman in my village work hard to hide their figure by wearing multiple layers and loose bag-like dresses and jalabas. When dancing, however, they often tie a scarf around their hips with a knot to one side which becomes the source of gyration. Men dance too, but opposite sexes are careful not to mix so often times men dance together. Neither sex require a partner, but men dance together more traditionally face to face, whereas women gyrate next to each other in unison more like synchronized swimming. And for those of you wondering, no I still haven’t been forced to dance yet. Men in Morocco maintain the luxury of not having any pressure to dance. During weddings, a mans role is often just to sit in the background sipping tea and eating cookies. That works for me!

Time in Morocco

As with many aspects of culture, America and Morocco are distinctly different regarding their understanding of time. The way this is described in textbooks is that America is a “event-focused” culture while Morocco is a “person-focused” culture. In other words, in America people conform to and work within schedules events. Conversely, in Morocco, events are developed around the needs and schedules of people. A great example of this is that stores in Morocco do not have set hours (although I still look for them on doors to no avail). Rather, stores open and close when the owner arrives, and when he feels like leaving. If the owner wakes up late, has a long breakfast, or runs into a friend on the walk to work, the store will open later without concern. Moroccan time can also be described as non-linear. For example, when our friend at the T’Hanut opens shop, he may easily serve three customers at once. Unlike in the States where people form a line at a counter, here, But’hanuts smoothly multitask getting and giving money and goods to multiple people at a time. Note to self: if you wait behind somebody in line in Morocco, you will never get to the counter. As a result of this nonlinear activity, Moroccan time is much more fluid. Getting a taxi is another good example. Since taxis only leave when they are full, a person may find that they are last person to fill a taxi and leave right away, or they may sit at the taxi stand for hours waiting for the rest of the taxi to fill up. One must be flexible when a commute can easily double or triple in duration based on luck. One must also be careful how they describe things in relation to time. Recently, I found this out the hard way. We have been told in our language class that the common phrase “Men B3ad” (the 3 is a sound that doesn’t exist in English) means “later”. This can be a very helpful phrase when used correctly. The other day however, I discovered that “later” is not a sufficient translation. After three weeks of only cold water bucket showers in the bit l’ma, I was dieing for a shower and getting impatient, particularly because the last week has been uncomfortably cold, especially at night when I would normally bath. Under these conditions, I can’t find the personal strength to dowse myself with freezing cold water. Finally when I got home from school one day, I said to my host mother in broken language, “Is okay? I want hot water”. She gestured to the soup boiling over the burner and said something I didn’t really understand, but took to mean “I can’t because I’m using the burner/pot right now“. To ease her mind I said “Waxxa, Mashi Mushkil, Men B3ad (okay, no problem, later) which to me meant “when you are done making soup”. Two disappointing days later, and still filthy, I was forced to ask my language teacher for help. After some heated discussion with my host-sister, it was discovered that because I said “men b3ad” they assumed I didn’t need a shower for a week or so. Rather than "later" they thought I meant "eventually" when what I really wanted to say was "right now! Please, for the sake of everyone around me, right nooooow!". Lesson learned; time and especially time expressions are very relative. Luckily, that night I got a shower and I even had another one this morning! All is well.

The "Beat"

You know how cops in the states have a beat. Well we volunteers have that here in Morocco too, but spell it differently. Here we spell it “Bit” which is short for “Bit L’ma”. L’Bit is stolen from Arabic and means room. Bit L’ma is a toilet room, and for almost all of us in the bled(rural areas), this is just a small room with two foot indicators and a hole in the ground. Also known as a Turkish toilet, this is perhaps one of the most feared aspects of serving in Morocco for many volunteers. When someone has to visit the Bit L‘ma, it is customary to excuse yourself and say “hashak” after you have mentioned where you are going. Hashak is a phrase expressing apology for mentioning or doing something undesirable. You can also say it after you mention a dog or a donkey, while you are washing your hands, or god forbid, if you were to fart “hashak”. Among volunteers, the “hashak” is unnecessary, but is often added for good measure. Among Tarabut Hussein, we have borrowed the term used by cops in the states. When it’s time to go, we just say, “I’m walkin’ the beat” and everybody is savvy. This also seems a satisfactory euphemism, because as with policing, going to the Bit is no easy task. I am proud to say that I have finally mastered it, but I am not as proud to say how long it took me to figure out the finer details. And in case your wondering, no we don’t use TP. A luxurious Bit will have a bucket and a facet. More primitive Bit’s will have just a bucket which you must remember to fill up prior to evacuation. Either way, I am happy to report that the water actually does a very good job and I get to feel all pretentious about how little water and paper I’m wasting. Yeah! So how did I learn? Well as you might expect, most of the time, its what we in the Peace Corps call SDL or self-directed learning. We did have a Bit session as part of our training in Beni Mallal though. Men and women were split into two groups and taught separately. Men where taken outside where a BIC pen on a string was taped to our backs. We then stood on two foot markers drawn on the floor and had to squat so that the pen landed in the tiny opening of a liter water bottle. This was very useful for aim, but cleanliness was mostly overlooked. H’humdullah, all is well on my beat these days.

