Remaining Timeline

December. Two years ago this month was a whirlwind of preparation for what still seems like a crazy decision to join the Peace Corps.

November-December rainstorms were pretty severe and meant daily visits from this species. To the best of my knowledge this is the only time one visited my bra.

This year I am chilling out (literally and figuratively–it got COLD in late November) in my Moroccan mud house, trying to stay dry (we’ve had crazy rain storms), dreaming about Christmas vacation and already trying to decide what I will pack when I leave Morocco.

I guess I have to bring some clothes back with me but I am so sick of everything I’ve been wearing for the past two years I just want to set everything on fire, arrive home in a makeshift toga and have my family drive me directly from the airport to Banana Republic’s day after Christmas sale where I can purchase $1,000 worth of clothing for $200.

Sadly, that would require some adjustments to the space-time continuum as I likely won’t be back in the States until springtime at the earliest.

At least I know that my days of choosing outfits based solely on weather and necessary bosom/ass/ankle coverage are nearing an end. All-linen outfits are great for high temps but the pink skirt, pale blue shirt and mint green jacket combo I rocked for much of July made me look like an Easter egg, albeit an Easter egg with her sexy, sexy ass appropriately covered.

But I’ll stop talking PCV fashion before I hit pit-stained t-shirts and saggy undersauncies. I’m in the home stretch! Here’s the scoop on what the New Year holds for me, with the understanding that it’s all inshah’allah and this is assuming nothing changes which IT ALWAYS COULD.

• Holidays in Italy: opera at La Scala, Christmas dinner in Florence, New Year’s in Bologna for the Fat Ox Fair, where I am pretty sure I will win the Fat Ox. It will be challenging to bring him back.
• Me, and probably my new pet ox, will arrive back in Marrakech and head straight to my Close of Service conference in Rabat. This is the final time our entire group will be together and when we choose exact COS dates: we leave in batches of 15-25 people in one of four Fridays between March 27th and April 24th. I also tell Peace Corps if I want them to send me back to my home of record ASAP or if I want to take cash and get myself home on my own timeline. I plan to take the cash, as I will likely want to travel at least a little bit–to Minneapolis if nowhere else but hopefully somewhere else.
• Post-conference I head back to my site and (mostly) don’t leave again for awhile.Peace Corps wants you to be in-site continuously for your final three months.
• The 2015-2017 stage is sworn in April 1st and begins the journey to their sites. As I will probably be replaced, I will also probably aim to COS after my replacement arrives, so I can at least introduce him/her around town before I ditch.
• On my chosen COS week, I head to Rabat on Monday and spend Tuesday through Thursday being processed out. Medical stuff, paperwork, etc.
• As of that Friday I am an RPCV–Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. Where do I go from there? Let me know if you have any brilliant ideas…

And Now For Something Completely Different

Courtney does her best to make me feel welcome despite a limited number of refrigerator alphabet magnets.

Continuing on my summer camp extravaganza, after working with a bunch of little kids at the SOS village, I headed up north where my friend Courtney was doing a camp in her site.

This camp couldn’t have been more different. No playing “duck duck goose” with a bunch of primary school kids who didn’t understand more than a quarter of the words that came out of my mouth. This was a “camp” for young adults, held in English, with a theme of improving job skills. The campers were mostly university students studying English, although we had one camper who was starting university in the fall with a goal of studying math and becoming an engineer. Thinking ahead, she wants to finish her studies in the US or Canada so if anyone knows of any good programs/scholarships for young women from abroad going into STEM fields, please let me know. I was totally impressed with her on so many levels (see below, beach outing).

Because Morocco has a concerning rate of unemployment for young adults, Youth Development volunteers are encouraged to do programming that helps young adults find employment and/or opportunities for volunteerism in their community. This camp covered all of that.

Camp Structure

Experts at the Judges’ Table

The camp incorporated workshops and presentations by outside “experts” (quotation marks because this group included me) as well as students themselves. Because we want to have fun too, there were extra-curricular activities such as an outing to the beach, a Taekwondo class, and of course a final celebration where we eat cake, present participants with certificates of completion and representatives from the media come to take pictures of us all.

Workshops and Presentations

Topics for presentation and workshopping included Interview Skills, Social Media and Job Search, Entrepreneurship, Stress Management, and creating a CV.

The rules for job searching in Morocco are not the same as in the U.S. For instance, you are expected to attach a picture to your CV. So the presenter included information like “if you wear a headscarf, it’s most professional to wear a black headscarf and have your picture taken on a white background.” Who knew? In addition to a picture, you add your age and marital status and even if you have kids or not. They asked us how things were different in the US, and we were like “for one thing, it’s illegal for a potential employer to ask for any of this information.”

