2/1

Just like that, Chinese classes are over!

I’m done and dusted, tired and tested. My final score was 2/1 (speaking/reading). This does not mean I can speak Chinese well. I cannot.

What I can do, per State Department rules, is PCS (Permanently Change Station) to Guangzhou, and take a 2/0 language designated position.

My visa is in order. I have all required vaccinations. The appointment is set for a pre-flight COVID test. And I am…getting cold feet?

Six months of working from a Seattle hotel room, one month of home leave, nine months of language training…you’d think I’d be desperate to get out of here. I kind of am. I mean, most of my possessions are in a warehouse, unseen since March 2020. I’m tired of living out of two suitcases plus whatever I’ve acquired after a year+ back in the USA. (Which is more than I thought possible, although in fairness some of that wasn’t acquiring, just consolidating stray possessions scattered in Minneapolis and Seattle.)

Yet here I am having butterflies about leaving the States. Or at least about going to China.

Maybe because China was far from my first choice or maybe because everything about going to China—from learning the language to getting a visa to making a seat reservation on the airplane—is just HARD.

Or maybe it’s simply because I’ve just had more time to sit and think this past twelvemonth (haven’t we all).  Last time everything moved so fast. I got the job offer and had less than three weeks to pack up my entire life. I arrived in Kazakhstan, first choice from my bid list, a mere three months after that.

This time, I’ve had time to ponder. About how sad it was to leave Kazakhstan earlier than expected. About the time I’ve spent in the US, during which I’ve barely been able to enjoy the company of my friends and family. About how China was a lot lower than #1 on my wish list and whether I should have just gone for a non-language post somewhere else (Conakry, Guinea would have come with a 30% pay bump but apparently also the occasional spitting cobra). About China’s COVID-era travel policies, which mean hope of seeing anyone from home in the next two years is slim. About about how much I miss America when I am away. About how I managed quick visits to Minnesota and Seattle and Boston and Sacramento but thanks to COVID and a grueling study schedule never made it to NYC, Connecticut, Texas, North Carolina, San Diego, or Marenisco, Michigan.

It’s all left me a bit verklempt.

Then, when it takes three credit cards and seven phone calls to get a reserved seat on a flight from LAX to CAN, it’s hard not to let the anxiety spike. When I get one week of notice that Mission China would rather that I cancel that ticket and instead join a charter flight to Tianjin, the anxiety spikes higher.

Fortunately (?) nothing compares to the anxiety I felt when I joined Peace Corps. I’ll never know if it was nerves or an actual stomach bug but profound apologies to the lady in the bathroom that pre-departure night at the Lock and Keel. As you occupied the single stall, you were very understanding about having to listen to me throw up in the adjacent garbage can and seemed to genuinely believe me when I said “I’m not drunk, I’m just sick.”

And hey–Peace Corps turned out to be a really good decision!

So my feet are very cold but as I have yet to throw up in dive bar garbage can, I guess I am headed to China?

Packing for quarantine: one suitcase of clothes and another suitcase of food to supplement Chinese hotel room service options.

I’ll quarantine for two full weeks in a hotel in Tianjin. No kitchen, no microwave, no guarantees on a mini fridge. I will have an electric kettle. From there I head to Guangzhou for an additional week of at-home quarantine in my new apartment. And then I go to work. In an office. With other people. Assuming I remember how to do that. Wish me luck!

Characters, Verb Tenses, and Measure Words, Oh My!

For those hoping I was off the Debbie Downer Express, I have good news and bad news.

The latter being that I still struggle. Daily reminders of just how not good I am at this aren’t ever going to be fun.

The former being that today I’m just focusing on things I’ve found interesting (or maddening) about Mandarin thus far. Which might be boring for all but the nerdiest of language nerds but at least shouldn’t be sad.

Characters

People keep asking me about characters. Look, I’m not learning writing at all and reading is only a minor part of my job requirement. Also, I’m learning simplified characters, adopted mostly during the mid-20th century in mainland China. Hong Kong, Taiwan, calligraphers, and a lot of tattoo artists use traditional characters. Meaning I’m ill-equipped to answer most questions and if you’ve got a tattoo, I probably can’t read it.

Heh–I actually can read part of this.

But here’s what I have learned.

While it’s a misconception that all Chinese characters are pictographic, some are. 

The character for “old” is supposed to look like an old man
bent over and carrying a heavy load. Sure.

However, every character either contains a building block called a radical, or is itself a radical. Here’s the character for water, which is also a radical:

Radicals are often modified when incorporated into more complex characters. Modified, the water radical looks like this:

The modified radical is in the characters 河 (river), 洗 (wash), and 海 (sea), all of which involve water. So if you know the radical, you have a clue as to what the character might mean. Theoretically. But alas, in words like 没 (not/don’t) and 法 (law) there’s no direct correlation.

And here’s horse:

马 also evolved from a picture, and is pronounced “Mǎ.”

Smushed in a bit it shows up in 骑, meaning “to ride.”

But…it also shows up in the words for ant 蚂 and mom 妈 where it isn’t serving as the radical. Instead, it is guiding pronunciation because 马 , 蚂 , 妈 are all pronounced with some tone variation on “Ma.” So in 骑 (ride),  马 is the radical and points to meaning. In 妈 (mom) it points to pronunciation and the radical is actually the other part of the character (女), which means female.

Are you tired yet? Yeah, me too.

Another misconception I’ve found is that one character = one word. Nope. Many single English words are two or more characters combined.

“Park” is 公园. Literally it’s the characters for public + garden. Makes sense.

But what about 天气?  Literally it’s day/sky + air/gas. Together, it means “weather.” Harder.

Then then there’s 东, which means “east” and 西, which means “west” but 东西, which means “things.”  If you say 买 东西 (literally “buy+east+west”) it means “shopping.”