The American Image

Morocco is a confusing and dramatically diverse country. Multiple languages mingle within most utterances, and while only about 30% of the population will admit it, between 70% and 80% understand and/or speak at least one of the 3 major indigenous dialects. Contradiction and hypocrisy are inherent in Moroccan culture, which has borrowed extensively from a variety of diametrically apposed religions and cultures. A simple example; the two most influential languages of Morocco are Arabic and French. People who are familiar with Arabic know that it is a language confused by a lack of vowels. Conversely, one look at a the French translation on the back of your fancy shampoo bottle will show that French has an addiction to excessive vowel usage that is downright abusive. More complex examples exist within the unusual mixtures of Islam and indigenous ways of life. The fact is that the successful inclusion of Islam in Morocco was directly related to its ability to be flexible in terms of cultural incorporation.
The most recent ingredient to the Moroccan tagine(melting pot) of culture, is what most Americans call “globalism“. To my surprise, it turns out that in many parts of the world, this movement is called “Americanism“, and Morocco is fully exposed. As with other cultural annexing within Morocco, Americanism has created many situations which seem to lack reason. For example, while many towns lack water and electricity, and almost all rural homes have only a Turkish toilet, no sink, and no shower, most houses have a satellite dish broadcasting tens of channels in multiple languages including many of the TV shows and movies that we take for granted in the States translated into either standard Arabic or French. In fact, as I write this, “Garfield the Movie” is being broadcast in French in my living room. So how does this cultural exchange effect Moroccan perception of Mericanis(Americans)? Well there is one more important impact to consider first. You see, the Peace Corps has been serving in Morocco for almost as long as it has been in existence. It is also one of Peace Corps biggest and most successful programs. Additionally, Morocco isn’t really that big. Morocco is comparable in size to California. For these reasons, Peace Corps has been a significant influence on the Moroccan psyche regarding American culture. This is especially true in the rural areas where other cultural impact is less severe. For example, some rural villagers who have only met Americans working with the Peace Corps often believe that most Americans speak Berber as a second language. Volunteers have been asked, “Did you learn Tashlhite in high school or primary school?”. Opinions run the gambit depending on how much exposure a person has had. On our last visit to the souq, we were approached by a man on a donkey who asked us why we weren’t riding donkeys. We replied that we didn’t have donkeys to which he replied with a smirk, “Don’t you Americans own the world?“. This same perspective also makes it hard for Americans (and French) to haggle a fair price at a souq. The more privileged urban Moroccans of Rabat and other big cities have a slightly different view of Americans. They are very familiar the American lifestyle as portrayed in the media. They are also well educated about our history and politics (perhaps better than most of us), and they have witnessed, for better or for worse, the American tourist as well as numerous groups of Peace Corps volunteers traveling through for diversion. Recently, I witnessed the result of these facts. Every night, my family watches the same three shows on TV before and during dinner. The first is a Turkish melodrama dubbed in standard Arabic, the second is a Moroccan-made sitcom in darija, and the third is the nightly Moroccan news in French. A few nights ago, I entered the TV room and was surprised to hear English coming from one of the characters from the Moroccan sitcom. I watched to find that he was the American brother of the father on the show and it was clear that he was characterized as a bit of a clown. He wore slicked-back voluminous sculpted hair, a baggy bohemian-style white linen suit, and of course, some Ray-bans. He immediately started throwing the peace sign with both hands saying “Peace” to everyone he greeted. Then he lavished his sister-in-law with compliments on her beauty (which is a big no-no in Muslim culture), and he is observed stretching and lounging around the house where he seems to be an unappreciated guest. Perhaps I’m sensitive, but the more I watched, the more it seemed to me that this was a caricature of Peace Corps volunteers in Morocco. There is one scene where he finds his cousin with bloody wounds from a soccer accident and treats them by giving the boy a glass of orange juice. Before long, French police with guns storm the house and it is discovered that this American is in fact a spy. In the end, the American is saved from the French police, who also turn out to be spies, by the Moroccan police who relieve his hosts of his presence. This may seem like a stretch for an American reading this blog, but most PC volunteers are accused of being a spy before the end of their service. This is partly because we are always writing in our journals which is very unusual here. Also, the concept of volunteering does not typically exist here so they wonder what other purpose we would have for leaving our families and affluent jobs and learning there language if not to spy. Perhaps even more damning to our perception, is a lingering distrust based on a very specific historical event. When France invaded Morocco, they first sent in doctors to infiltrate villages and towns. They later used information gathered from these doctors to create a successful campaign. With that in their past, I can sympathize with Moroccan distrust. Also, I know that one of the three goals of the Peace Corps is to facilitate cross-cultural understanding and I am looking forward to being a positive example of America as many of the wonderful people I have encountered have cultivated my admiration of Morocco.