Courtney, Meg (another PCV) and I all led different workshops during the week (apologies for getting a little carried away with the Instagramming. Sometimes the sessions ran long and I passed the time by exploring every possible filter).

One of my sessions was on Social Media and Job Searching and the other involved the GAD committee’s “You Can Dream” video. While the video is focused on women, it’s also about non-traditional careers and/or starting your own business–great topics for this camp. I think the more we can “normalize” gender issues as something we talk about often and in lots of contexts, not just on International Women’s Day, the better. So I re-wrote the suggested discussion questions to focus more on the business life of these women.

Coupled with the conversation we had after Courtney’s presentation on entrepreneurship, I learned a lot about how Moroccans view “risk.” Most Moroccans want to work for the government because these are the best and most secure jobs you can have. The idea that you might give that up to open your own business is almost inconceivable. Of course, there’s also a lot more emphasis on taking care of your family in Morocco so striking it out on your own is seen in a very different light.  On the other hand, if you are unemployed and the only job available to you is driving a poorly maintained truck through a dangerous mountain pass at night, that is considered a reasonable risk.

Beach Outing

It’s not camp without an excursion of some sort.  In classic Morocco style, the exact location of our outing, the time we would leave, and the time we would come back, were details that only got worked out at the last minute. But eventually we headed to Ras el Ma, a lovely beach area (not sure it qualifies as a town) that includes views of the three Chafarinas Islands, that are still owned by Spain.

As I jumped into the warm Mediterranean water, I thought about how I was swimming in the Atlantic Ocean in El Jadida just a few weeks earlier. Not the worst life, right? But despite (or because of) my love of swimming, I was a little disturbed by some of the things that came up during our outing.

For one thing, there was the girl who didn’t come in part because she didn’t like swimming anyway. Why not? Oh, she said, she loved it when she was little and could feel the water on her body, but now she has to wear so many clothes and it’s just not fun. Then, out of all of the seven or so Moroccan women who did come to the beach, only two were comfortable getting undressed enough to swim. It just makes me so sad. I look at all the little girls frolicking on the beach and think “how many years do they have left to play like this? Before they are expected to wear drapery? And not in an awesome Carol Burnett parodying Scarlett O’Hara way?”

Parcheesi on the beach. Two of these girls are in their bathing costumes.

But for all of my depression at the state of women’s clothing in Morocco (I probably don’t need to add that the boys were scampering about in shorts and t-shirts) two girls were ready to swim, even though one of them didn’t know how. She was in the water as soon as possible and was ready to learn. I worked with her on learning to float on her back, although as the waves got bigger that got harder. But still she totally impressed me with her fearlessness. This is the same girl who is hoping to be an engineer. I wish so many good things for her!

Celebrating Success

No government-sponsored event in Morocco, no matter how small, can go by without a lot of pomp and circumstance. So on the last day of the camp we were scheduled to end at noon but it was 2 pm by the time we finished with all of the picture taking (three local media outlets!), certificate giving. thanking, presenting of gifts, and some crying about how we won’t all see each other like this again. Especially Meg and me, who came from so far away. But we’ve got a Facebook group set up and we talked about returning to do more camps next spring or summer. Enshah’allah!

El Jadida: Not 100 Degrees!

With attractions like a beach, a lovely and historic old town, extensive availability of fried carbs and non-100 degree temperatures, how could El Jadida disappoint?

Although I spent most of my three weeks at the SOS Village, a good half hour walk from the center, I got enough of a feel for the town to say unreservedly that I like it. It’s just a really lovely, chill beach town. Chill as in mellow and as in not 100 degrees all the time. Only one of those things is currently true about my hometown here in Morocco.

Granted, I was there during Ramadan when everything slows down, but I was also there during their busiest tourist season and it never felt remotely overwhelming.

My guidebook agrees that El Jadida is relaxed but says that might soon change—people have “discovered” it and are getting ready to develop the hell out of it. But my book was published in 2011 and some of the most prime beachfront property remains untouched. Actually not so much untouched as abandoned.

What we could glean from locals is that the area was developed as a resort by the French (or possibly by some Moroccans, for the French—comprehension was impeded by the language barrier) but then the French left and the once-impressive beachfront hotel, that would have fit right in at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, was left to go to ruin.

Anyone want to join me in a real estate venture that involves restoring this mid-20th century hotel? I am sadly certain it will be torn down soon.