So simply memorizing characters won’t make you literate. In reading class we often struggle over these combinations, even if we know the individual characters. It’s made harder by the fact that the space markers we count on to indicate separate words don’t exist in Chinese. Whichmakesitdifficulttotellwhenonewordendsandanotherbegins.

Finally, words imported from other languages often have no direct character meaning.  “Cola” is 可乐. The characters mean “able to” and “fun,” not because of deep love of love of soda pop among the Chinese people, but because when said out loud you get “kělè,” which sounds like cola.

Verb Tenses

Have you heard there are no tenses in Chinese? Whenever I expressed concern about studying Mandarin someone would pipe in with this factoid. I call bullshit.

OK, OK. Verbs don’t change like in English where “work” becomes “working” or “worked” depending on the who and the when. But you also can’t just add “yesterday” to your sentence and call it past tense. There are additional constructions to learn. For instance, the verb 过/guò, on it’s own means “to pass.” But combine it with other verbs and you’ve basically got perfect tense. Add “guò” to “to go” and you can say “I have been to China.”

There are also “complements” like 了/le, indicating a completed an action. You can add it to the end of a verb and say “I+yesterday+eat+了” and get a kind of past tense. Although if you have multiple verbs you just add it once. “I + yesterday + eat + drink + watch TV + 了” means, “Yesterday I ate and drank and watched TV.”  It is kind of past tense even though the teachers and the YouTubers get mad if you say that.

I do take their point. It’s not the same. For instance, you can’t add 了 to a negative statement to say yesterday you did not do something because if you didn’t do it you didn’t “complete an action.” Also, the same “了” indicating “completed action” can also be used to create a “change of situation.” To say “it’s snowing” you use 了, not because the snow is over but because it’s a change of situation to the majority of the time when it is not snowing. And if you use 了 twice you can create a meaning akin to present perfect continuous tense to express, “I have been studying Chinese for 4 months [and am still studying Chinese.]”

measure words

Chinese doesn’t have articles like “the” and “a” but if you say “one [something]” you create the same meaning as “a.”

If your native language is rife with articles, you may find comfort using “one” in place of “a,” or perhaps using “this ____” or “that____.” But…

Because you must also use a “measure word” in between the “this/that/one [or any another number]” and the noun.

What’s a measure word? The most common measure word is “个/gè”

“Yī gè yuè” means “one month” or “a month” while just “yī yuè” means “January.”

“A book” is “yī běn shū” because the measure word for books is “běn.”

A fish? “Yī tiáo yú.” “Tiáo” is the measure word for anything long and flexible/twisty. For long and inflexible things like pens and pencils, you use “zhī.”

“Zhāng” is the measure word for flat things like tables, photos, and pieces of paper. “Yī zhāng dìtú” is a single map but “yī běn dìtú” is a book of maps.

Confused yet? Sometimes the measure words shapeshift. In English we say “three cups of coffee” and in Chinese you say “three bēi coffee.” So “bēi” means cup(s)? Not so fast. If you say, “I bought four cups” at Target, then “four cups” becomes “Sì gè bēizi” because “cup” as a stand alone word instead of a measure word is “bēizi.” Or you might say “yī tào bēizi” because the measure word for “a set” of things is “tào.”

“This easy-to-use dictionary introduces 217 frequently used Chinese measure words.” 217?!?!?

Yikes.

If you don’t know any Mandarin, but have read this whole post, you pretty much know as much Mandarin as I do. Congratulations!

It Could Have Been Barbados

Perhaps surprising to anyone who knew me as an adolescent, as an adult I’ve not been a particularly easy crier. It generally takes a breakup, a death, or a Hallmark Christmas movie to make me tear up. Number of times I cried during the 2+ years of Peace Corps? ZERO. Number of times I have cried in the 4+ months I’ve been studying Mandarin? Let’s just say, NOT ZERO.

That’s when I think about what might have been. When preparing my second tour bid list, I made a fateful decision. While I didn’t rank either particularly high, I put both Barbados and Guangzhou in my top ten, Barbados one slot ahead of Guangzhou. At the last minute I swapped their order. The rest is history. I got Guangzhou. Barbados went to a (charming) colleague who was behind me in the bidding queue.

And so, on a day like January 6th when I am at or beyond the point of tears in my struggle with Chinese grammar, trapped inside thanks to Covid and cold weather and homework, listening to distant sirens responding to armed insurgents pissing all over American democracy, my colleague’s social media kindly showcases pictures that force me to think hard about my life choices.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CLwcMptrfhL/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Why did I do it? Knowing that I’m not great with languages, knowing that Mandarin is super hard, knowing that it would mean months and months of stress?

There are logical reasons. I lobbied for a language designated post because I have vaguely understood that an additional language will be good for my career.

Less logical, could Catholicism be a factor? I can’t discount it. Plenty of OMSes enjoy fine careers without a second language but the idea that unpleasant things (fasting, going to church, taking nine months of intensive Mandarin) are good for us and pleasant things (sex, gender equality, drinking rum on a beach in Barbados, and now I guess single shot Covid vaccines?!?) are bad for us was definitely part of the Catholicism I grew up with and that continues to galumph through my life.

So here I am.

Normally “here” would mean physically at the Foreign Service Institute. I even chose my ho-partment because of its proximity to the FSI shuttle bus (and a Target and a decent burrito spot). But that was 疫情 以前 (before the pandemic). Instead I am on Zoom every day for about 5 hours, with other hours dedicated to “self-study.”

Classes are three to five students plus teachers who rotate every couple of months. On most days we have three 50-minute sessions in the morning, with ten-minute breaks in between. Then we get two hours for ̶n̶a̶p̶p̶i̶n̶g̶ lunch and self study, followed by another two sessions in the afternoon.

