Bone-itis

I don’t know if I’ve talked about this much yet in the blog. It seems like I’m always talking about it, so my memory tends to get a little hazy. Regardless, however, I’m fairly certain that it’s impossible to over-emphasize the point. Winter in Freedonia is cold. Damn cold.

They like to ask us what our expectations had been of Morocco before we came, and I like to answer with something along the lines of how I had tried incredibly hard to not have any. This is true, but that doesn’t mean that I succeeded. And one area in which I failed to not have any expectations is with the assumption that while living in a country significantly closer to the equator than where I had previously been I would not be concerned with the lower half of the thermometer. When we arrived, however, our program directors cheerfully explained that Morocco is “the cold country with the hot sun.” There has never been a better description of anything in the history of describing things. When the sun is out – even in the winter, even here in Freedonia – it’s hot. We’ve had a few days here in the past weeks when I’ve worn a long-sleeved shirt only because it’s a little inappropriate to wear short sleeves. When the sun isn’t out, however, because it’s raining, nighttime, or simply because a cloud has temporarily moved in front, it’s cold. This can be especially true indoors. It can also be especially true in Freedonia.

And what happens, as I’ve learned from speaking with other volunteers up here in the northern mountains and from my own unfortunate experience, when exposed constantly to this kind of cold (remember what I said about houses – they’re more-or-less the same temperature as the outdoors with the only differences being the presence of blankets and furnaces), is you get chilled to the bone. Literally. Your bones get cold, and this causes them to create horrible red rash-like manifestations on your hands and feet. It looks like eczema or similar everyday dermatological problems, but it’s not. It’s your bones being cold. Your bones. Usually it itches, and when you’re particularly unlucky, it just hurts. Other times, you can’t feel it at all – in a good way, not in an advanced-stages-of-frostbite way.

I’ve taken to referring to this condition as bone-itis, and I’m fairly sure that this is the correct clinical name (for more information on bone-itis, see Futurama, season 3, episode 21, “Future Stock”). And what’s the prescribed treatment? Spend four days somewhere warm. Good luck with that. This means that I can most likely look forward to several more months of my bones being cold enough to cause epidermal irritation and my hands exhibiting that look of general decrepitness you’d expect from octogenarians.

There is an upshot, however, to all this cold. Word has it that the summertime in Freedonia is paradise on earth, made even more so by the tales of volunteers in the south sweltering the season away, having to pour buckets of water on their beds before they can sleep. That’s the sort of vision that carries me through the long cold nights.
My only regret is that I have bone-itis.

“There Are Mountains Facing Mountains”

So goes the beginning of a song we sing occasionally in the Dar Shebab, and this past weekend I found out first hand that in the Greater Freedonia Area, this is absolutely true. Of course, having driven through here in taxis to and from the seminar site of my pre-service training and having looked out a window once or twice or just in a generally upward direction from the street, I already knew this, but there’s nothing like first-hand, on-the-ground experience to really solidify any knowledge.

At some point in the past weeks, probably in the recent nice weather we’ve had since my first few weeks here of rainy misery, the guys from the Dar Shebab decided that we should all take a hike in the mountains and have a picnic. Last Sunday that’s exactly what we did. Now, I’ve taken my fair share of hikes and prepared my fair share of picnics, so I began this hike with a pretty healthy load of confidence in my ability to do both of those things. I was going to be in for quite a surprise.

To start with, I was beginning from an initial elevation that’s just shy of Denver’s and going upwards, so we’re talking some reasonably serious mountain climbing. Second, I may have eaten some bad mutton the night before. On the other hand, perhaps I’ve just never really given the appropriate appreciation to the American forestry services that blaze and groom the many trails that lead us around our national parks. Whatever the reason, our initial ascent was a killer for me and I found myself stumbling all over the place. Then again, I’ve yet to find a single surface in the entire kingdom of Morocco that is “flat” in the sense that we Americans come to take for granted, an observation made all the more shocking on this trail littered with rocks the size of large mice that rolled around on each other like ball bearings when I realized that this was not merely a recreational mountain pass but a pedestrian artery between Freedonia and its environs traversed regularly by animals, children, and 60-year-old women with a lot more on their backs than just a camera and a bottle of water. I was even more shocked when I noticed that I seemed to be the only one of us having any sort of difficulty, but determined to carry on.

So, the general idea was to hike our way into the mountains until we came to a natural spring (of which we eventually saw several), and then cook ourselves some tagines and have a great time. For any of you who don’t know what a tagine is, it’s a type of traditional Moroccan dish defined by its being cooked in a pointy-topped ceramic pot and general deliciousness. Before we could cook anything, however, we had to build some fires, which, given the incredible windiness of the top of a mountain at this altitude, reminded me on several occasions of one of Jack London’s more well-known works, much to my exclusive pleasure. And while building the fire places that we eventually used to contain our fires, we happened upon another noteworthy discovery: scorpions. Yes, scorpions. Four of them, in fact. Little yellow ones, the smallest of which was not any bigger than a dime, though the largest was easily the size of a Hot Wheels car. If Indiana Jones is to be trusted, this should be a serious problem, but my understanding is that though you can (obviously) find scorpions in Morocco, the ones you’re likely to encounter will at worst make you sick for only a couple of days.

But this was all quickly forgotten as we got to work on the cooking and eating. It was quite exciting to be making this picnic up there, since everything was prepared on the top of the mountain. The cleaning and dicing of the vegetables, the seasoning of the meats, the brewing of the tea. This was definitely the first time I’ve ever gone hiking with a tea pot, but in Morocco very little is done without the assistance of tea. It also turned out to be the best tagine I’ve eaten in this country, as well, as apparently one of the guys had previously been a chef in the Royal Armed Forces and definitely knows what he’s doing with a chicken, some vegetables, and a pointy ceramic pot.

The tagine euphoria was quickly shattered, however, by one of the most heart-breaking aspects of Moroccan culture: the total lack of environmental consciousness. We had a beautiful picnic in pristine nature, but, as the standard operating procedure in Morocco is generally just to throw your trash more-or-less wherever you feel like, this will not be the case for the picnic that comes after us. One of the guys did gather up most of trash into bags and tied them together behind a rock, which kind of makes a difference, except for the fact that, no, it really doesn’t. Of course, you may be asking, “But Duncan, why didn’t you do something about this?” You have a good question there, and I don’t really have a good answer for you. I mostly just stared in pacifying depression. As this blog and its millions of avid reader/disciples are my witness, however, I intend to rectify my lack of action with something hopefully much more sustainable by the time I leave this country.