On our first day off we were quick to don bathing costumes and take advantage of the zween beach. This was easily the most undressed I have been in public since arriving here. Yes, I wore a swimsuit at a hotel while surrounded by a bunch of other PCVs, but this was really really public. On the one hand, it truly is OK to wear a bathing suit here because they are used to tourists/whores of Babylon or whatnot. On the other, there is no getting away from the fact that Moroccan men will stare at you even if by U.S. standards your bathing costume is the height of modesty. My trips to the beach included leering glares from groups of oily young men whose use of hair product even Danny Zucko would have categorized as perhaps a tad excessive. My attitude was “seriously? The best you can get is a look at a 40 year old woman with hairy armpits and mosquito bitten legs wearing something from the Esther Williams swimwear collection? (highly recommended btw). Don’t you have internet porn to look at?”

But a few minutes of discomfort was well worth the chance to swim in the warm ocean.

The only police station in Morocco with a need for a women’s restroom?

And overall, harassment problems here were comparatively low. I was definitely concerned, having heard that in some beach towns (Agadir) Moroccan males feel like it’s open season on western women. Maybe it’s different in El Jadida because they have a lady police officer. I saw her with my very own eyes. It’s getting all Betty Friedan up in here!

Whatever the reason, I had no major problems and felt comfortable with my hair down and my sleeves short. Except for evenings when got a little chilly and I wanted a sweater. (Because it’s not 100 degrees!)

Standards of modesty are more relaxed than in my site (lots of uncovered heads) but it’s still Morocco and most beach-going Moroccans of the lady-persuasion only undress to the point of peddle-pushers and a short sleeve t-shirt. I saw some women sitting on the sand in full on niqab, topped with a floppy beach hat. I was tempted to file under “why bother” but I guess everyone can enjoy the beach?

In addition to the beach, the main tourist attraction is the old city. Walking there, we discovered a busy fish market that settled an ongoing argument/discussion we’d been having since day one, when a waiter at a restaurant told us that people didn’t eat seafood during Ramadan. Courtney thought maybe it wasn’t safe to eat seafood at this time of year. I was on the side of “I think that guy was just out of fish.” Taking one look at the hordes walking around with bags full of recently gutted eels, squid and fish, I announced that I was pretty certain we were good to go on the eating of fish.

Star of David up top, marking the synagogue

We can add a minaret to anything! (former lighthouse)

Right after the fish market we reached the fortified city aka “Cite Portugaise.” The walls around the seaport were built by the Portuguese, who controlled the city from 1502-1769 and called it Mazagan. When you are within those walls, much of the architecture looks distinctly non-Moroccan. There’s even a church and an (abandoned) synagogue. Although I think that was added later, when the Sultan who controlled the city after the Portuguese adopted a very welcoming policy towards Jewish traders.

One of the most interesting buildings was the cistern—originally a warehouse (possibly an armory) and then converted, the space is now one of El Jadida’s few official “attractions” other than the city itself. A thin layer of water covers much of the floor and most of the light is through a hole in the ceiling. We had the place to ourselves to enjoy the fantastic light, shadows, reflections and generally spooky atmosphere. Naturally we took way too many pictures. Well worth the 10 dirham admission.

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Afterwards we walked along the city walls and enjoyed the sea breeze and the view. We saw some other tourists but not very many. We passed a few tourist shops but not many. The whole town was really relaxed.

Outside the walls is a different story—a traffic jam of people and cars in a maze of busy souks. But these are souks for locals, not tourists. In the afternoon, as lftur is approaching, street carts show up tempting you with figs, milwi (aka missimin aka fried bread) and Moroccan baghrir (crumpet-like pancakes), to name just a few things.

At sunset a number of cafes and what appear to be pop-up shops open to serve lftur. Some serve it and then quickly close back up while others are seemingly open for the night. Families start strolling along the beach shortly afterwards, vendors start hawking popcorn, ice cream and “use it once and then it breaks” toys, and neon-lit mini-carnival rides (paddle boats in a kiddie pool, bouncy houses) open up. It wasn’t unusual to see parents and their kids strolling at 10:30 or later.

Going for an early morning walk to the old city and along the city walls I discovered that late nights meant later mornings, and that the early morning atmosphere I love about almost any place lingers, at least during Ramadan, till about 10:00 am. Ideally my entire three weeks in El Jadida wouldn’t have been during Ramadan, as I’d like to compare and contrast the atmosphere. Overall however, thumbs up. Did I mention it wasn’t 100 degrees?

Just Like Joan Crawford vs. Bette Davis: the North and the South Part II

The greatest things to ever come out of Texas and Massachusetts, respectively.

So here are some more thoughts the differences between the north and the south.