Every other week we take a one day break from language to learn about the history of China and the current on the ground situation. That still involves a fair amount of reading and video watching, albeit in English.

The Department of State uses a point scale to rate language ability. Professional working proficiency is “3/3” with reading and writing ranked separately. Different languages take different lengths of time to reach 3/3. Mandarin averages 88 weeks but as my job requirement is only 2/0, I’m in a 33 week program. Reading is but a minor part of my daily work load and I don’t need to learn to write at all, which is good because my handwriting is bad enough using the Roman alphabet.

Homework might involve reviewing grammar and vocabulary, doing workbook exercises, writing and reading a 3-5 minute speech, translating sentences or whole paragraphs, listening to recordings in Chinese and answering questions about what was said. The last is by far my least favorite activity. A three minute clip can take me an hour to figure out.

Per the teachers, the transition to Zoom means fewer in-class hours but a lot more homework. Rumors I hear are that there has always been a lot of homework at the language school. Whatever the case, it’s not unusual for me to finish class at 3:30, start on homework, and not finish until well past 7:00 or 8:00 pm. Then there’s entering vocabulary into my flashcard app which takes forever because I have to enter one set of flashcards for reading, where I look at the character and speak the answer in English, and another set where I look at the English and try to speak the Chinese. If this was a language with an alphabet, I would have one set of flashcards and just switch between studying them front to back vs back to front. But I have three things I am working with: the English meaning, the Chinese character, and the pīnyīn. Pīnyīn is the Roman alphabet version of Chinese, used to phonetically spell Chinese words and guide pronunciation.

I cannot promise that #yourtaxpayerdollarsatwork are achieving their best use by teaching me Mandarin. I can promise that they are not being used to fund a slacker lifestyle. I put in far more hours per week than when I was working my “real job” in Kazakhstan.

I don’t have enough hours in the day. How do non-single people do it? There’s simply no time to interact with another person. I do read and listen to audiobooks but that is literally my only hobby. I rarely watch TV, obviously don’t go out with friends, and haven’t touched my Nintendo Switch since arriving here.

• 

  The coating of dust speaks for itself

Weekends never feel entirely my own because there’s so much homework. If I manage to finish homework on Friday night, I spend the remaining weekend feeling guilty (see Catholicism, above) because I’m not doing more flashcard review, more sentence construction practice, more watching youtube videos explaining 了 (“le”) usage. Covid-era prohibitions on socializing should theoretically give me more time to study but all it does is make the feeling of “I could be studying right now” oppressively loom over me during every waking moment. I’m feeling it right now!

I even feel guilty complaining given that I don’t have a significant other or a child needing my attention, but then I think “why is my time to myself less important than someone else’s time with their nuclear family unit?” Then I am mad at myself for feeling guilty.

While I haven’t cried lately (never mind, rough class about the 把 structure), lack of free time + pandemic + guilt has my stress level possibly at an all time high. I tried to take a stress-relieving long walk one weekend and, two blocks in, tripped and strained my Achilles tendon rather badly, leaving me even more housebound. Speaking of weekends, I am now staring down three months with no long weekend in sight. Of course I want Juneteenth and Election day to be designated as national holidays but can’t we also find something for March or April?

I hate being Debbie Downer.

I still feel lucky to have this job. I try to remember that I’m headed to a place with fascinating history and amazing food and am currently being paid to go to school full time (in Kazakhstan I was limited to a couple of Russian lessons a week while working). I think in the end it will be worth it? That may be the latent Catholicism talking.

I cannot promise I will be tears-free from now until July and I cannot even promise I will pass my final test at the required 2/0 level but I can promise you that it won’t be from lack of trying (or crying).

NO ONE IS CRYING (ok I am crying…)

My first time leaving the city limits since arriving in Almaty. Where to go? Should I explore central Asia (the whole reason I requested this post)? See relatives in London? Check back in with the USA? Take advantage of an invitation to visit a colleague in Moscow?

I hemmed and hawed but ultimately decided that the massive digital and language divides separating me from some of my best loved Moroccans meant I needed to touch base there or risk losing touch completely.

As a bonus, I could invite my friend Heidi, who suggested visiting me for Christmas back when I lived there and received a delicate response along the lines off, “F that–I need to drink some decent wine.” And we had a very satisfying trip to Italy. But I didn’t want to permanently deprive her of Morocco.

Only a couple of problems with my Morocco idea: I don’t have much vacation built up and Kazakhstan is not close to Morocco. Hence an itinerary no one should emulate.

I started by flying into Fes to see my host family from my time in training. Or flying Almaty-Istanbul-Marseilles-Fes, with an eight hour layover in Marseilles. Fortunately, I got advice on how easy it is to head into Marseilles from the airport. So my layover, on a simply glorious sunny day, was quite pleasant

 

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When I rolled into Fes around midnight I had many thoughts about being back Morocco. Why are driving lanes so fluid but gender roles so rigid? Did we almost run those children over? Wait, why are those children playing by the side of the road at midnight? What is that smell?

But it was the next morning at breakfast, when a staff member asked “Nesti muzyn?” (did I sleep well, a common polite morning question in Morocco) that I really knew I was back.

And the staff loved my bad Arabic more than I remember anyone ever loving it when I lived in Morocco. The delighted reaction to my report of a problem with the bathroom light was certainly unexpected.

Leaving Heidi to explore the nooks and crannies of the medina, I headed to the suburbs. Having lost my host family’s contact info, I just showed up and hoped they’d be home. They were and I was fed generously on delicious food and family gossip.

And that was about all for Fes. The next day we rented a car and drove from Fes to Zagora. DO NOT DO THIS.