But before that happens, I’ll conclude for you my story of mountain adventure. It was at about the same time that I was being made an unwilling accomplice to LitterGate that I was given another surprise: the natural spring where we had just gorged ourselves like hedonistic Romans was not actually the spring of our final destination. And so we set off once more following at times donkey (excuse me) trails (it’s impolite in Moroccan culture to say “donkey” – excuse me again – without excusing yourself), and other times making our own paths through brush and scrub trees where no man was ever intended to tread. We walked through sun and rain; we saw snow on the ground and walked through intense heat. We made our way up to the top of one mountain with boulders and caves and crossed over sheer ridges. At one point we met a farmer up there and paid him off with our remaining bread to take photos with his donkeys (excuse me one final time). If I’d been walking with Halflings I’d have sworn I was in New Zealand. It’s possible that in all this time I may have breached the extent of my out-of-site policy, but as I’m not really sure where it is that I went, I suppose that no one – including myself – will never really know.

Our journey finally came to an end after we had ascended and descended four separate ridges and the sun had gone down completely enough that I was no longer the only one having difficulty with his footing and we began to discuss the various dangers posed to us in different degrees from the wild boars, lions, feral dogs, wolves, foxes, Aisha Qandisha, and our mothers if we were forced to spend the night in the mountains, but we managed to make landfall once more in Freedonia at around only 6:30 in the evening (sunsets are a lot faster the closer you get to the Equator, and there’s a lot less light pollution in Morocco than I’ve ever been used to) after around eight hours and countless kilometers (who really understands kilometers anyway?) of hiking. I can’t wait to go again.

It also got me thinking seriously about the excellence of the standard, The Ants Go Marching, but that's probably a story for another night.

The Big Holiday

That’s the popular name for Eid al-Adha, the Islamic Feast of the Sacrifice, which just past this week. Eid al-Adha is, for comparison, like a combination of the intensity of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and occasionally little bits of Halloween all at the same time. It’s so big, in fact, that Peace Corps volunteers are forbidden from travelling anywhere for a full week – the roads are that packed with people going home or to visit friends and relatives, and towns and cities are just that crazy. Fortunately, I’m still living with a host family, so I was able to experience all there is to the Eid, but before we get there, perhaps a little background on its origins.

The Eid is a commemoration of something that happened at perhaps the very beginning of all three Abrahamic religions. It’s a festival celebrated only by Muslims, but the event is part of Judaism and Christianity. I’m a little fuzzy on some of the details, to be honest, but I’m hoping that you’ll recognize the story and fill in the rest on your own. It all began with Abraham, the founder of this religious tree, and a dream he had. In his dream, God commanded him to sacrifice his son, Ishmael (I believe). We he awoke, he discussed this vision with his son, who, being sensible, recognized the inevitability of God’s will and told Abraham that he had to do what he had to do. They gathered everything necessary for the sacrifice, Abraham raised the knife over his son, and right before he’d gone too far, God interceded and sent a ram, which they sacrificed instead. As well as I can remember, this was God’s test for Abraham, who, having shown his absolute piety, would go on to lead the new religion. (Anyone should feel free to comment here on the accuracy of my recounting this story.)

Today, people across the Muslim world show their piety by reenacting this story’s most important detail, the slaughter of a ram. Actually (and here I’m going to start speaking just about my experience in Morocco rather than universal Islam), it doesn’t have to be just a ram. Though most people do look for the biggest, fattest, most impressive-looking ram that they can find and afford, they’re more than free to slaughter a ewe instead, or even a goat. My language is not the best, but I’m fairly certain that I heard that people with diabetes opt for the goat. Why this makes a difference I can’t tell you. And I should make a small amendment: when I say “people,” I should say “families.” There is supposed to be one ram per family, which means that even small towns in Morocco need a lot of rams.

This is part of the excitement, however. Starting about a week before, all the sheep and goat farmers from the area start bringing in their animals and make an informal souq (“market”) in the center of town. At least, that’s what happened here in Freedonia. As we get closer to the day of Eid, people start to get moving on acquiring their sacrifice. The souq gets packed with folks looking for the best ram, which has to meet several requirements. First, you feel its back end, right about where the spine reaches the hips, to see if there’s any meat there or not. You also have to pick it up and take a look at its teeth (for obvious reasons). You see, there are some unscrupulous ram venders who try to fluff up the wool, or give it low-quality, fattening feed in the week immediately before to give it bulk, but not meat. And these things are expensive. Families are dropping well over a thousand dirhams – and this is in a relatively poor part of the country. In fact, they’re so much so that venders on quote the first two digits of the price, like, “26,” meaning “26 thousand riyals.” (A riyal is a ridiculous construction that is equal to one twentieth of a dirham, and just about all prices are quoted in them, but there are no denominations of money that indicate their riyal value, but I’d rather not go down that road just yet. Suffice it to say, 26,000 riyals is the same as 1,300 dirhams, which is approximately 162.5 dollars. When's the last time you payed that much for your Thanksgiving turkey?) My family and I walked around the ram market for more than an hour, grabbing the back end of any reasonable-looking animal, asking for some prices, and trying to bargain down the sellers. I tended to have little idea of what was going on, but we eventually got ourselves a good-looking ram, brought him home, and got ready for the Eid two days later.

On the day of Eid, people wake up early and pray, and then get to the business of the ram. Like American Thanksgiving, the majority of the day is devoted to either the preparation or consumption of food, and, thus, the ram needs to be slaughtered quite early. Actually, the most surprising aspect of the entire Eid is the straightforwardness of the slaughter itself. I’m not exactly sure why, but I had expected something more of pomp and circumstance. There is none of this. No praying or invoking of holy powers, no family gathering, no ritualistic aspects of any kind. In fact, only a few people in my family were there when the ram was sacrificed, and I think this was mostly to see what I would think of it. And from what I saw of other families, this is fairly common. Even the king, who had his slaughter rebroadcast on the news, merely had a ram brought over and held down by attendants, took out a knife, and cut its throat. That was it. If the movie Gone in 60 Seconds had been about Eid al-Adha instead, it might have actually been a decent film.

The process of the slaughter is very important, however. Muslims are forbidden from consuming the blood of animals, which is not only a problem for Islamic vampires, but also means that all of the blood must be removed from the animal. (Spoiler Alert: If you’re a member of PETA or similarly disposed, you may not want to read the rest of this paragraph. Probably not the next one, either.) Consequently, the jugular of the animal is cut, causing lots of bleeding, but by not severing the spinal column the ram’s brain continues to drive the beating of the heart, which causes the animal to pour out all of its blood. If the brain were no longer connected to the heart, blood would stay in some of the veins. I’m not entirely certain that some doesn’t stay in either these processes, but I can say that a piece of meat here in Morocco doesn’t seep blood like a piece does back in the States.

