I've got my back to this town

Well, here I am at my last blog entry... how has it come to this? I leave Fes tomorrow for Casablanca, where I'll crash for a night, then fly out of the Casa airport to the Netherlands, then take the longest flight of my life to Minnesota (9 hours!), THEN to the good ole Tarheel State, land of the Longleaf Pine; in other words, HOME! I am SO excited to go back, to see my family and friends, to eat (as I've mentioned -- I'm restraining myself from going into further detail), but at the same time I hate the thought of leaving.

For the past three days Fes has been in a high state of excitement. Yesterday was Throne Day, the anniversary of Mohammed the 6th's ascension, which he celebrated in this very city! His wife is from Fes, and this is a former capital of Morocco, but other than that I'm not sure why he came here and not Rabat. But anyway, this means that the city is spick and span clean, there have been frenzied groups of workers all over the city all week, and for the past three days there have been concerts, parades, and general merriment. It's impossible not to feel the excitement even if Moroccan royalty has very little to do with me - there are Moroccan flags lining all the main streets, enormous portraits of Mohammed the Sixth interspersed between them, fountains working like they've never worked before, lights, and all the restaurants prepare their best just in case the king steps in. 

Classes weren't let out, which made my professors angry (it's like working on the fourth of July), but in between classes I managed to just miss the king and his retinue's appearance on the big boulevard near ALIF, go to a concert and watch Moroccan men/boys dance a Berber-Tektonik-Arab mix of dances, and watch fireworks last night from the roof. The fireworks were kind of funny - we watched them from around our neighbor's laundry, hanging out to dry on their roof, smack in the middle of our view. Though the show was obstructed, we could still see some, and more fun was to hear the crowds of people from Place Bab Bou Jaloud (a huge concert/meeting space nearby) and the kids on the roofs all around us shouting and whistling after particularly great bursts of color.

I knew before I embarked on this journey that six weeks would pass quickly, but this is just ridiculous. I hate to leave and I'm ready to go back at the same time! My guess is I'm going to split in half at the airport terminal on Saturday morning.

For now, I sign off.

whooooOOAAAAaaaoooh, tainted love, whoooooOOAAAaaaooh BAM BAM

ONE NIGHT I was loitering in the kitchen looking at spices and, hey! My white shirt found the saffron! I tried to brush it off, then realized I had saffron on my fingers and was effectively reproducing a Kline painting. What a Moroccan way to go to your end, shirt.

INTERNET ACCESS has reached the Benyoucef family. This means Omaima is always listening to angsty French songs on headphones and singing along very passionately, very off-key. One time I looked over at her and she was swaying in her seat, shaking her index finger to the music. Pretty funny, but I didn't dare laugh; at twelve, Omaima takes herself very seriously.

SLEEPING CONDITIONS I've already touched on - it's impossible to do more than doze unless it's between the hours of midnight and six AM (heat, three TV's, people in the street, music, construction trucks, drills, Ariz the barking dog, the three squawking pet birds, noisy pigeons outside my window). Well, today Hamid told me, clearly expecting excitement, that he's going to get a talking parrot. After a moment of tunnel vision, I wheezed, "You know, those things can live thirty years." Hamid nodded appreciatively. "That would be good." Let's just hope the parrot enters after I exit.

THIS may actually bring the definition of "awkward'" to a whole new level. Jeannie met a friendly Fassi guy (Jamal) on the train five weeks ago, and she figured it was a great opportunity to make a Moroccan friend. They exchanged email addresses. His first few emails were ambiguously flirtatious, but Jeannie figured it was just his pseudo-French manner. Then he invited her to get coffee. I came along like a frowning, beefy-armed matron from a Dickens novel to ensure that things would be decidedly platonic. Then there was another email, which was slightly more romantic, but Jeannie figured if she was clear about her intentions there shouldn't be an issue. When he invited her to coffee again, she told him I was coming, too. 