I should mention that in my last post on this topic I may have given people the impression that I am unaware that Neil Young is actually Canadian. Well, I did know that. But Canada is just the northernmost state besides Alaska, amiright? Well, that’s what a lot of Moroccans think anyway.

DRESS

I’m only going to talk about clothing in this post because I have a lot to say about it. See that picture at the top of my blog with the guy dressed like he’s in a movie about Morocco? Maybe you, like me, thought people don’t really dress like that unless they are dressing up for tourists. Let me assure you, they do. Not up north, but down here? Definitely. But we’ll get to men in a minute.

The first thing you will notice about women’s dress down this way is how so many of them wear a layer of lace fabric, tied on one shoulder like a toga, over whatever they are wearing. My neighbor ladies told me that it’s really just a thing here in N’Kob and the neighboring villages, not elsewhere in the south.

But overall, throughout the south (as much as I’ve seen of it), the women dress way more conservatively. In Fes I saw the occasional knee-length skirt, as long as it was paired with tights so there was no skin showing. I can’t imagine that down here. And while in Fes I saw more headscarves than not, down here it’s really rare for any woman to be without not just a headscarf but the double headscarf where the very tight scarf is worn under the looser scarf that covers the head, ears and neck.

When I arrived in CBT I originally assumed that I would keep my hair tied back to be respectfully conservative-looking without actually wearing a headscarf. But it pretty quickly seemed unimportant and I let my hair down (literally) more often than not. I feel differently here in the south and would never walk around with my hair blowing in the wind. So I always have it up in a ponytail or a bun. Which is probably for the best because it disguises how desperately I am in need of a cut and color. Here’s a picture that a student drew of me with my ponytail. I am supposedly standing next to a donkey. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out if I have grown to towering heights or if the artist needs to work on mastering perspective.

Also, compared to Fes, I see a much bigger gender divide in the dress code down this way. This particularly maddening as it gets hotter because…sexism. Guess who gets the shaft in the dress department IMHO?

Here’s the deal: during CBT, I definitely thought some stuff was ridick–like how collarbones need to be covered because…too sexy? I totally didn’t notice until someone pointed it out but it was true—male or female, hardly anyone showed their collarbones. Except in Meknes, which was a veritable fiesta of collarbones. I couldn’t stop looking! Maybe they are sexy after all?

RIP and all but no one–not even Steve Jobs–can make the mock turtleneck look good.

Due to this anti-collarbone issue, the mock turtleneck is everywhere. I felt bad when I noticed that, in the final weeks of CBT as it was starting to warm up, my LCF was wearing a mock turtleneck sweater layered over a black t-shirt and probably dying of the heat. But with everyone covering their collarbones and generally wearing more layers than I thought necessary, I didn’t feel like it was unfair to women. It’s not sexist if everyone is equally miserable!

Now that I am down in the south, it’s a whole different story. With temperatures currently hitting the 90s on a fairly regular basis, I accept that I can’t be culturally sensitive while wearing a tank top. But I am also not interested in putting on a layer or two under my already ankle-length skirt like many women here do. They’ll have a tight long-sleeved shirt and leggings layered under a long dress. My sitemate said to me on a recent 90-degree day “today my host mom was wearing sweater pants. SWEATER PANTS.”

In the meantime, what are the men wearing? For the most part, clothing that, while still modest by American standards, seems way more comfortable. And while I am glad not to have to see any mock turtlenecks, I don’t think it’s fair that women are wearing two headscarves while the men flash so much disco fabulousness that I start hypothesizing about the wheres, whens and how-tos regarding chest-waxing in Morocco.

I have seen v-neck, short sleeve tee-shirts paired with longish shorts (okay–let’s just call them man-pris). And what I see on men of all ages is this traditional combo of white lightweight pajama bottoms worn under a long white top. They often top it off with a turban of sorts—either fully covering their heads or just wrapped around the forehead like a large-ish sweatband. This must lead to some bizarre sunburn patterns on balding men. But with some re-wrapping it doubles as a face mask for guys who are working in the dust and sand, and I bet it’s a lot more comfortable than the double-headscarf!

Sadly I’m not buddies enough with the men in my town to snap a pic of all the guys sitting in coffee shops wearing their pajama outfits. So you’ll have to make do with this street scene that gives you an idea of some of Moroccan menswear. See how comfy that nightgown thing looks? And see the guy on the curb and how he’s showing all kinds of leg?

When it comes to summer fashion, the sexes are not equally uncomfortable down here. Hands down men have it way better.

Finally, a clothing style that I thought might only exist in the north, but unfortunately seems to be popular down south as well (although mostly with younger women) is the little-girl pajama set.