Once all the blood is out, the butchering commences. This begins with removing the skin (wool included), which is actually quite fascinating. To separate the skin from the muscle, you cut a small hole in one of the rear legs and blow into it, inflating the torso and legs like a balloon or really unfortunate bagpipe. Things then proceed pretty much as you’d imagine – with a brief pause to decapitate the ram about halfway through – until all the skin is off. At this point, you hang up the carcass and have to get to the business of disembowelment. As far as I can tell, every part of the ram, aside from the hooves, horns, and skin is eaten, which includes all the major, minor, and never-before-seen organs scattered about its innards. Each must be carefully separated from the body and placed aside for cleaning and eventual eating.

Speaking of which, immediately after the organs start to come out, the cooking begins. Much of the food that I’ve eaten here in Morocco has been pressure cooked, but the Eid ram is grilled (some parts are pressure cooked later), and as far as I can determine, everyone starts with liver and lungs wrapped in the fat that lines the stomach. This may sound somewhat unpleasing, but the fat actually adds a lot of flavor, and, with some salt and hot pepper, makes for some very tasty kebabs. As for the rest, I’ve been counting down the internal organs as we’ve eaten them, and there can’t be too many left. I think that today’s lunch is going to be the head and everything that comes with it, after which I can’t think of anything remaining. It has been six days since Eid, and last night’s dinner was the first meal in all of that time when we ate chicken (mutton/goat and chicken are pretty much the only meats I eat with my family). It was delicious.

Language

Some words and expressions in Darija that are particularly awesome, useful, or noteworthy.

Fayadan /fæ · yuh · dän/. This means “flood” in English, and is about the coolest sounding word I’ve ever heard. If I ever get into lucha libre (Mexican wrestling for any of you Philistines out there), that’s definitely going to be my name (with the requisite conditioners, of course). El Fayadan Loco.

Sfinj /sfinž/. This means “doughnut,” and is the funniest sounding word I’ve ever heard.

“Hit me with your telephone.” This is a literal translation of what you say when you mean “give me a call.”

Brodgan /brōd · gän/. These are boots – not your big galoshes types, more of the work/hiking disposition. Not very interesting in themselves, but the word makes them sound like something you’d find in a fantasy role-playing game. “Come hither, squire, and bring my brodgan. I must off to slay the terrible serpent.” Seriously badass.

The 4 Words (this is a tribute to another of my training comrades, Zacki, who discussed these in a speech at our swearing-in). These four words are pretty much all you really need to know to speak Darija. They are also very frequently used by volunteers speaking English (see Volunteer Darija, below).

1. /bε · zaf/. This means “a lot” or “much,” but is much more important than these two functions. “Bezzaf” is what you answer whenever anyone asks you if you like something, or if you’ve done things like eating already.

2. Shwiya /šwē · yuh/. This is pretty much the opposite of “bezzaf,” though it can also be used to imply incompleteness. For example, “I feel shwiya today,” or “I have a shwiya mudir (director) at my Dar Shebab.” It’s most used, however, when someone is about to give you more food or tea, though not very often listened to by said person.

3. Inshallah /in · šä · lä/ or /in · šä · uh · lä/. We’ve talked about this before, but for the beginner in Darija, “inshallah” is most useful as a way to end a line of questioning by an interlocutor, particularly when you don’t know what they’re talking about. Just say, “inshallah,” and you’ve got a 80% chance of having said the right thing. It’s also incredibly useful if someone asks you about doing something with you in the future, and you’re unsure about it or flat out don’t want to.

4. Yumkin /yehm · kin/. This means “maybe,” and should not be confused with mumkin (/muhm · kin/), which means “it is possible” (as I did for the first month or so). “Yumkin” is the perfect response to any question to which “inshallah” is not applicable, especially if you don’t know what they’re talking about.

“Fatal Tigers.” This is actually English and not Darija at all, but it’s been seen written as graffiti on a wall in Fes and here in Freedonia. I have no idea what it means, but whether it’s a street gang, a political movement, a rock band, or a team of synchronized swimmers, it’s got the coolest name of all time and I want to join. Also, I’ve yet to meet anyone who can explain anything about it.

Khowi /khä · wē/. This is a very dangerous word. The “kh” should be pronounced in a gargling fashion from the back of the throat, similar to an “r” in French. There is no phonetic letter for this sound that I know of, so it’s usually written as a “kh” in languages that use the Arabic alphabet, “ch” in Hebrew (think “Channukah”), or “x” in our Darija textbooks. In any event, if you have difficulty pronouncing it, talk to Michael McCowan; he’s really good at making this sound. Anyway, “khowi” means “pour,” as in “khowi attay” (“pour the tea”). The problem is that many people can’t make the proper gargle, and instead say “howi attay.” Normally it’s not such a problem if you make that mistake, but in this particular instance, you are giving the imperative command to do something quite improper (and seemingly impossible) to the tea.

Qub /qüb/. This is the verb that is the solution to your “khowi” problems. The “q” sound is also another difficult sound for non-Arabic speakers, being a sort of vocalized glottal stop rather than an English q. However, if you make a mistake when you say “qub attay” – which means the same thing as “khowi attay” – you just sound like a silly foreigner rather than a vulgar pervert.

Yek /yek/. This is what you say after making a statement you’re not sure about the veracity of. It basically means, “right?” For example, “We’re going to eat now, yek?” But it has a much better use, as well. After you make a statement that you really want the listener to understand, you say “yek.” Basically meaning, “you dig?” Excellent expression, yek?

“God help you.” This is the literal translation of what you say to people when you are leaving or going to sleep or someone else is leaving or going to sleep. It functions as something like “God be with you,” or “Godspeed,” or I really don’t know what it means, but it sounds funny every time I hear it. Especially since the reply is “Amin,” which is my name here in Morocco.

Volunteer Darija. We volunteers tend to speak another language of our own – two actually – volunteer Darija and volunteer Daringlish. Volunteer Daringlish is mostly English, with a handful of extra words from Darija thrown in. For example, The 4 Words, which are so important in our speaking of Darija that we can’t help but add them to our speaking of English. There are others, though. “Wallu” (/wa · lü/), meaning “nothing;” “belati” (/bi · lä · tē/), meaning “wait,” and “shnu” (/šnü/), meaning “what.” And this happens even we’re talking to people from back home who speak shwiya or wallu of Darija. We just can’t help it; so, if you’re thinking about talking to a PCV Morocco, you might want to learn those.