It’s a beautiful drive but too long for one day, especially when the car rental place doesn’t open when it says it opens. And yet when Expedia asked about my experience, did I give a bad review? How could I when the man who eventually helped us was so friendly and (again!) so delighted with my bad Arabic? We had a lovely conversation about his mother who is Berber and then he gave us his personal phone # to call in case of any problems. 

Originally my plans involved heading straight from Fes to my village, letting Heidi do something more touristy and fun. But when she hatched a plan to check out the remote sand dunes of Erg Chigaga, which I’d never been to and aren’t even that far from my village…dammit! Suddenly I was interested in sand dunes too!

Could I sacrifice a night in the dunes for a night in N’Kob? Compromise idea! I talked the current volunteer in my site and my host sister into joining us. Which meant a little more time with them and also, camels. Win-win!

 

But all this fun was prelude to the highlight: returning to N’Kob after all this time. It was emotional.

Seeing everyone was bittersweet. The current volunteer is awesome and fully appreciates the amazing host family we share. I couldn’t be happier that she is with them. But it was sad because I am no longer with them and I’ve missed so much in my time away. If only I could live in multiple places at once.

I warned Heidi we’d eat and eat and eat AND that she would experience Berber dress up time and sure enough…

But it’s not cultural appropriation if your host sister makes you do it!

 

Heidi gets wrapped in a malhafa, popular in Zagora and Sidi Ifni among other southern towns

Couscous!!!!

The one-shoulder lace piece I’m wearing is very specific to N’Kob, worn even as an accessory for everyday dress

On our final night, walking to my host family’s for dinner, I heard my name called and was beckoned into a sewing shop that didn’t used to be there. It was several women I sort of recognized plus Tuda, one of the women who went on an epic bike journey with me. We chatted about how red I got on that bike ride (exertion and sunburn) and how far we went and how no, I’m still not married, and how my mom died as did Tuda’s and now we are both orphans. I finally left the shop with many blessings and kisses and walked into the street where I again heard my name–there was one of my neighbor boys who was tiny when I left and is now a preteen. Suddenly I wished I had planned a much longer visit. Why didn’t I give myself days and days to catch up with everyone?

 

Looking out over town

street scenes

The view from our Kasbah Hotel

N’Kob translates as cave. This is the N’kob n’kob

But all too soon it was time to leave N’Kob and head over the Atlas Mountains to our final stop.

Trek Tichka, over the Atlas Mountains

Oh, Marrakech. I know it’s the #1 destination in Morocco. I know many people love it. I…feel mixed. Can it ever compare to the beauty of the Drâa Valley in the south? As if. But once I got over the fact that every taxi driver was totally going to overcharge us and the vendors would be relentless, I mostly relaxed. I drank my favorite tea (no, not mint–a spicy ginger and cardamom blend that I’ve never found outside of Jemaa el Fna) and bought some cool prints at La Maison de la Photographie. I didn’t feel like I needed to spend a lot more time there, but I wasn’t as desperate to leave as I have been on past visits.

 

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Verdict? When I left Morocco in 2015, I was so ready to go. This time around, I was so not. Especially not N’Kob. Future goals: longer visit, shorter time between visits.

Morocco and Moroccans, twachkum bzaf! (I miss you so much!)

 

 

Hibernation Season

I guess it’s my hibernation season. After a couple of beautiful autumn weeks when I first arrived, the weather and the daylight took a turn and suddenly exploring the city has taken a back seat to exploring the inside of my apartment with a book and a bottle of wine. Or a pickle jar of wine. Whichever.

Bottle or jar, comme ci comme ça

 

I’ve spent years pining for Central Asia and now I am here and I haven’t even left the city? What am I doing? The guilt is real…

In my defense I have been figuring out how to navigate both a new job and a new city.

I work in the consulate security office. Department of State is just one of the many American agencies run from the consulate. We also have DEA, USAID, and CDC, which all require lots of routine work keeping badges current, verifying security clearances, making sure people are up to date on all the rules. I do a lot of making a list and checking it twice to see who is being naughty or nice when it comes to following security protocols. Then there are less routine communication strategy type things that occasionally remind me about my past life in the nonprofit world. Ask about my security directives email drip campaign! (please do not actually ask me about that).

I’ve been assigned some extra projects like attending events as a representative of the consulate, covering for the Consul General’s office manager when she’s on leave, and serving on the housing board to help decide where new people will live and how we meet specific housing needs.

There are also some options for getting involved in the local community. A volunteer opportunity I am excited about is facilitating English language discussion groups at the American Space. I’ve only done one so far but it was a fun and lively discussion. Of course I work with Kazakh people all day at the consulate, but getting to know other locals, for whom meeting an American is novelty instead of a work requirement, is harder.

Fun Soviet architecture near the American Space:

Religion was discouraged in the USSR so many got married in secular wedding palaces instead of religious buildings

Heteronormative wedding palace decor

Less heteronormative decor at the nearby sports palace

Speaking of language, I have started Russian lessons. Could I get by without it? Maybe, but certainly not everyone here speaks English. Russian is the lingua franca of the cities.

I have two 45-minute lessons each week. Compare that to the training I got in Peace Corps: five hours of class a day, followed by going home to my Arabic-speaking host family. And still my Darija was not great! Obviously I don’t expect I’ll ever approach Russian fluency. One bonus is that unlike Arabic, in which I am 100% illiterate, I am now able to read most of the Russian alphabet. I mean, I have to sound out every letter like Abel on that Little House on the Prairie episode* about illiteracy and the career frustrations of substitute teaching, but I can at least read the few words I learn. And since some words are similar in Russian and English, it’s very helpful.

So I’m learning the job, learning (some of) the language, and just learning how to live in the city. That includes how to get around (usually walking and Russian Uber. The metro, while pretty, doesn’t go where I need to go) where to eat lunch, and how to grocery shop.