How to explain it?

Some younger women wear pajama sets that in the US would only be suitable for girls 10 and younger. They wear them not as pajamas, but as all-day around-the-house wear. But “around the house” can extend to “around the neighborhood.” So my host-aunts in CBT would wear theirs everywhere within our little community. Sometimes they’ll also throw another garment over the top, more bathrobe than jellaba. In fact, my host grandmother would flat out just wear a bathrobe all over the place. Slippers too.

But as soon as we went farther afield, like to the souk one suburb over (still walking distance though), it was time for jeans and a sweater.

Many of these pajama sets are really childlike, with designs that incorporate flowers, hearts, balloons, and cute cartoon characters like Piglet from Winnie the Pooh..

My theory was that traditional Moroccan clothing including jellabas and the popular Moroccan shoes sometimes called babouches, are close enough to American sleepwear that the lines got a little blurry when western clothing started making its way over here. It’s not as solid of a theory as evolution, but is more credible than intelligent design.

Jeallabas and babouches: like a gateway drug to wearing bathrobes and slippers in public?

My CBT mate and I had a pact that if either of us started wearing them, it was time for the other to stage an intervention. But no sooner did she get to her final site than her new host family bought her a set! This is one of the less egregious iterations I have seen, but at least it gives you an idea of what I am up against. I hope resistance is not futile

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Wading into Treacherous Waters

I’ve been thinking for a while that I should write a post about the clothing styles in Morocco but I didn’t really have the energy. It’s a big topic that definitely touches on standards of modesty and how those differ from those in America. And I’m not sure how to best talk about the looming subject in everyone’s mind when we talk about clothing in Islamic countries–the headscarf. I know that it’s a very sensitive subject and there’s a lot of differing opinion about it. But let’s just get it over with. Let’s talk about the headscarf, commonly referred to as the Hijab—easy to wrap around one’s head but difficult to wrap one’s head around. See what I did there? Hilarious.

I was asked several times before I left if I would wear one and I was very clear that I would not.* I have strong feelings against the head scarf and I do not buy any of the arguments that it is somehow a powerful pro-woman/feminist statement to wear one. Or that women make a truly free-will choice to wear it.** I even have far more complicated feelings about headscarf bans (as instituted recently by the French and, much longer ago, by Atatürk) than my liberal bona fides would generally allow. But I found this article that comes kind of close to my sentiments.

But whatever my feelings, I am very clear that the headscarf battle is not mine to fight. All I expect to do here in Morocco is be a woman who doesn’t wear one and let people take that as they will.

So what is the headscarf like here? I know lots of people in the U.S. have trouble differentiating among the different coverings (not everything’s a burqa!) so let me give a quick rundown of what I’ve seen in Morocco in order of how conservative I think it is:

• Basic tied scarf: In my host family in Merja, the women generally had their hair knotted in some kind of pony tail/loose bun and then they took a scarf and loosely tied that around their head. It wouldn’t be unusual for some hair to still peak out above the forehead. Necks were generally still visible. This tended to be an “around the house” look although “around the house” often extended to “around the neighborhood.” I’ve also seen some women, even here in the south, go out and about with little more than a minor draping of fabric over their heads that shows some neck.
• Pinned scarf: Often women will secure their scarf with some pins to keep it in place. The same effect can be achieved with some expert folding and tucking but pins assure it stays put. With this scarf, the neck is usually covered as well. My host mom in Merja would swap casual tied scarf for pinned scarf on special occasions such as my going away party and a trip to Marjane (the Moroccan Wal-Mart). For things like weddings and birth ceremonies, sometimes women pin their scarves into very elaborate and decorative flower-like shapes.
• Double scarf (like the Al Almira, above): One scarf really tightly around the head, with another looser scarf over that. Maybe in your own house you only have the under scarf on but if you go out, you add the second one. The intent seems to be to allow for a slightly looser scarf look, while still assuring 100% hair covering.
• Double scarf with neck cape: When the overlaying scarf is much more voluminous and more of a scarf+neck/shoulder cape.
• The DVD Player: This is what I heard one person call the full head and face covering, with only a narrow slot for the eyes to peak out. It’s almost a burqa but, unlike the burqa with its mesh eye-covering, the DVD Player (actually called a niqāb) allows for some actual unimpeded vision, although maybe not so much peripheral.

In Fes I saw everything from the totally uncovered head to the niqāb. While I certainly saw more headscarves than not, my impression is that the scarves were generally on the liberal end of my scale.