Volunteer Darija is the special language that we speak with actual Darija speakers, consisting of all the extra words and expressions that we’ve created. This isn’t a reference to our frequently unintelligible words we throw at unfortunate Moroccans. It’s more of a grassroots movement to build a new language, or at least redirect where this one is going a little bit. Here’s a sample.

- Mumtastic. This comes from the combination of mumtaz (/muhm · taz/), meaning great, and fantastic, meaning “fantastic.” People here tend to not really understand when you say this.

- Bezzaffer. This comes from the word bezzaf (see above) and is the noun form, as in, “That 5th policy session was a real bezzaffer.”

- Shukes /šüks/. A diminutive form of shukran (/šōk · rän/), which means “thank you.” “Shukes” is our creation of a “thanks,” and Moroccans tend to think it’s funny.

- Mashi Moosh /mä · šē müš/. Another diminutive, this time of the expression mashi mushkil (/mä · šē müš · kēl/), meaning, “not a problem.” “Mashi moosh” is easier and more fun to say, and, because it technically means “not a cat” in a combination of proper Darija and Berber, Moroccans tend to think it’s really funny.

Hopefully this guide is a useful way for you to better understand Darija and the life of your Moroccan Peace Corps volunteer.

9 Things

Some things I’ve noticed about Morocco that are different or surprising enough to write about (aside from the obvious like everyone speaking Arabic).

1 – It’s rude to whistle. I’m not talking about whistling at girls or anything, which is just as rude back in the states; I’m talking about the whistling Dixie / whistle-while-you-work kind of whistling. Imagine burping the alphabet, and that’s about what whistling is like. Burping is pretty much okay, though.

2 – There are a lot of trees here in Freedonia that drop a lot of leaves, and people solve this problem in the most obvious of ways: they burn them. You walk down the street and you’ll see huge piles of leaves just burning away on the side of the road, heaped up against a wall, or right in the middle of a park. Of course, not a whole lot around here is built of anything other than concrete or mud, so there really isn’t that much danger of danger, but it’s nonetheless American-mindset blowing to think how many lawyers you’d have rolling over you if you even thought about it in the states.

3 – You can’t talk about the future without using the conditioner “inshallah,” which translates roughly as “God willing.” For example, you’re talking about college so you say, “I’ll graduate in a year with my master’s, inshallah;” or you’re going away on a trip so you say, “I’ll see you in a week, inshallah;” or you’re cooking dinner so you say, “tonight we’ll be eating chicken, inshallah.” Always. And if you don’t say it, the person you’re talking to will add it for you. “We have a meeting here at 3, so I’ll give you a call 10 minutes before.” “Inshallah.” But “inshallah” has other connotations as well. It’s not polite to flat out refuse something, so people often just say “inshallah.” For example, “Hey, baby [(you say “gazelle,” actually)], can I have your number?” “Inshallah.” In this case, your translation is more along the lines of “if God compels me to [you sleaze],” and I think it’s something we should definitely pick up in English.

After spending only a little time here, though, I can tell you that sometimes it really does take divine intervention for things to happen.

4 – Television is king. This is actually not different at all from the states; I add this point mostly because it’s something I really didn’t expect. What’s interesting is that the people I’ve watched television with seem to be more invested in the watching of tv than the actual tv that they’re watching. I can’t tell you how many times we start watching something and someone will just switch the channel to another show, and everyone just goes along with it. Maybe after a bit and a few more switches we’ll be back at that first show, but by now we’ve missed enough of the story that it doesn’t make sense any more. I guess it’s not what you watch, as long as you’re watching something.

5 – There is tile all over the place. Not just like in the states where the only place you see tiles are in bathrooms and kitchens (and those are purely functional), just about everything is decorated with beautiful painted tiles. Floors, walls, doors – you can’t get away from them. And this translates into the streets as well. Morocco is not so strong in terms of public sanitation, and you find tiny bits of trash all over the streets and open spaces. This includes tiny bits of tiles, too. You can’t walk down the street without stumbling over beautiful fragments of discarded tile. I don’t know why they’re there; from an American perspective, it’d be like tossing out shards of stained glass with the trash. I’m thinking about collecting them and making mosaics.

6 – Dar Shebab. That’s what we call the center where we do our work when we transliterate it from Arabic. Except that it isn’t. Everyone (this pretty much just includes Peace Corps staff) calls it the “Dar Chebab.” Now, there is no difference in the way the two are pronounced, both sound like /š/, as in “shut,” as in everyone who writes “chebab” should shut up. (Obviously, they aren’t speaking in this case, and if they were, that would be ok, as the two sound alike.) Consider this: there are four different ways to pronounce “ch”: /č/ as in “cheese,” /k/ as in “chemistry,” /tč/ as in “sandwich,” and /š/ as in “shebab.” Are you considering it? Rather than having to worry about whether we work in the Dar /Chebab/, the Dar /Kebab/, the Dar /Tchebab/, or the Dar /Shebab/, we could just say “sh,” which has only one pronunciation and no worries.

7 – English and Shleuha (the Berber word for Berber) are not at all “bhal bhal” (identical), despite the fact that “eat” (as an imperative) and “etch” mean the same thing and sound like each other.

8 – Pretty much all meals are eaten from a communal dish, which is pretty cool (very much like Ethiopian food, for those of you who’ve had it). It usually consists of a meat of some sort (the idea of vegetarianism is pretty much non-extant here) piled upon which is an assortment of steamed – thoroughly – vegetables. This is not really surprising or strange in any way. It’s mostly just delicious. What is mysterious enough to warrant inclusion in this list is the meat. The eating thereof, anyway. There seems to be an unwritten rule that everyone eats the vegetables first (mindful to stay in your triangle of the dish and not to violate the triangle of anyone else, of course), and, at a time ordained by some higher power, everyone starts in on the meat. What I cannot for the life of me determine is when and how you know it is that time. For me, it’s a lot like playing Hearts and waiting for someone to “break hearts” so that you can start playing your heart cards as well.

9 – The word for “winter” in Darija is “shtah,” which is exactly in writing and pronunciation like the word “shtah,” which means “rain.” At first, I thought this was just a funny coincidence, but then I came to Freedonia where it rains everyday, sometimes more than once in a day, and sometimes not at all because it’s snowing instead. This makes me wonder in a bad way about the summer, which in Arabic is “saif,” which is often pronounced like “sif,” which means “sword.” That can’t be good.

What You've Been Waiting For

Or, as my eternally lovable training comrade, Anthony, would say: That for which you’ve been waiting. Either way you put it, I recognize that I have been very amiss in my writings in talking about my actual work here in Morocco, tending more towards philosophical tangents and nonsense.