Jamal enters the ALIF garden, bachelor cousin from Sefrou in tow, both men dressed to the nines. Jeannie hastily invites along our friend Michael. We end up at the nicest cafe in Fes. I know nothing about either of these guys, and due to language barriers group conversation is out of the question. Michael is stuck precariously at the end of the table, and whenever he speaks the two Moroccan men's eyes glaze over. Every topic of conversation bombs. Jeannie freaks out  and, putting her hands on the table, exclaims, "Well! Conversation's not going too well, so I'm going to go to the bathroom!", leaving Michael and I to examine the faux-alligator seat cushions. I order a 25 Dh sandwich (at a sandwich stand it would cost 4) and Jamal and his cousin don't let me pay. We FINALLY leave, after an hour and a half.  Jeannie is mortified.

Incredibly, that night Jamal texted, called four times, AND left a voice mail with Jeannie to tell her he just wants to hear her voice. She has since, with the clearest language possible in polite society, set him straight.

I LEAVE in seven days. Since I am sick AGAIN (though not as bad as last time) I am mostly looking forward to being able to eat with grotesque abandon without serious consequences. And when I say "grotesque" I really mean it. If you live on the Eastern seaboard, lock your pantry and turn off all your lights on August 2nd! After twenty hours of international transit and a month and a half away from pasta (cous cous is good but not the same!), I cannot be held responsible for what I might do.

Marriage Proposals and Sandstorms; or, the night a bug almost took my life

First of all, Jeannie's blog is here and the entry from July 9 is hilarious and, as a plus, a microcosm for pretty much everything that's happened in the past three weeks.

AND ALSO this weekend we headed out to the Sahara via long hours winding through Morocco on a bus. The trip there was fascinating in itself - there were some beautiful views and SWEET ruins that made me very excited. Seeing crumbling watchtowers along all the ridge lines was spooky. And then we got to our first hotel, some hours outside the desert, and discovered that someone had put us in a resort. What a whip-lash inducing second take THAT was. But don't worry, for all the catering to Westerners, I still was told to change when I entered the pool-side restaurant at 9 AM with a swimsuit and coverup on (no pants?!?!?). 

The trip the next day took us to a hotel where we waited in a room full of windows for the camels to ready. Through said windows we watched a sandstorm whip the bulrushes into a frenzy and, at times, obscure everything from sight. The undercurrent of worried murmuring rose and fell in proportion to how hard the wind blew.  But by go-time the wind had died down to a mere gale, so we journeyed out on our camels, in caravans of five or six, each led by a Berber guide dressed in blue. The ride out was bumpy, to say the least, but the landscape made up for it. The endless dunes made it seem like we were on Mars, and in the pauses in the sandstorm (sand in hair, eyes, teeth, mouth, ears) it was completely, positively silent.

That night we stayed in an oasis, sheltered from the wind by a dune that covered my whole field of vision lengthwise and a good three-quarters of it height-wise. I only felt hot in the tents, when the dry wind couldn't wick away my sweat before I even knew I was perspiring. That night we had the best meal I've ever had (I was starving) and danced to Berber drums. Some friends and I also had a great conversation with one of our guides, named Imbarik, who had been working this job for 9 years. 

In case you missed that, I had a conversation in Arabic with someone who didn't speak English. 

For those of you who have just joined us, I SPOKE TO SOMEONE FOR AN HOUR IN ARABIC.

Anyway, things were going great until I made the mistake of asking where "you" (plural! I used the plural!) slept at night. I wanted to know if Berbers actually used tents all the time; a very innocent question, right? Well, after that the conversation turned toward my marital status, where I was sleeping (a friend answered "Tent 55, ha ha ha!" with some speed - the tents had no numbers and there were not 55 of them), and whether I was interested in marrying a Moroccan. I made a graceful, prompt exit.

Other highlights were the sandstorm finally letting up, seeing a whole lot of stars, and a little episode  I like to call The Time I Could've Died. I woke up in the middle of the night (I slept outside my tent, like most of my fellow travelers, where it was cooler) and felt something like a prick on my wrist. I lifted it, and in the near total darkness I descried a black, evil looking thing resting below my hand. I sat bolt upright and thrashed around a little, transferring the thing from my wrist to down my shirt, from there to my mattress, from there to someone ELSE'S mattress, and then finally onto the sand. Then I started sucking on the place I thought I'd been bitten and got a lot of sand in my mouth. Then I sat for awhile and tried to figure out if my pulse was spiraling out of control or if I felt short of breath. Then I decided it was probably only a beetle and went back to sleep.