Almaty Metro Stations: 

Grocery shopping can be surprisingly challenging when only Ramstore has tahini but only GalMart has chickpeas and cilantro may be available at both, or neither. I feel like every day I learn something new. Last week I discovered a tiny storefront that doesn’t look at all like a storefront but perhaps a dentist office is actually a Korean market, complete with resident bodega cat, that sells otherwise unattainable brown sugar and corn syrup.

A few things just cannot be found here. Then I head to Target.com to buy 10 bags of black beans. Shipping charges are the same as to a US address but to order I need to use a VPN because Target.com doesn’t show up on Kazakh internet. Basically, grocery shopping involves a lot of steps and you may need to wait several weeks to get all the ingredients you want.

Sadly, despite a fair bit of time off in December (the consulate is closed for both American and US holidays and the Kazakh calendar is lousy with December holidays), I’ve still not left the city.

Google Doodle for Kazakhstan’s Independence Day Holiday: 4 day weekend!

Kazakhstan is bafflingly large and some of the best sights are so far away that regardless of the four or five day weekends at my disposal, travel seems daunting. Even if the nearest cool silk road site wasn’t a 13 hour, 675 mile train journey away, is the gray mid-winter the best time to visit? Also, it’s not as if I have explored all Almaty has to offer.

I have been to the very cool, very affordable ($7 for fourth row seats!) opera house once and already have tickets for two more shows.

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And there are tons of restaurants and coffeehouses and bars I’ve not yet set foot in. There are also museums, the Soviet-era bathhouse, the lookout peak park, and even a Kazakh state circus.

The Kazakh State Museum that I have not visited

Finally, the holiday season means consulate community parties and potlucks.

All of which is to say, if you were hoping I’d be blogging about all the great Central Asian sights, I think we’ll all have to wait until the spring thaw. But I’ll try to keep you up to date on the inside of my apartment.

*while researching this blog post I discovered that the actor who played Abel now plays Hitchcock on Brooklyn 99 and MY MIND IS BLOWN.

What I Wish Americans Knew About Morocco

President Kennedy’s establishment of the Peace Corps is recognized as March 1, 1961. On each anniversary Peace Corps encourages us to produce a video or blog on a particular theme. The theme for 2014 was “What I Wish Americans Knew About [my host country]” and I totally meant to do a blog post. Better late than never?

Whatevs. Here’s a list of things I’d love for people to know before I land back in the U.S. Then we can have better conversations!

1. Morocco is in Africa, not in the middle east. Doesn’t seem like you’d need to say it but you do. Even some Moroccans will refer to “Africans” as someone else; “Africa” as some place else. Morocco is in North Africa, on the west coast. It’s Arabic name (Mahgrib) means “west.” Although often times the region of MENA (Middle East North Africa) is used to indicate the cultural connections between the regions.

2. Morocco is not “an Arab country.” This one would surprise some Moroccans too.

The Amazigh (as they call themselves, it means “free man”) or Berber (as the Romans called them, it means “barbarians”) were here before the Arabs and while some sources will smoosh the two together and say that Morocco is 99% “Arab-Berber” the people in my region very strongly do not identify as Arab at all. One letter of the Amazigh alphabet, ⵣ, is also used as a symbol for their culture and you’ll see it written officially and unofficially throughout Amazigh communities.

3. Morocco is geographically diverse. Yes, I live in the kasbah-dotted landscape of the south, where camels really do roam and houses are made of mud and a couple hours or so by car (longer by camel) will bring you to towering sand dunes. But Morocco also has mountains and sea coasts (Mediterranean and Atlantic) and lush forests aplenty. There are even monkeys in those mountains!

4. Morocco lays claim to having been the first to grant recognition to the brand new United States of America. Although I happen to know that the Republic of Ragusa, now known as the Croatian city of Dubrovnik, claims it was the first. What is not in dispute is that the USA’s first piece of foreign real estate–before embassies and military bases–is the American Legation building.

5. Morocco is semi-secular. I have met Moroccans who brag about the secularism of their country and western tourists who proclaim Morocco very liberal. It’s not untrue but it’s hardly the full story. Headscarves are not mandated but the cultural pressure is high to wear them in many places; alcohol is not illegal, just expensive and often difficult to find (ditto for pork). However, 99% of the people who live here are Muslim, mosques are government funded, it is illegal to proselytize for other religions, restaurants open during daylight hours are forbidden from serving Muslims during Ramadan and similar laws govern supermarkets that sell booze–it’s a no-go for Muslims during Ramadan, although my American passport was enough to get me in to the hshuma room at Carrefour Supermarket, even though it’s not like religion is listed on my passport.

6. Moroccans are often quite a bit more overtly religious than Americans. Things only the nerdiest/most enthusiastic Christian youth group members would do in the States (listen to Christian rock, wear t-shirts proclaiming their love of Jesus) are way more accepted here. At a training I attended, answering the question “if you could meet one person from any point in history, who would it be?”, 75% of the Moroccans in the room answered “Muhammad.”

7. Moroccans are very family-focused. It’s not unusual for multiple generations to live in one house.

8. Moroccans speak a lot of languages. Not all Moroccans and not always well, but I’ve met so many who speak Moroccan Arabic, some other Arabic (usually FusHa), French, a Berber dialect, and maybe English and a little Spanish.