Now, my work and nonsense. As I hope you are aware by this point, I am a Peace Corps volunteer. If you were not aware, I’m afraid that you’re going to have to do your own research on that subject, as, this not being an official Peace Corps publication, I’m not at liberty to tell you anything about it all. In fact, I may have said too much already. Let’s start again.

I am a volunteer with an organization that shall remain unnamed, working in the Youth Development sector. Youth Development varies somewhat form country to country within this organization, but in Morocco, this means working with the Ministry of Youth and Sports out of a building (there’s one in most all big towns, more than one in really big towns) called a Dar Shebab, which means “youth house.” It’s not exactly a house, however; it’s really more of a youth center. Mine actually does have a house attached to it, though, for the mudir, or director, to live in.

So, what do I do at the Dar (as we call it)? Well, the Dar is open from Tuesday to Saturday, at varying intervals of the day, so I go and teach English classes every evening except for Fridays. But, I should correct myself; it’s not so much that I teach English classes as it is that we do. “We” being myself and Ali, my counterpart. Ali is fluent in English himself, and does at least half or more of the work for the classes, as well as taking care of just about everything else that I have to do with me. If it weren’t for his New York Yankees hat, I’d say he’s a great guy.

There are two levels of class that we teach: beginner/intermediate on Tuesday and Wednesday, and advanced/baccalaureate on Thursday and Saturday. Fortunately, there are also two categories of students: ones who come only a few days a week, and ones who come everyday. Unfortunately, this means that the levels of the classes are really more of an academic exercise for me when I’m planning, and don’t really carry over too much into the classroom. We’re working on that, though.

But English teaching, though important, is really only a secondary objective for the organization’s Youth Development volunteers. The main idea, as you might imagine, is youth development, which is much bigger than just English classes. We spend a lot of our time doing activities with the youth, working with other organizations, motivating parents to take part in the lives of their children, and helping schools with their projects. That’s the idea, anyway. My town of Freedonia (you’ll recall that Freedonia isn’t actually its name) is quite developed for a site in Morocco. For example, there’s Ali who could do all the classes himself if he wanted to, there’s several organizations that run activities for the Dar Shebab, a bunch of older youth putting together their own organization to help tackle the lack of employment opportunities. In short, I’m not entirely sure why this town needs a volunteer, but I’m happy so far to tag along with these guys while they work.

And so I’ve spent the rest of my time meeting the principals of the various schools here (there are four elementary schools, one junior high, and one high school, as well as a private elementary and high school), talking to English teachers, and spending time with my host family. My house is in possibly the most aesthetically fantastic location in Freedonia. It sits at the top of a gentle cliff, looking out over a valley with a clear shot to the major city nearby. It’s gorgeous when it’s not raining. My family consists of my host mom, Mahjouba; dad, Mustapha; brothers, Mohammad, Smail, and Aisam; and sister, Noura, who lives and goes to college in Local Major City. Of course, this being Morocco there are also tons of other family around. In fact, my grandfather (who just left last week to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca - we’ll talk about that later), is the owner of the local ladies’ hammam. His house is a great place to hang out on cold winter days with all the pipes of scalding hot water.

Beginning this week, I’m going to have to start looking for my own place to live, though. I’m looking forward to the independence it will bring, though it will mean more work I have to do on the part of housekeeping and staying occupied. I do a fair amount here, washing my own clothes and taking care of my room – though my host mom would certainly prefer to do those things for me – but I don’t get to cook. It’s actually one of the most difficult parts of living in a host family in a country where such things are expected to be done by women only, but I did get to make a Thanksgiving dinner the other day, which was fantastic.

Anyway, that should give you some idea of what I’ve been up to around here. Stay tuned for some flashbacks about what I was up to during training.

Installation

As of November 20th, 2008, around noon, I am a full-on Peace Corps volunteer. Obviously, this honor comes with certain rights and responsibilities, crap-tons of street cred, and a lot of changes. Although I’ve been in Morocco for almost 3 months now, I’ve only been working at my site for almost 3 days.

Which brings us to the main point of this writing: where is my site? Well, unfortunately, I can’t tell you that. You see, there are certain security precautions that we have to take here in the Peace Corps so that the rest of you (we tend to refer to you as “normies”) can benefit from the peace that we are creating. Now, I don’t want to frighten any of you with delicate sensibilities, it’s not really dangerous; but I would be amiss if I didn’t imply that there’s a hint of peril.

So, how does this affect you? Well, ladies will probably swoon a little bit at the magnitude of my awesomeness, and those who are pregnant, nursing, or have heart conditions should probably not read this without qualified supervision. And anyone who wants to write or visit will have to write me an email to find out where it is that you or your packages should be sent.

But seriously, I can tell you some about my site in general terms that should keep the hypothetical terrorists and Illuminati in enough dark about my whereabouts to last me the next 2 years. First of all, for the purposes of further confusion, let’s call my site Freedonia, in homage to probably the most influential of treatises on international relations of the 20th Century. Second, allow me to confirm suspicions that Freedonia is, in fact, located in Morocco.

Freedonia is a small town in the Middle Atlas of less than 10,000 people, which, if that number is as meaningless to you as it is to me, means that you could easily walk from one side of town to the other in less than 2 hours, but you could never hope to meet all the people in it. It was developed mostly by the French as an escape from the incredible summer heat of the major cities, and so there is a very obvious blending/imperialism of cultures and architectural styles that some people see as “un-Moroccan,” but is usually very welcome to most tourists and expatriates.

The weather is quite cold, which can be difficult to unbearable in the winter, though the envy of Morocco in the summer, when it is – allegedly – paradisiacal. But the icing on the meteorological cake is the air and water. Almost all the big cities of Morocco are in the coastal plain, and, as a result, are smog-tastic, but the fresh mountain air of Freedonia keeps all that in the cities where it belongs. And the water in pretty much every town, city, and village, if it’s potable at all, tastes like a cocktail of chlorine, salt, and desert, and evokes a sensation similar to when eating blowfish sushi – even though you’re assured it’s perfectly safe, there’s still a chance it could kill you. Or worse. Not so in Freedonia. The tap water runs from the same natural mineral springs that feed the bottling companies that bottle the water the rest of Morocco drinks in lieu of playing Russian roulette with their gastro-intestinal systems.