The other thing that bears mentioning is that the Berbers named their camels, and in one caravan there was Mohammed, Omar, Ibrahim, etc. The one at the head of the caravan, however, was Bob Marley 4x4.

Things that won't fit anywhere else

TRAFFIC here, as compared to American traffic, is what the abstract movement is to the classical. Moroccan cab drivers are artists. The road is their palette. They make lanes where there are none, they experiment with spatial relationships.... there are no rules. If the passenger is squeamish, it's only because he or she isn't creative enough. And that whole pedestrian right of way thing is just quaint. One cab ride almost hit (literally and figuratively) every stereotype for awful car accidents: oh no, another car! Oh no, not the old man doddering across the street! The woman and her small cherubic child! The bus! The cement truck!

 ... no, really, we almost hit a. cement. truck.

NOOR is this Turkish soap opera dubbed in very clear, easy to understand Syrian Arabic that has me hooked. I love this world where someone gets kidnapped every week, the grandmother has more Botox than Cher, and everyone looks great even after a helicopter takes off two yards away from them, they are shot in the leg, or they cry for hours. The theme song is, incidentally, very catchy.

THE JUICE here is amazing. There's a place near ALIF where you can get a huge glass of any kind of juice, as thick as a milkshake, for about $1.75. I will miss this.

OUR NEIGHBORS must have at least forty deaf people in the house. My room has a window on a small courtyard-esque space between buildings, and the people down a level and across the space play their TV for hours at a time at such outrageous levels that, if I were playing it on my computer here in my lap, I'd turn it down. I can deal with this unless they're watching horror movies. That was a fun night. They also have a (much quieter) alarm that goes off at 8:30 every morning. It's a peppy tune.

MOROCCANS sleep on the floor in the summer because it's cooler. There is no choice but to follow suit.

HAGGLING is easier than it seemed, and after a good session everyone comes away happy. But if you walk away from a deal about 8 Dh pairs of earrings (a little more than a dollar), they don't follow you. Too bad.

SNIPPETS: 

During dinner one night the TV was on in the other room, tuned to a news station. Here is what I heard: "asifohdsaf;dskva;dsaf Arabic I don't know yet andfa;sdfadsfjas  Charlotte, min wilaiyat North Carolina, ahfsdiasfdskalfadsf"...! It was a story about Obama's campaign. Everyone here loves him. Maybe this is why I like Morocco.

I dreamed about eating spaghetti last night and it was glorious.

Amin, my homestay brother, shares his birthday with my actual brother. WHOA.

Have I mentioned I love it here?

Who knows what's going on with the formatting, but when I try to change it pictures disappear. Pick and choose which caption goes where!

Jeannie and me at ALIF

Bread and eggs at the communal bakery, which smelled like baking and yeast. OH GOODNESS.

This little dude was so pleased with himself.

The view from the roof on a hazy morning (I counted five mosques last night, but they're not all in this shot - also missing are the mountains... more to come)

Walking through the medina, and the back of Jeannie's head.

A door in a madrassa, it was on the medina tour and gorgeous

Pride goeth before the... mall? Call? What?

Happy July 4th weekend! I have some fireworks of my own with which to celebrate our day of independence: traveler's diarrhea! Sorry, that was too perfect to waste. Yes, it has happened to me, who so cockily proclaimed herself super. It's not a whole lot of fun, but luckily I have avoided the truly wretched ends of the deal that some of my friends have suffered. I'd say just about everyone in the program either has this thing now or has recently recovered. If you were to stroll through the ALIF garden, you'd hear so many frank conversations about bowel movement that you'd think you were in a retirement home. I think the culprit of my illness is delicious pistachio ice cream that made Jeannie, Oumaima, and me sick in varying degrees. Speaking of which, I spent Wednesday night with Jeannie in the hospital; she was there because of a 104 degree fever and severe dehydration. Whoa! A classmate of mine was there for the same thing in a neighboring room. Luckily, that night happened to be a break in my own difficulties, so I was able to fetch water and give company without worrying about myself. Both Jeannie and my classmate were discharged the following morning, and both are doing better. For myself, I'm going through the last stages of the traveler's curse, in which I eat small meals, regret them every once and awhile, take no less than five prescription medicines, and feel overall better every day. I think I will reclaim super status by this weekend. 