9. Moroccans don’t generally get to read in their native tongue. Arabic as written is Modern Standard Arabic or classical Arabic. While Shilha (Berber) does have an alphabet that is now being used more frequently, it is still more common as a spoken language and many of the older women who speak it are illiterate. I can’t help but think this impacts things like reading for pleasure, ease of education, cultural identity…so many things! I feel like they need their own Dante to elevate the vernacular to a higher standard (plus, based on my experience/conversations, a poem about hellfire would be very popular in Islam) but I’ve heard from others that elevating the vernacular is somehow a corrupt French (read: western) idea. They want to keep focusing on a ‘purer’ Arabic because it’s the language of the wider Islamic community. One of my least favorite things about Islam is the fetishization of all things Arab even though outside of MENA, Muslim-majority countries like Pakistan and Indonesia are full of Muslims who can barely understand a word of Arabic. There are some similarities to the way Latin was viewed a few centuries ago in the west, although there’s no Tyndale Bible-esque freak out over translations of the Qur’an. In fact, Qur’an translations are widely encouraged and available, although a smug feeling of superiority might be detected by those who read it in Arabic vs. a translation.

10. I feel welcome in Morocco. It is true that tact (yep–I have it!) and language barriers mean that not everyone knows me as well as my friends in the U.S. but Moroccans I know personally, especially my host families, have been accepting of me, kind to me, and welcoming to any guest I’ve brought to them. For every moment of harassment or mendacity, I’ve experienced 100 more of kindness and love.

So there are just some things people should know about Morocco. If you are interested in the 2015 theme, it’s “Host Country Hero.”  A bunch of PCVs here in Morocco put together this video about a cool PC staff member.

The North: Where We Do What We Want

No matter if we spend our time revisiting spots I already know and love or seeing places I’ve never been, it’s always a bright spot to have people from home here in Morocco.

When Derek and Gina visited we spent our time almost entirely in new-to-me places in the north, where we do what we want!

(sorry, that only makes sense to those who have had seen the Red Riding trilogy)

While I can’t say Derek and Gina’s visit to Morocco went perfectly, it was super fun. After all, when you’ve sat with two people in a dark theater for all three movies of the aforementioned Red Riding trilogy, a little lost luggage and food poisoning barely rates.

Derek shops at the Fes mall!

We started in Fes, where Derek had arrived luggage-less. After a day of getting misinformation from every new person we spoke to at Air France, we realized that with travel plans exclusively in cities without airports, there was little hope of reuniting Derek with his luggage until we left Morocco via Tangier.

So post-sightseeing in the old medina, it was off to the mall where we shopped for replacement clothes at the only Moroccan stores that actually provide receipts (to later give to Air France in hopes for reimbursement). Fun times.

Derek re-outfitted, we continued on to Chefchaouen and Tetouan in the Rif Mountains and Asilah on the Atlantic coast.

Chefchaouen has been on my “must-see” list for ages. It’s a small town with a mellow vibe. That may have something to do with all the kif (marijuana) fields. But the town’s main claim to fame and beauty is the blue. Everything is painted in gorgeous shades of my favorite color. I am unclear on the exact reasons for the blue but it has something to do with a tradition introduced by the former Jewish population, who made Chefchaouen their home after the Spanish Reconquista.

For centuries Christians were actually forbidden to enter the city but that changed when the Spanish took over in the 1920s and now it’s a popular tourist destination and one of the parts of Morocco where Spanish is more widely spoken than French. This was also the case in Tetouan and Asilah and boy did it make life easy! If someone said something in Arabic that I didn’t understand, they repeated in Spanish and 90% of the time I understood. That’s waaaayyyy better than my comprehension level in my own site!

Working on tracking down lost luggage

Visit to the Fes tanneries

On the road to the north

Fes: medieval city, 21st century technology

Chefchaouen medina

Chefchaouen medina

Chefchaouen medina

Chefchaouen Kasbah

Sadly, we had only a few hours of enjoying Chefchaoen’s beauty before we had dinner which led directly to me, barfing. Sigh. I was in Morocco 474 days before I fell-victim to any kind of food poisoning. It was sad to see my winning streak end.

A note about Morocco food and water: it’s generally fairly safe. The tap water in all but the most rural areas is okay and I drink it everywhere except Ouarzazate (where it is safe but tastes awful). But properly washing fruits and vegetables and hands is hardly common and I did have some fruit for dessert and…and…after 474 days of good luck I guess I was due.

Fortunately, my food poisoning wasn’t too debilitating and we were able to complete our planned mini-hike up to the now-unused mosque built by the Spanish. I know I’m supposed to follow the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce and toast) for food poisoning recovery but I have always gone with the “the thought of it doesn’t make you gag” diet and I swear that the only thing that sounded appetizing was beer. Go figure.

The Spanish mosque is the little whie dot on the hill top

Donkey delivering budagaz

Spanish mosque

The stomach wants what the stomach wants

After two nights in Chefchaouen a grand taxi brought us to Tetouan. Tetouan is larger than Chefchaouen but far more manageable than Fes. We only spent one night and that was probably enough to see the sights such as they were (the medina, a museum of some artifacts from the Roman site of Lixus, a school that teaches kids traditional Moroccan crafts) and then head to Asilah for our final two nights in Morocco.

Is this the Wizard of Oz’s castle?

Roman mosaics from Lixus

Asilah is a beautiful town on the Atlantic coast, not far from Tangier. They have great seafood, which I was schwiya recovered enough to appreciate, and some amazing public art. The town is awash in blue and white, accented with colorful murals that are painted in an annual festival.

One of the more disturbing seafood offerings

Gina and I treated ourselves to a hamam (my first touristy hamam–about 20 times more luxurious and more expensive than my prior hamam experiences) and I also got to meet up with one of the new PCVs who lives there. Normally I try to be positive when speaking with new volunteers but in this case I insisted she tell me all the things that are difficult about living in Asilah so that I wouldn’t get too wistful for “what could have been” if I’d been placed somewhere like this. Communicating is so easy when you have another language to fall back on and my basic Spanish was so helpful! I’m still loyal to my site of course, but I needed to hear some negatives about Asilah so I didn’t get too jealous.