The people are, on the whole, quite friendly and welcoming. There are certain stereotypical forms of harassment that foreigners face here in Morocco: political, religious, sexual, and “daily.” Political harassment is usually related to being associated with President Bush or the Iraq War, but President-Elect Obama has done an incredible job already of minimizing that. Religious harassment usually manifests in two ways, arguments for converting to Islam or discrimination against atheists, adherents of polytheistic religions, and Jews. Sexual harassment can range from chauvinistic bothering to groping to serious sexual assault. Finally, “daily” harassment that foreigners experience usually takes the form of xenophobia or rock-throwing (we’ll probably have a discussion later about rock-throwing, as well as harassment in general, I’m sure). As for xenophobia, all black people are Senegalese and looked down upon, all Asians are Chinese and looked at strangely from a somewhat downward perspective, and all white people are French and looked at with a mixture of envy, resentment, suspicion, and supplication.

Thus far I have experienced none of these – hamdullah – here in Freedonia. Of course, I’ve only been here for a 1-week site visit and 3 days of actual installation, but news spreads around pretty quickly in a small town about the arrival of a new American. I credit this fortune, however, to several places. First of all, the Peace Corps, in my estimation, did an excellent job of preparing us for entry with language and cultural training (mostly through the home stay program and the guidance of phenomenal language and cultural facilitators). Second, my family here is incredibly warm and helpful, and I have to take this opportunity to give a shout out to Baba Mustapha, Mama Mahjouba, my brothers Mohammad, Smail, and Isam, my sister Nora (at school is Fes), and my sister Itou’, who lives in France with her husband and I’ve never met or spoken to before. But finally, I credit the town of Freedonia itself for being very open to cross-cultural communication.

In short, when Peace Corps volunteers talk about the best countries to be placed in, Morocco is always at the top of the list, and when PCVs in Morocco talk about the best sites in the country, the ones who’ve been here for a bit always list Freedonia as number 1.

On Development, Part I

Now that all of us new volunteers are getting our sites and starting to think about our development plans in a less abstract fashion, I think that it’s an appropriate time to talk about the effects of continuity and development. By “continuity” I mean the effects that a previous developer can have on the experience of his or her successor, as well as just the impact that all cultural ambassadors have on the image of their compatriots and the response they receive from the host country.

To illustrate this point, I’m going to tell you a story about my adventure hiking a mountain today. Today was actually the first day off that we’ve had here in Morocco. Every other day we’ve either had classes of some kind, self-directed language study, or been with our host families practicing our integration. However, today we’re in our seminar site (no host families), we had our massive language test yesterday, and it’s the staff’s day off, so some a handful of us decided to take a hike in the mountains. (As a quick side note, this part of Morocco, the Middle Atlas, is not at all like any of your preconceptions would lead you to believe. In fact, it’s cold and mountainous, and a lot like Western North Carolina.)

Fast-forwarding through most of the hike, we wandered around through some of the mountains going from peak to peak and pausing every so often to enjoy the view of the city. And when I say mountains, they are mountains, but the city is in the mountains as well, so the relative heights that we had to ascend were negligible. Anyway, we passed a bunch of Moroccans from time to time – Berber ladies doing laundry in the river, farmers coming and going between the city and the bled (countryside), families gathering branches for firewood, children playing jump rope up on the mountainside – and we would greet them casually and continue on our way. Usually they would start speaking to us in French (most Moroccans conceptualize all foreigners as being French because of their abundance here), and we usually surprised and impressed them by responding in Darija (Moroccan Arabic).

Anyway, after spending about an hour-and-a-half enjoying the bucolic splendor of central Morocco, and realizing that all of our conversations were turning to types of food we missed back in the states and the best of what we’ve had here so far, we decided it was time to head downtown to the café that sells hamburgers (which, ironically, are not worth writing home about). And so we left, but it turned to out to be earlier than I had expected, as I still had a loaf of bread (not as big as you think, they make them pretty “fun size” here) and a chocolate bar, so I scarfed the bread and began working on the chocolate as we walked. Before long we began passing some of the people we had seen on our way up, including a handful of boys who had been gathering firewood or something (most likely just horsing around), they saw the chocolate bar in my hand and immediately made a bee-line for us.

Now, an important element of development is sustainability (I believe we discussed this in a previous issue), which includes the way that you give to the host country. There really is no consensus on this particular point, but I and many of my colleagues would argue that just giving money or things to the host country runs contrary to the purpose of development, as it really only seems to develop a culture of asking foreigners to give things (or money), which means that development requires the presence of foreigners, their things, and their money, rather than requiring only the motivational energy (at best, ideally) of people like Peace Corps volunteers and the continued effort of the host community. This becomes even more important when you think about how if one developer just gives things and/or money, then they may condition their host community to expect the same from future developers – or foreigners in general – and can cause real problems for a successor trying to convince his or her host country to develop sustainably.

Needless to say, my convictions on this matter led me to say, “no, sorry” in response to the demands on my chocolate. The little ones were not so easily dissuaded in their pursuit of Maruja (this brand), and called in some reinforcements and began swarming us yelling, “Maruja! Maruja! Âtini [give me] Maruja!” We spoke with them a little more forcibly as we continued walking, but there was no changing their minds, so we mostly just kept walking – attempting to ignore them and continue our conversation about fencing (the sport, not the lawn decoration). And that would have been easy if it weren’t for the fact that one of them was definitely carrying a pretty nasty-looking meat cleaver (intended on the top of this mountain for a purpose that escaped me), and while he didn’t seem to be menacing us with it, it was definitely present in our negotiations. But we were clearly not interested in what they were selling us, and responded to them with, “Do you understand Darija?” “Hshuma âlikum [shame on you]!” And big lumberjack Tim asking them if there was going to be a problem.

We kept walking along the trail, but, unfortunately, this trail was pretty much only switchbacks, and the little chocolate monsters were just coming down the sides of the mountain calling at us from the trees and occasionally tossing rocks (fairly common in the aggregate amongst Moroccan boys), and doing a pretty good impression of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park – though keeping their distance for the most part. It’s hard to say how it would have ended if we’d had to really throw down because we soon saw a couple older men walking up the path towards us who seem to have dissuaded our pursuers.

Hopefully that was an entertaining story for you – there’s action, adventure, suspense, chocolate – and a little bit of reference to development, but I started this blog talking about continuity between developers, and I’m fairly sure that I haven’t talked about that yet. Here’s how it all ties together:

When we got back downtown and were headed on our way to the aforementioned hamburger café, we ran into a few more trainees sitting in a different café enjoying some lunch, and having just had this adventure, we quickly set about telling them what happened. But they stopped us pretty much immediately and said, “Wait, which mountain are you talking about? The big one with the building on top of it?” We said yes and they began to talk about how they had hiked the same earlier in the morning.

“We went up the side, and headed towards the peak,” they said. “After getting up there and having all the fun we needed, we started coming back down again and ran into these boys barring the path with a branch and demanding money. 100 dirhams. We said we weren’t going to give them anything except for the fact that one of them had a pretty nasty-looking meat cleaver seemingly intended specifically for menacing way-farers. They kind of chased us back up the hill and we had to climb down the rocks on the far side to escape. We had a little chocolate with us though, which we gave to them to get them away from us. It was horrible.”

