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.