Covered and uncovered heads at my CBT site

The mudira of the women’s center did not wear one and several of the teenage girls in the Dar Chebab would go also go without. Or would go without at least sometimes. When we toured the women’s center we walked into a classroom and one woman who was unveiled immediately started reveiling herself into her niqāb when she saw there were men in our group. I found this heartbreaking.

Fes is considered a religious center so it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that headscarves are more common there than in Marrakech or Tangiers for instance. Of note, when I have seen the king’s wife and sisters on TV, they have not been wearing them. Female news anchors don’t wear them and there’s this woman who has a talk show whose name is something like Neehel (I call her the Moroccan Oprah), does not wear one. Also, when I saw wedding pictures from my host mom’s wedding, at least 12 years ago, I noticed that neither she nor her sisters were wearing scarves although they all do now. My host mom is the oldest of her siblings so it’s possible it’s because everyone was so young. Or maybe things have changed in the past decade and a half. I read somewhere that some religious groups banned under King Hassan II have been allowed under his son, Mohammed VI who took the throne in 1999. So maybe a religious resurgence has led to more headscarves?

So far I’ve seen the fewest in Rabat but in Rabat I’m in a much more “western” atmosphere—in hotels and among PC staff and government officials (headscarves are discouraged in government positions). Perhaps unsurprisingly, within the PC staff group, you see more uncovered heads than covered heads. But at least one female LCF told her CBT group that she started wearing a headscarf only because the street harassment was so bad for her when she went without. Slut-shaming, Moroccan style I guess. It made me really wish I’d had a female LCF I could talk to about it. My male LCF was not super sensitive to the harassment issue, to say the least.

Here in the south though, almost everyone is double-scarved, with or without the neck cape. I hardly see anyone over 13 years old without one. My sitemate told me that her host family used to ask her if she wanted a scarf every time she ventured outside. Fortunately this had not been an issue for me. So far my host family has only insisted on me covering my head when I was coming back from the hammam. Because of how I might catch cold if I go outside in 85 degree weather with wet hair.

Anyway, there you have my initial thoughts on the headscarf. As I know people better, I hope I can broach the topic directly with them and they can correct some of my misunderstandings. But they won’t talk me into thinking it’s a good idea.

*note: except if my roots get really bad and I can’t get my hands on some hair dye.

**note: In related news, I also don’t believe women who tell me they choose thong underwear because it’s comfortable.

Lady Stuff and Another Wedding

Not that kind of lady stuff. And not really a wedding

Just wanted to note that I got my first and second henna applications. The first was courtesy of Anna’s host sister Hayett. Henna is usually done by women for women, although I’ve seen a couple of dudes get a small henna “tattoo.” Hyet does it as a hobby I think, as many women do.

But a few days later we were invited to a “wedding.” In my cohort is a married couple whose host dad is the one who invited us to the wedding our first weekend. Well he decided they should throw Zack and Julie a Moroccan wedding. So after our morning language classes, we headed to lunch at Aziz’s house. There we were dressed up again in caftans and libsas and Aziz’s sister, a local woman known for her “zwina” henna work, hennaed our hands.

We got to see some of the aspects of a Moroccan wedding that we didn’t see the other weekend. Namely, the hennaing and the part of the ceremony where the man and woman feed each other figs and give each other milk to drink. This is usually done before the giant party. As a bridesmaid (I guess) I was decked out in a libsa with a long train and a bunch of jewels including tiara. They were disappointed that none of the 8 holes in my ears were stretched out enough to accommodate Moroccan pierced earrings.

The caftans were unwieldy but we couldn’t move much anyway for fear of disturbing the henna. When they brought out food, one of the older women seriously fed me by hand. Since henna has a cooling effect and although Aziz’s house is warmer than my family’s, I was really glad we stuck to hands and I didn’t have to take my warm tights off.

My last bit of lady news is that I did get warm outside of my bed (covered in three blankets) with my first visit to the hammam. It was so great. Nothing like the fancy hammams I visited in Istanbul (which, while gorgeous, have mostly been taken over by tourists).

This was just a bunch of naked women, some of their kids, an unending supply of hot water and the opportunity to scrub yourself really really clean. I think some hammams have different days for men and women but the Merja one had two separate spaces with separate entrances.

Here’s how it’s done: you gather the things you would need for a shower and the immediate time afterwards: towel, soap, shampoo and conditioner, a change of clothes (or at least a change of underwear), a razor if you bother with that sort of thing, perhaps a pumice stone and ideally a hammam mitt. Like a super-exfoliating wash cloth. Many women also take a small stool or a plastic matt so sit on. You should probably have something to cover your head on your way out. Something about wet hair in public is upsetting to Moroccans.