In the meantime, my homestay family has been absolutely incredible through all of this. On the worst night of my sickness, two of my homestay brothers came up to me individually to say that I should wake them up the second I need anything. I've heard constant reassurance from all the brothers that this happens to everyone foreign and that even Moroccan people get sick when they're kids. Hamid has given me all kinds of advice about what to do, most of which is new to me (I should consume mint tea, chocolate, and olives? Whatever you say -- I love those things) and even the father and grandmother, with whom I can barely communicate, have gone way out of their way to make it clear that they're around if I need anything at all. The father told me that I'm like a daughter to him, and Hamid said that most of their conversations during the week Jeannie and I were sick revolved around what could be done for us. The first time I volunteered to eat a plate of food I received a standing ovation. I am extremely, extremely fortunate.

Interesting experiences abound in spite of illness! At the hospital on Wednesday I had some occasions to attempt to ask nurses and/or doctors for things, and it was, as always, kinda funny. No one spoke English, Arabic was out of the question, and my French hospital vocab is limited, so I talked to a whole lot of people before I managed to be understood. Everyone was very nice about it; there was a lot of laughing and baffled shaking of heads. Fortunately, a very attractive doctor ended up understanding, and besides helping Jeannie out, he even treated my terrible French with good grace. Oh, how little it takes to develop a crush when you can't understand half of what's going on. I also spent some time in the waiting room and saw a passel of women oohing and aahing over a baby boy (who seemed huge for a newborn and healthy to boot, so I'm not sure what the story was) and talking every once and awhile about me. I was loaded down with school books and overnight bags for me and Jeannie, sitting there in my knee-length skirt, short hair, and Birkenstocks. All I could make out was "American" and "student"; in any case, they had my number. Another cool thing was how everyone seemed to know everyone else - every time someone came in the door one group or another exclaimed and went up to kiss their cheeks. It was kind of funny to watch macho, hair-slicked-back men in their twenties prowl into the waiting room, swiping pairs of Aviators from their eyes, only to become extremely considerate and personable once they recognized a friend or relative. Another family, exiting, carried with them a huge silver tray and samovar and several bouquets of flowers, still wrapped in plastic. From their happy faces it seemed someone was coming home.

I'm two weeks into my time here, which seems downright impossible. Time is FLYING.

walla walla bing bang

This morning I had a very funny conversation with Hamid about drinking coffee black - it seems no Moroccan can conceive of a reason why anyone wouldn't add sugar to their coffee or tea at a 1:2 ratio. The reasons he tried to attribute to my drinking coffee black were that I do it just because everyone else does but don’t really like it and/or that the sugar in America doesn't taste good. I gave up trying to explain.

This weekend was VERY interesting. We spent most of Saturday winding through the medina, whose streets are frequently two feet wide, and saw the tannery, a Berber weaving shop, saw very old and very beautiful schools and mosques, and generally had a great time. The air smelled in turn like spices and mint and animals and people. It was pretty fantastic. I got hit in the face by a donkey tail once. And did you know that when the architects from ages ago mixed their plaster, there was no white cement or coagulant, so all the plaster molding and carving in these HUGE structures was whitened with egg whites? I can't even imagine how many eggs that is. The highlight of the catcalling we heard was being called "fromage blanc" (white cheese) in the most romantic of tones.