And so there you have it. We had no idea why they were so fixated on the chocolate (we just figured who doesn’t like Maruja?), and they had no idea what – if any – impact their choices would make on the interactions between these host country nationals and future developers. And I certainly don’t intend to imply that what the others did was wrong; they were being more or less robbed at cleaver-point and made the right choice to preserve themselves (which leads to further discussion on the interplay between the needs of the developer and the developee, but we’ll have to save that for later). The point I’m trying to make with this story is that you never really know what’s going to happen in the future as a result of what you do or say now. We find ourselves often generalizing Moroccan behavior from a relatively small amount of interaction, and I hope it’s not too ridiculous of an assumption to imply that Moroccans do the same.

Take our site replacements, for example. The previous volunteer in my site is French-American and spoke in French for a good many of his meetings with counterparts, and I have a bit of difficulty convincing the same people to speak to me in Darija as they assume that all Americans speak French (an assumption that isn’t helped by the fact that I actually do speak French). That’s a very minor situation. Some of my friends, ladies, are replacing other lady volunteers that married or are marrying Moroccans, and have to spend all day explaining to their communities that they are there to do youth development, not to find husbands. Again, you can’t really say that it’s wrong for volunteers to fall in love and get married, but it goes to further illustrate the point that everything that we do works to establish precedents that we or our successors will have to deal with.

Something to think about.

An Apology

Sorry about the infrequency with which I've been writing, but, as you might imagine, things are quite busy now. We have been taking classes in just about everything you can imagine, meeting our new sites (which I'll talk about later), and being generally awesome, which, as you know, can consume quite a lot of your time.

But, if you'd like a quick update, tomorrow is the big language test that determines if we can stay here and do our work or if we have to stay here and do our work after signing a piece of paper that says we'll also keep working on our language. If we don't have to sign the paper, we still have to keep working on our language ability.

Also, next Thursday is our Swearing In, which means that we become official volunteers and get to start accruing vacation time. I'll probably write about that some time in the future as well. And I'll start uploading photos once I've gotten into my own place (February 1st, inshaallah), so jusy keep hanging on a little longer, ok?

The Hammam and Man Love

Let me tell you about the hammam. The “Hammam Story” is the most told by anyone – Peace Corps volunteer or otherwise – who comes to Morocco, but it is an unavoidable duty. So, what is the hammam? In short, the hammam is the public bath, and it is at once both exactly like what you think it is and completely different.

I went with one of my CBT (Community-Based Training) pals, Michael. It’s very important to go with someone else for reasons that will be explained more later. When you get there it’s a lot like the YMCA – damp, humid, disrobing men making small talk – then, you’re handed a few buckets (important) and go on in to the most memorable bathing experience of your life.

Now, not all hammams look the same – some have many rooms, some have few; some are big, some small; some have many faucets and some have only one – but the one I went to has four rooms, each for a specific purpose. And before I go any further in the story, let me clarify what I meant by the “disrobing” I mentioned previously. You do NOT get naked in the men’s hammam (I’ve heard conflicting stories about what happens in the women’s), but you do strip down to your undies or bathing suit (I opted for the former). So, the first room is called the “cold room” and it’s actually the last room you go to. The two following rooms are each significantly progressively warmer and the final room is the hottest.

The hot room is where you get your water in your buckets (still important), but also where you sit and warm up. The whole philosophy of the hammam hinges around the fact that people don’t really bathe as frequently as they do in the States, for example, and so they have different requirements for getting clean. The room is so hot that you can hardly move and no cleaning is done here. Instead, you only sit and sweat until you’re almost completely dehydrated – maybe 20 minutes – allowing the sweat to loosen the grime and filth that has collected over the last 3-4 days (if you’re Moroccan) or 6-8 days (if you’re a Peace Corps volunteer).

Now you’re ready to start cleaning yourself. For this you have to go to a medium temperature room, take a seat on the floor (after disinfecting it with a little hot water from your buckets), and get out your soap and, most importantly, your kees. The kees was originally designed by Cardinal Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition as a means of extracting conversions from non-believers (see Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I for more information). Today, Moroccans have adapted its use for deep-penetrating exfoliation and extracting conversions from non-believers. Although the kees is cloth, it is actually more closely related to the common cheese grater, and it goes a long way towards explaining the psychology of the average masochist. You see, when you don’t wash yourself that frequently, you build up layers of dead skin on top of your living skin, and you really don’t want that. Actually, after the first time I eventually took a shower in Morocco (sans kees and not in a hammam) and started to dry myself off, I began to panic when rolls of skin began coming off with my towel. These were the unexfoliated follicles, and had I used the kees, I wouldn’t have had this problem.

So, while you gouge yourself with the kees or, as in my case, emasculate yourself by using a loofa (or “American kees,” as my pathetic attempt at preserving my dignity put it), you may make a few interesting anthropological discoveries. The first is the buckets. Morocco is a very communal society. People share everything with the notable exception of hammam buckets (or “plastic gold,” as they are referred to by most lay people). The taking of another’s hammam bucket is justifiable cause for the offended to kill the offender and enslave his women, and I have heard even more harrowing tales of what goes on in the ladies’ hammam. (I should remark here, however, that these are actually second-hand stories and that in my experience the other dudes in the hammam were actually incredibly helpful in filling my buckets for me and lending me a small bucket with which to scoop the water onto me.) The same rules also apply to taking another’s designated (by being disinfected) space on the floor, and I did actually witness a brief total war between two guys on this subject.

The second, and most notable of anthropological points, actually brings us to the second half of our discussion: man love. Obviously, you’ve got as many almost naked dudes as a bad gladiator movie, but there is so much more that might offend the delicate sensibilities of your typical Westerner. For example, let’s say that you’re busy flaying yourself with your kees and you realize that you can’t quite reach all the places on your back (and you certainly don’t want to leave any skin there). What do you do? No problem; just lay down and have your sweaty, scantily-clad pal hop on your back and get busy with the kees (there’s usually a professional wandering around the hammam somewhere, though, of course, his services will set you back a few dirhams). This is totally normal, and it is not at all the only instance of man love you’re going to experience in Morocco.

When you go out of the hammam, almost everywhere you look you can see guys walking down the street holding hands and/or walking arm-in-arm. Was there a spontaneous rift in the space-time continuum and you’ve accidently stumbled into San Francisco? Is this a music video for the Village People? No, this is everyday Morocco, and it’s generally discomforting to most Americans.