If you don’t have some of these items, the hammam may have some for you to buy or rent. For instance, our hammam sold small packets of soap that looked exactly like condoms. But no—it is NOT that kind of bathhouse.

Once inside, there is a changing room that in our case also doubled as the cooling off room. You change into pretty much nothing. Most women are topless but keep their undersoncies on although I saw a few full birthday suits. I also heard from some female LCFs that some women keep their bra on in the hammam. I didn’t see anyone who did that.

Then you move into the hot steamy room and fill a bunch of buckets with hot water. The floor is a little bit sloped so that you can claim a spot and “clean” it by throwing hot water on it and letting the water run towards a drain in the center of the room. Then, spread your plastic matt down or place your little stool down or just plop yourself on the floor (what we did). You use a small dish to take clean water from the buckets and pour it over yourself. Use some soap and your hammam mitt to scrub away several days (or more) worth of dust and grime. Wash and rinse everything as thoroughly as you can. When needed, refill the buckets or go into the other room to relax on one of the cooling tile benches before returning to the steam. Someone may offer to trade a back scrub—don’t be afraid to say yes. In many hammams (probably most that would be encountered by tourists) you can pay an attendant to do this for you but in every day ones it’s the barter system.

On the way out put on your clean clothes (or at least your dry undersoncies) and wrap your hair up and enjoy how clean and warm you are!

Host Family in Merja and a Moroccan wedding

It’s been such a whirlwind since leaving Rabat I don’t really know where to start. This is a long one…

After a 3 hour bus ride from Rabat to Fes, where we left half of our luggage, my cohort (Zack, Julie, Anna, Josh, me and our Language and Cultural Facilitator, Jawad) piled into a “Grand Taxi” for the 15 minute drive to Merja, an outer neighborhood of Fes. Lest the name “Grand Taxi” lead you to believe this was a vehicle large enough to hold 6 passengers, a driver, and the luggage of five people who had packed for two years, let me disabuse you of that notion. It was your average mid-sized sedan from the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. We were crammed in like sardines with three people in front, four in back, lots of luggage on laps and a trunk that was held shut with some kind of strap.

Amazingly we didn’t lose anyone or anything along the way and when we got to Merja there was a whole group of people waiting for us. After many formal introductions, “Salams” and cheek kisses (between ladies), and the official welcome from the head of the community, we were finally on our way to live with our host families who speak very little, if any, English. My family consists of host mother Raja, (who is 10 years younger than me BTW) her husband and two sons, ages 5 and 10. I admit to a pang of a kind of homesickness when seeing the older son, Ashref, who looks so grown up. That is how old my own nephew will be when I return home if I last the full two years! Zachariah, the 5 year old, was anxious to tell me all kinds of words. I did manage to remember spoon (melk-a), plate (top-seal) and glass (kess) before my brain was full. Truth be told, I ignored some of the words that Zachariah wanted to tell me. Teepee? I have limited bandwidth and I bet that the dwellings of the American Plains Indians are not going to come up in conversation over the next two years. I know, it’s a roll of the dice.

When walking to our site, one of the members of my cohort said “this is the craziest thing I’ve ever done” and I will second that.

My first meal was a kind of afternoon tea which is served around 6:00 and consists of sweet and salty snacks, tea and hot milk (with or without Nescafe, with or without sugar but I bet I’m the only one who drinks it without. Moroccans LOVE sugar and have a national diabetes problem). Zachariah has a workbook that helps him learn French and Raja’s sister Hayett, who is hosting another one of our cohort, used it to show us pictures of the different meals and their corresponding times. The workbook showed 8pm for dinner but Hayett indicated it was more like 9:00.

Alas (for this early to bed/early-to-mid-morning to rise old lady), it was a hair past 10:00 when the tagine came out. It was yummy, but I was exhausted. I had learned at tea that the key to eating is to leave some food on your plate. Members of the clean plate club will have more food immediately spooned back onto it. If you don’t have a plate, don’t finish your bread. Since you eat tagines out of a communal plate with a hunk of bread, finishing your bread is like cleaning your plate. DON’T DO IT!

When I met up with the cohort the next day and we all compared notes, all but one of us had been surprised and delighted that the bathrooms were way more western than what we had been led to expect. But we have all learned that many of the buildings are cold–much colder than the outside. I can usually see my breath inside and I am grateful for every layer I have. The area we are in is really interesting and I think not what one thinks of when one thinks of Morocco as a tourist destination (ancient medinas, intricately decorated mosques and medresas, camels) or of the Peace Corps in general (mud huts, no electricity).