Jeannie and I also washed our clothes last night - on the roof. Literally ON the roof. Oumaima swept off a portion of it, we poured water on an article of clothing, rubbed it with hand soap, and basically gave it hell by scrubbing it on the rough roof. The absurdity really hit me when the three of us had been working for awhile and were trying to think of songs we could sing together, and the only one we all knew was that "Oo ee oo ah ah, ching, chang, walla walla bing bang" song. It was too much and I started laughing for a good minute or more. 

This coming weekend we're going to a hammam (a bath house) where apparently the scrub they give you takes off dead skin like Westerners can't believe. I'm looking forward to it!

"It is hot as the hell, yes?"

Greetings from breezy Morocco, where for the past couple days it’s been around 110 degrees Fahrenheit! Anyone want to visit? My dad asked me a few weeks ago what it smells like here: generally it smells about the same, but right now it smells like hot. The aforementioned breeze is remarkably similar to a hairdryer, and to stand in the ALIF program garden at 3 PM, with its tile walkways and patio, is to bake. I may have known what “sweating” meant before coming here, but I never truly understood until yesterday. When you wake up at 4 AM with the pillow stuck to your neck, after having been in repose at least three hours, that’s sweating. And who knew forearms could sweat? I didn’t! But, as with everything, it’s just another thing to which we Westerners must adjust. I drink a truly astonishing amount of water a day, I take cold showers, I sit on the floor to do homework… I deal. 

The first week of classes is nearly over, and boy what a week it’s been. I absolutely love it here. The fruit is so good it almost hurts, the people are friendly, and my host family is a bucket of laughs. On Monday we received another student into the house named Jeannie. Having someone else who’s learning Arabic has given me the courage to do away with English more of the time, and I can tell a difference already. Jeannie and I have a lot in common, get along great, speak Arabic at the same level, both have short hair, and… at home she goes by her middle name, Katherine. To avoid confusion at home she's using her first name. I think there must be something mystical about Morocco’s relationship to the center of the earth that makes these kinds of serendipitous/bizarre coincidences happen so regularly.

There is no way to accurately describe how frustrating and humbling and hilarious Jeannie and my conversations with our host family are when we’re struggling through a simple sentence like “We had good juice today”. The oldest brother Hamid, who’s become our surrogate father/tour guide/professor because he speaks near-fluent English, helped me with homework last night, which means by the end he was very depressed. He finally looked at me, with a kind but baffled look on his face, and said of my Arabic syntax, “Is like I give you hands, feet, and head, and you put hands with feet and head with hands.” It does sometimes feel like achieving fluency in Arabic is as likely as winning Calvinball, but as I get used to my professors and finding a time to do homework between all the interaction with the family (which I refuse to sacrifice) and eating dinner at midnight or later, I think it will get easier.

A related bit of information is that in the space of a single day I managed to mess up three times and say embarrassing, disrespectful, and/or inappropriate things that would’ve probably been unforgivable had a native speaker said them. I know they’re bad because no one would even tell me what they meant. Ha! It’s a good thing my host family has a sense of humor.

The other thing is that I’ve been drinking swimming-pool amounts of tap water at home with no side effects. I knew that this was fortunate, but I didn’t realize that it’s downright amazing until I went to our orientation the second day of class and heard our professors say, in tones of gravest sincerity, “DO. NOT. DRINK. THE. WATER.” They say if I’m okay so far there’s no reason to think it will change. I am, apparently, super. 

In which we discover that “Turkish” toilets really aren’t so bad

Saturday was my first day with my homestay. The grandmother and father speak only Moroccan Arabic, which at this point means I can’t communicate with them to save my life. On Sunday morning I had a MAJOR victory and was able to understand that the grandmother wanted me to put the dog out (I caught one word in the entire sentence). The three brothers, who range in age between 25 and 29, speak varying amounts of English and have been very patient and good-humored about teaching me Arabic. I’d always referred to Moroccan Arabic as a dialect, but when counting up the languages they speak, they count Moroccan and formal Arabic as two separate ones.  Since I relive Babel every day, I’m inclined to agree. The brothers may seem old to be living at home, but in Morocco men live with their families until they get married, and sometimes until they have children. The sister, Oumaima, who is twelve, doesn’t speak English, but she speaks French, which the two of us use, but even now we’re transitioning into more Arabic. If all goes according to plan, I’m going to be a trilingual when I return to the states!