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From Asilah we headed to the Tanger airport where we met up with Derek’s bag and then boarded a tiny plane to Lisbon. But that will have to wait for another blog post as Lisbon was too fabulous to be given short shrift at the end of this one.

In which I Finally Acquire a Moroccan Name?

I have not taken a “Moroccan name.”

There are plenty of good reasons to do it—you can set up a Facebook page under your new name and keep your real profile (and all those pictures of you drinking margaritas in Mexico while wearing a bathing suit) private, it might help you better integrate into the community, maybe your real name is a slang word for genitalia in Arabic (If I recall, Chloes and Tinas should change their names), you can avoid any problems that might arise if your name is the same name as a certain biblical character who changed his name from Jacob to another name that is currently the name of a country that some people in Morocco aren’t super fond of.

And really, with some names it’s just not a big deal. Going from David to Daoud, Zack to Zacaria, Jacob to Yacob, Mary to Miriam.

But maybe you don’t want to take a Moroccan name because your name is your name and you want to keep it even if in American movies it’s the name of the not-very-bright stripper who welcomes the aliens and is the first to die.

Plus there’s still enough of the hard-core women’s studies major in you to chafe at the idea of a woman having to change her name to please other people. Perhaps you’d like to read my five paragraph compare and contrast essay on heroine names in Wuthering Heights vs. Jane Eyre? No? That’s odd.

In CBT no one ever brought it up. But as soon as I arrived in my permanent site, minimum 85% of the people who met me would ask this question…the gendarme, the guy at the post office, the guy who coordinates the grand taxis, the ladies who work at the cookie hanut.

Call me stubborn but my name is my name and part of my goal here is to teach people about American ways and in America we are (mostly) past the days when people with “ethnic” names had to change from Ricardo to Ricky or Barack to Barry.

That sure doesn’t stop people from trying. At first they always tried “Fatima.” Lately its been Ayesha, which I prefer if only because it’s the name of She Who Must Be Obeyed. But I just keep ignoring them.

I thought I might be making progress when I overheard the gendarme refer to me as “Tiffany she hezja” (Tiffany “something”).

And now there’s one of the ladies at the cookie hanut who always calls me by a very special name—more of a catch-phrase really. Like all the best characters had in the TV shows of my youth.

It happened when she asked the all-important question in Morocco: am I married (and when will I have babies)?

I used to give the culturally appropriate answer of “not yet” in response to “are you married” but awhile ago I started telling them the truth—don’t wanna.

The idea of not wanting to get married usually ends the topic–it strikes people as hilarious and possibly insane. If they knew it, they would probably exclaim with the most famous 1980s catch phrase of them all.

But one woman at the cookie hanut was not so easily put off. When “I don’t want to” didn’t work and she asked “what about kids,” I went on to defense #2, I am very old—too old for babies. But she didn’t buy that either! Her four year old daughter came into the store and she’s immediately all “don’t you want a pretty girl like this?”

Flummoxed! What do I say that is not rude and wildly inappropriate and possibly giving the (incorrect) impression that I do not think her daughter is adorable? And what do I even have the ability to say given my limited language skills? If I had been speaking English I probably would have said “While your daughter is truly lovely, I am satisfied with a life in which I interact with such wonderful children on a daily basis and then go home to a quiet house.”

Instead I replied, haltingly and in my most up-talking/questioning tone: “I-yeah. Well-a-keen…ma-hoss-neesh?” Which basically translates into: “yeah, but…I don’t need [one]?”

I’m not sure if it was my broken Darija, my questioning tone, my obvious discomfort, or just the idea that a woman doesn’t need kids but Oh! how all the cookie ladies laughed. So now, whenever the cookie ladies see me, it’s all “Salam Tiffany! Well-a-keen…ma-hoss-neesh!” Hahahahaha.

Tiffany-well-a-keen-ma-hoss-neesh. As Moroccan names go, it’s a mouthful. As 1980s TV show catch-phrases go, it’s not amazing. But at least it starts with Tiffany.

Me, Speaking Arabic

One of my friends was asking me about how I communicate in Arabic. Generally, not very well. Both the language itself and the cultural expectations around language (spending at least five minutes on “hello, how are you”) are often confounding. I don’t think I am the worst PCV when it comes to language, but I am far from the best. Here’s an example of a recent conversation that might give you an idea of how I speak Arabic and how lost I sometimes feel when making conversation.

Back story: Because of Ramadan ending a day later than we thought, I needed to change my Fes to Nador train ticket to a different day. Here’s how the conversation went, translated as word for word as I can remember.

Me: Hello. How are you? Do you speak English?

Train station man: I am good. No. French.

Me: Me, no French but no problem, some Arabic. Yesterday I bought ticket but then my friend said ‘not possible because Ramadan.’ Now I need a new ticket. For today–possible?

Train station man: There are no trains.

Me: When [will there be]?

Train station man: There is one tomorrow at 5:00 pm.

Me: Nothing before?

Train station man: [Consults book, not computer. This makes me nervous and yet computers/websites in Morocco don’t always tell the truth so maybe it’s for the best?] There is an 11:00 am train.

Me: [Wondering why he did not tell me about the 11:00 am train before and suspecting that there might be an even earlier one] Nothing before?

Train station man: There is a 12:15 am train tonight/tomorrow morning.

Me: okay.

Train station man: okay?

Me: okay.

Train station man: [corrects my pronunciation of the Arabic “ok” and then] I speak German, do you?

Me: No. None.

Train station man: [says something to me in German]

Me: I don’t understand.

Train station man: I speak German.

My super official new train ticket: my old ticket, with a stamp (Moroccans love a good stamp) and some writing scribbled on it.

Me: Good. My mom speaks a little German. Me? No German.