To my American eyes, and in the late afternoon, it looks a bit like a half-abandoned suburban housing development. A lot of apartment buildings built on the same general designs, stray dogs, vacant lots, piles of trash, intermittent sidewalks and some streets that aren’t paved. But on closer inspection you are definitely not in America. Not only do you see lots of headscarves and jeballas (the robes that men wear over their clothes that make them look like very tall Jawas or maybe Jedi Knights) and some flocks of sheep in the vacant lot, but when it’s “business hours” (just what those are is hard to discern), you see what looked to your American eyes like garages on the ground floor are actually store fronts on nearly every apartment building’s ground floor. Coffee shops, bakeries, car washes, clothing stores, kwiki marts—everything you need within walking distance. Definitely not an American suburb.

But the infrastructure to provide things we take for granted in the US—road repair, animal control, trash pickup—just doesn’t exist here. (Of course there are those who think it shouldn’t exist in the US either. Welcome to the Tea Party dystopia!) As near as I can tell, Merja is a growing community, but they don’t put up pre-fab communities in the same way we do in the U.S. So there are lots of buildings in progress, some already occupied. So far I have seen a lot of the community but I have a hard time knowing my way around because there are no street signs and because many of the buildings look alike, especially when the stores are closed and the “garage doors” are covering the storefronts, aka my landmarks.

I kind of can’t believe I’ve only been here since Thursday night. On Friday we had a bit of language class followed by orientation to the community. But orientation was cut short due to weather (lots of rain) and the ill-health of our LCF, who has a bad cold. Fortunately the community is watching out for us/watching us. When we were walking around in the rain from apartment to apartment, meeting everyone’s relatives and being given tea and sugary snacks at every stop, a police van drove by to give us a ride. My first ride in a paddy wagon and it’s in Morocco! Somewhere along the way we were all invited to a wedding on Saturday night. Our LCF jumped at the chance to take a day off and recuperate while assigning us “homework” for the wedding.

On Saturday night I dressed up as much as possible given my limited wardrobe. My family took one look at me and started digging through their clothes for something more suitable. Soon I was decked out in a silver and black sequined “lipsa” (a kind of caftan but with two pieces) and a giant silver belt. Any hopes I had of relying on caftans to disguise how much sugar I am eating were dashed by that belt.

An Islamic wedding is marked by two critical differences from US weddings—no alcohol and the sexes aren’t supposed to mix. When we entered the bride’s parents’ house the boys were sent upstairs and the girls went downstairs. The house was amazing—two floors of intricate tile work and amazingly decorated ceilings. There were some women who weren’t dressed up at all—just jeans and shirts—but those who were done up were seriously done up. Lots wore headscarves arranged in such a way that there was a certain Carmen Miranda look going on. Some wore no scarf but had their hair decorated with lovely pins and barrettes.

I was glad I’d been appropriately dressed by my host family. After a lot of greetings were exchanged, we sat around until dinner was served. Bread and giant platters of chicken, followed by bread and giant platters of lamb. Woe is the person (me) who ate their fill on the chicken because they didn’t expect the lamb. To drink we had water, orange pop or Coke. After we had eaten, we headed upstairs to actually see the bride. At this point the rules started to relax a bit. There was still very clearly a male and female section, but the sexes did mix here and there (mostly men coming into the women’s section, not vice versa) and I even saw some mixed dancing. One woman who spoke English was really friendly and helpful to us as we tried to understand what was going on. Our LCF told us we’d probably be at the wedding for 3-4 hours. Three hours in, she told us that the wedding would go on until morning, although not everyone would stay that long. She then told us that the bride had a whole bunch of different outfits to wear, depending on how much money her family had and this was a very rich family. She herself had had 7 outfits at her wedding but she thought there would be more at this wedding.

With every outfit change there was a whole set of pictures taken with miscellaneous guests and relatives and another round of dancing. We arrived at 7:30, ate around 8:30, and then stayed through white, green and purple outfits (we were exhausted after the first outfit!) before finally piling into a taxi again around 1:00 am.

Today is Sunday which is supposed to be my only day off every week. I kind of had Saturday off too because Jawad was sick, but man that wedding was a lot of work! My goals for today: figure out how to ask to take a shower (4 days and counting!) and how to ask to do laundry.

Also, to find a cyber café which, if you are reading this, I have accomplished. A note about my internet access, I don’t seem to be able to find a place that has wifi. My only option is to go to “a cyber” and use their computers. The keyboards are in French and Arabic so it is confusing. So right now I can’t use facetime but I can skype. Maybe I will get into a rhythm but if not, regular contact with me will be on a pretty irregular basis.