Are you my dad?

So I’ve been making friends with one of the shopowners here in town who speaks decent English. He’s been a huge help with my pathetic attempts at Arabic and today he invited me into his shop to share a tagine (meat and vegetable stew slow-cooked) with him and his friend which was delicious. I don’t know if people around here are just used to dealing with Peace Corps volunteers or if all Moroccans really are this nice and patient? The kids here are also super fun and always eager to get involved in the frisbee, football, soccer game that we’re playing. If the sport of frisbee takes Morocco by storm I will happily take credit:)

In exciting news, I found out today the area that I may be working. Probably near the central area of the country in the High Atlas (around Fes) or up in some of the parks in the Northeastern part of the country. We’ll see?

A big development is the cell phone that I purchased today. I’m still working figuring out voicemail but if you want to give me a shout-out please do. You’ll probably need to dial 011 to call outside the United States and the country code for Morocco is 212. My number is then 059154291. Morocco is 4 hours ahead of Eastern time. Calling via Skype should be pretty easy and incoming calls are free for me (lucky me!).

Another important purchase was the knock-off adidas pants that I bought at the souk (market). Apparently its somewhat socially questionable for anyone (even males) to wear shorts so I guess I was being a bit scandalous by running in shorts and showing off my calves. The warm-up pants are a nice blue velvet-like material and will be great to run in once temps get to 100. I guess I’ll just run at 4 in the morning?

On Sun I head of to my community based training site. Since I pretty much exhaust my Dariya vocabulary in about 5 minutes, I can imagine some awkward silence. I guess thats the best way to learn though? I’ll be there for a week and then back to Ouarzazate which is starting to feel more and more comfortable.

So I’ve been teaching my Darija teacher some American slang and when I asked how she was doing she just told me that she’s been “busy as a beaver.” My response, “No its busy as a bee but beavers are also very busy.”

03-24-08

Well......its been an interesting week. We just returned from our CBT (community based training) sites. 5 of us from my Darija (Moroccan Arabic) were at Magraman which is a tiny little village about an hour from Ourzazate. There we lived with a host family and focused mostly on language.

I don’t know if there is anything quite as awkward as living with a family with whom you cannot speak to. All in all though a great experience. There was some confusion at first. Mostly due to which toilet I would be using. The confusion was mainly do to the fact that there are certain specific times for men and women to use the bathroom. After an entertaining discussion which involved my father drawing stick figures of men and women in the dirt on the ground I finally decided that I would just use the toilet at the school. It wasn’t until the next day that it all became clear. My toilet is also the community hamman (bathhouse) and I just wouldn’t be allowed to use the toilet from 8am till 6pm because thats when its reserved for women. Well....Ok?

Getting used to the turkish (squat) toilets has been a bit of an.....ummm..... well......adjustment? I’ll spare you those intimate details.

It was during the aforementioned ridiculous conversation that I was laughing hysterically in my head and decided that I must on one of those hidden camera TV shows and at any moment the camera crew would pop out. However, no such camera crew appeared.

My family has 6 children ranging from age age 1 to 12. They’re super fun and all seem to enjoy climbing on me. From the moment I come home from class till the moment I go to bed, I become a walking talking jungle gym. I also think I am a great source of comedy relief as my brothers and sisters erupt into hysterical laughter whenever I butcher a Darija pronunciation. There’s 3 adult brothers who live in the house and it wasn’t until day 4 there that I realized who my official host dad is. Fortunately, Lahcen (my host dad) speaks a little English and has taken it upon himself to make sure that I am the best student in the class. I’m afraid he may be sadly disappointed. Because of those high expectations Lahcen has taken it upon himself to quiz me in the evenings on what I learned in class that day. Just what I want after 8 hours of language classes.

While I knew it was going to be different........the gender separation is astonishing. The women here do everything and receive very little if any credit. I have never shared a meal with my host mom and haven’t really even had a conversation with her. It is also somewhat questionable for a man to even enter the kitchen. Interesting?

The food has been incredible if a little overwhelming. There were times eating with my family where I thought if I heard kul, kul, kuI! (eat, eat, eat) I may vomit on someone. At one point I was quite happy with myself for finishing my meal and my host dad ripped a piece of bread out of my little brothers hand and put it on my plate kul kul kul!. Mostly the food has been either tagine (a veggie and meat slow-cooked stew) or couscous along with copious amounts of delicious homemade bread. One of the members of my group was treated to a dish of sheep brains but unfortunately I haven’t had the privilege.