Oumaima tells me that her grandmother has been married four times, beginning when her grandmother was ten years old. In addition to that notable cultural difference, the women do all the housework. Were I made to do this while Madison lounged around, I would be pretty resentful; in Morocco, however, it’s been this way since time immemorial, and it’s clear no one counts it unfair (at least in this house). As a guest, I’m excluded from housework duty, but I do force my way into the kitchen to help prepare food when I can. Another privilege I enjoy is eating first, which is frankly a little awkward. I doubt that’ll last past the week, but I will always eat with the women, around a different table than the men. Since this doesn’t translate into discrepancies in individual worth, it strikes me as different, but not offensive. I also have my own room, which I tried to argue about, but in the summer Moroccans apparently sleep on the floor of the sitting rooms, where it’s cooler. There is also a “Turkish”, or squat, toilet. This has been less of an adjustment than I anticipated; like all of the other differences between American and Moroccan culture, it’s a matter of rolling with the punches until it becomes normal.

Last night Oumaima and I took the dog up onto the roof, a normal hang-out for Moroccan women, and it’s a great view. The dog is named Ariz, after a god of war, which doesn’t quite fit: Ariz is a wacky two month old pitbull mix whose head and feet are twice the size of the rest of his body. He’s hilarious. Anyway, on the roof you can hear the calls to prayer particularly well. I thought the calls to prayer in the Ville Nouvelle were loud, but every few hours in the medina (I haven’t learned specific times except for the infamous four AM call to prayer… man, that’s a blast) it positively rings with “Allahu akbar”s. To use a very American term, the awesome-ness of this has not yet worn off in the slightest. It is SO. COOL. 

Classes begin today, and thus the rhythm of the next few weeks is about to be set. I look forward to it.

Reporting FROM AFRICA

I am currently sitting in the Hotel Olympique with the sounds of car alarms, honking, tinny Arab pop music, and a whole lot of voices coming in through the balcony doors. I MADE IT to Morocco! Tomorrow I move out of the hotel and join my homestay family. All I know about them right now is that they live in the medina (old city - this is good) and the lively woman who accepted my tuition check doesn't want them to speak French or English. This could be interesting.

My adventure began earlier than anticipated. I had a four hour layover in JFK, so it made sense to me and the airline people I asked that my flight information wouldn't be on the displays yet. I could've sworn they told me it would fly out of GATE 1, so I moseyed on down. Forty five minutes before the flight was to depart, when the Gate 1 waiting area was still stubbornly empty, I finally asked someone what was going on. WELL. Turns out the flight was going out of TERMINAL 1. I got lost on the way there, of course, so by the time I got there I had twenty minutes to check in, go through security, and find the gate. The guy checking me in earnestly chided me to "Go now!", as if I had planned on buying a few duty-free items first. I did indeed go then; I ran from security to the gate with my shoelaces flying free. And I made it.

What followed was a whole day of trains and meeting friendly people. The scenery in Morocco is gorgeous, though usually in a stark way. As we got closer to Fes the mostly flat landscape gave way to rolling, sand-colored hills and eventually huge slaps of mountains (the lower Atlas, to be exact). The grain of the stone suggested that these things had shot out of the earth at a slant during some prehistoric earthquake that I'm glad I missed.

The people here are, almost without exception, incredibly helpful and accommodating. I had to find a three-prong adapter today for my computer (the one necessary thing I forgot to pack!) and, after shuffling through three languages with the guys behind the counter, was told to take three adapter options back with me to see which would work. On the train, a couple of women repeatedly tried to feed me. Before that, a man helped me get my bag into the train, helped find me a compartment, AND put my bag up in the overhead storage area. After reading so many guidebooks warning about this kind of thing, I expected him to ask for either a tip or my hand in marriage, but neither occurred, and I thanked him heartily for his help.

Unfortunately, it is still completely clear to just about everyone that I am an English speaker. Will work on this.