Train station man: [says something to me in Arabic that I don’t understand while handing me my new ticket]

Me: I don’t understand.

Train station man: 12:15 tonight.

Me: I understand. Thank you.

Train station man: Danke schön.

I left the train station with two questions:

1) Why were we talking about how he speaks German, even after it had been established that I do not speak German and therefore his ability to speak German would in no way add to our ability to communicate?

2) When asking about train times in America (I mean, if we had trains outside of Ayn Rand film adaptations), one might expect to be told when the next train was. So why did this man start by telling me about a train 36 hours in the future and only move backwards in time based on my prodding? Apparently in Morocco, the guy just picks a random train he thinks you might like and it’s up to you to express another preference.

So this is kind of how I communicate in Arabic when I can communicate. There are times when I understand far less. Some PCVs are rock stars with language—either because they came here with a leg up, having studied it in the past, or because they have a knack for languages and/or because they really apply themselves. I admit, I know my Arabic could be better if I applied myself more but I haven’t made it as much of a priority as I could.

Part of it is laziness, part of it is a preference for spending time on other things, part of it is that I am older and don’t absorb languages as easily as younger brains, and part of it is that I am pretty sure I won’t be using Arabic a lot in the future. Oddly, what learning Arabic has inspired me to do is brush up on Spanish. Compared to Arabic, Spanish is sooooo easy! And when I have had occasion to speak it of late, I am understood far more easily and often. Even though my Spanish is TERRIBLE.

So I am already planning my Spanish immersion vacation for when I return to the Americas. Peru, Mexico or somewhere else?

Learning Yet Another Language

Once upon a time, PC-Morocco had programs in health and environment, placing volunteers in rural communities where the local language was one of many Berber dialects spoken in Morocco. Those are primarily Tamazight, Tashelhit (also called Shilha, although that term is also used as an umbrella term encompassing both Tam and Tash), and Tarifit. When PC-Morocco went exclusively Youth Development a few years ago, placing volunteers primarily in communities large enough to have Dar Chebabs, the thought was they could just train all volunteers in Darija, the Moroccan-Arabic dialect.

Or not.

See, Morocco is actually a majority Berber. And especially here in Morocco the Arab Spring was also Berber Spring, with an increased appreciation of the Berber contribution to Moroccan culture and history. Berber was recognized as an official language and restrictions on naming kids Berber names were lifted. It used to be that some babies would get a (legal) Arabic name on their birth certificate, but be known in their communities by their Berber name.

Whether Peace Corps (headquartered in Rabat, where French and Arabic are the norm) overestimated the Darija-speaking population or the Arab Spring changed things, or there’s some other explanation entirely, I’m not sure. All I know is that many PCVs are stationed in areas where locals speak little Darija or really really prefer to speak a Berber language.

The solution, such as it is: a 10-day in-service training. Tam and Tash were taught in Ouarzazate, where the temperature hovered in the high 90s, our classrooms were un-airconditioned and only half of our hotel rooms had air conditioning.

Al Hoceima, where spoiled Tarafit PCVs go to be trained

Tarifit was taught up north at Al Hoceima on the coast of the Mediterranean.

WTF Peace Corps? How about next time you look into Essaouira or Agadir for us southerners?

Anyway, my first step was to decide which language to learn. If you look at a map of geographic areas and dialects, you’d definitely think Tash. Indeed, PCVs only about an hour away from me signed up for Tash. But the consensus seemed to be that my site was more on the Tam side of things. So now…how’s my Tamazight?

Unsurprisingly, it’s not great. I can conjugate a few verbs, greet people and exchange pleasantries, and more easily recognize when someone is talking in Darija or Tamazight. This is important because it helps me rate how clueless I am: am I failing to understand a single word in a language I received two and a half months of training in, or am I failing to understand a single word in a language I received only 10 days of training in?

I can say “I want” and “I have” which is most of what I say in Darija anyway so that’s good. I also learned a lot of vocabulary words that start with “Tif” and wind up sounding an awful lot like my name. The two that sound the most like “Tiffany” are:

• Tifayi: meat
• Tifinagh: the name for the Berber alphabet

One of my fellow PCVs was trying to say “We eat everything except meat” and the teacher thought he was trying to say “Everyone ate except Tiffany.” I guess better than “We ate everyone except Tiffany.” I’m so done with the zombie craze.

Of limited use, but still fun, is the vast health-related vocabulary we now have at our fingertips. Since the Tamazight textbook and dictionary were written with health volunteers in mind, I can now easily look up words such as: vaccination, hunchback, man with no teeth, lymph nodes, etc. By “etc.” I mean “enough bodily functions to entertain a classroom full of 12 year old boys for at least a week”

In a horrifying turn of events, Peace Corps had a “Language Talent Show” at the end of our training. Thanks to one member of my group’s talent with the iphone app “garage band” we pre-recorded a song and then limited our live talent to dancing our version of a traditional Berber dance (called a “hadous”) along with the beat. Sadly (not) I have no pictures. But here is the song.

Other benefits of the training included a lot of information on Berber culture. I will try to cover that later because it is so fascinating and deserves its own post.

NOT, as it turns out, proper CPR technique

Also, I got CPR certified. One PCV’s visiting parents, CPR trainers in the US, took time out from their vacation to arrange a training. It turns out that what I learned through many episodes of Boys Over Flowers is inaccurate and you should not shake a drowning or hit and run victim vigorously by the shoulders and shout “get ahold of yourself!”

Now a bunch of PCVs and our teachers are certified in CPR. Not the Tarifit PCVs though. Those pampered beach-side babies would probably be useless in an emergency. (I guess it might take me awhile to get over my bitterness?)

Ouarzazate: where everything is made of mud and you are 5 hours away from the beach.