But putting aside the immature yet brilliant gay jokes, I’d like to talk seriously about some very interesting culture. As I hope you are all aware by now, Morocco is a proud Islamic country, an identity that comes with certain requirements, one of which is that public interactions between men and women are not smiled upon (and private interaction is virtually non-existent - as far as people are willing to talk about - except for between husbands and wives). This leaves people with little outlet for interpersonal contact, and so, naturally, they turn to intragender relations. I think that the amazing thing, though, is seeing the power of culture in action. Western culture says that men holding hands is wrong (though we certainly need to work on that), and so it is very hard for Westerner men to hold hands with each other. Try it. Find a friend of yours – a guy, assuming you are one, too – and just hold his hand. See how long you can do it before you start to feel really uncomfortable. I’ve done it and I don’t even agree with these constructions, but I can’t hold a dude’s hand for more than about a minute before I just get weirded out. But Morocco says that it’s totally normal, and so Moroccans can scrub each other down almost completely naked and they don’t think twice. On the other hand, don’t ask a Moroccan guy for advice on how to pick up chicks because his culture has given him so little opportunity for interacting with women that he’s about as useless as

The point is that it's all just a matter of what your culture tells you is ok, and it's important to realize that there really is nothing wrong with guys expressing their affection for each other, regardless of how they choose to do it.

And so, you have these two cultures clashing in every volunteer who comes here: trying to intregrate into the culture but having these blocks from our old culture that get in the way more often than not. But if we can spend a few hours taking a bucket bath in our underpants with 25 other guys and have a great time, then there shouldn't be any problem overcoming our other difficulties.

Nshetah

This past week my fellow CBT (Community-Based Training for you who don’t speak Government Hyper-Acronymization, which is when we go to small villages, live with host families, learn Darija, and practice youth development) members and I began teaching English classes at the local Dar Shebab (youth center). Being very conscientious youth developers, we worked out a schedule of ability levels, planned lessons according to those ability levels, announced these levels in writing and speaking to the local Shebab (youth, as you may have guessed), and then proceeded to be overwhelmed by eager English-learners at all the classes, almost all of whom – regardless of which class they came to attend – were of beginner level or lower. This was a bit of a problem, so we turned to the youth developer in Morocco’s only alternative: Nshetah.

Nshetah, translated literally, means "activities" (I think), but functionally it’s more like "anti-class." This means that there are extremely different perceptions of nshetah between adults and youth. Youth see it as their only outlet for creative energy short of playing soccer (for those who are able to), wandering the streets aimlessly, and smoking hash. Adults often view nshetah as non-educational, and, therefore, wasted time.

Nshetah is, however, extremely needed by the shebab of Morocco. As alluded to above, there is really nothing for them (particularly the boys) to do after school. Unfortunately, no one has come to the "Dar Shebab" looking for nshetah. They all want "qraia" (class). This makes the class very difficult, particularly when it is supposed to be an advanced class and you begin with a quick review of the English tenses and a quarter of the class doesn’t know a word of English beyond "Hello." This also makes the nshetah very difficult because regardless if it was scheduled to be a theatre club or chess tournament, it turns into a pandemonium of shebab who came for English, but don’t want to go away when the opportunity to see Americans still exists and so they just run amok.

The trickiest part is really finding something that the shebab actually want and are committed to continuing without your control. Ideally, you’re really just showing up every now and then to give them a little guidance, but, of course, if your town is at that point, they wouldn’t have a Peace Corps volunteer, would they? So, you’re stuck between one of these two extremes, and you have to figure out what to do about it.

At least, that’s the theory. I don’t have my own site yet, so I can’t really tell you what it’s like, but it seems to be a constant struggle of attempting to motivate shebab to create things for themselves without telling them what to create. You’ll have to wait to hear how it goes.

The Duncan Process

I’ve discussed this with many of my companion trainees, and it seems to be enough of a consensus that I’m going to talk about it as universal truth.

Reality for a Peace Corps Trainee (I can’t speak yet for the full-on volunteers) is quite different from that which we were accustomed to back in the States. That is to say that what we would have considered a normal existence before coming to Morocco no longer exists, and our current reality is actually an alternate reality of what is really real.

Allow me to explain. Have you ever dreamt that you were in your house (doing something, it’s not really important what), except when you stopped to think about it – either during or after the dream – you realized that what you had accepted as being your house without question during the dream was in fact completely different from your actual house? That’s what life is like here. My day is really the most typical of days imaginable: I wake up, eat breakfast, walk to school, study for a while, eat lunch, study some more, spend some time at the after-school center, come home, do some homework, eat dinner, maybe watch tv, chat with my neighbors and family, and then go to sleep. The regularity of days is interrupted by the occasional excitement and I have a regular group of friends and associates that I see enough of the time to be able to take slightly (in a good way) for granted.

Except that every once in a while, when I stop to think about it, nothing feels normal. And I wonder why. Why, if I live the Norman Rockwell of routines do I feel like I’m actually in the Twilight Zone instead of the Saturday Evening Post? The answer, I think, is symbols. This occurred to me only the other day when I was walking to school, but I now believe that reason that everything occasionally feels just slightly off is that, like a dream, though I am doing my usual actions, I’m not doing them with or in or about or around or to any of the things I used to do them with, in, about, around, and to (among other prepositions). Just like the house in my dream, my brain excepts Morocco as normal because this is where I am functioning, and where I’m functioning should be, by definition, my home, but when I pause to evaluate my reality I realize that nothing about "my home" is familiar to me.

The most obvious disconnect is language, but by virtue of its being so obvious it’s probably not most jarring. That distinction would probably go to the smells of the street (both pleasant and unpleasant), the dynamic between salesman and client, the relative evenness of a sidewalk or flight of stairs, the artistic quality of a tv show, the temperature change between day and night, or the taste of water – all things that we take so completely for granted and would never consider being possible to do in any other way. For example, my host mother this evening cooked spaghetti, which looked just like any spaghetti you’ve ever eaten, but tasted like nothing you could hope to find on Federal Hill (a reference to the Italian district of Providence for those of you who may not understand). Such a typical action (especially if you know how often I eat pasta) that was totally unlike my typical reality.

These typical actions are, however, the signposts by which we guide our reality. Just like the dream house, we often (here in Morocco) carry on according to the macro-signals of reality – eating, talking, seeing things – without noticing the micro-textures – eating tagine with our hands, talking in Darija, seeing barren desert mountains and flocks of sheep – that give normalcy to the actions we can do anywhere.

This is probably not new psychology, but if they haven’t already named this stage of what I’m sure is "culture shock," then I want to call it the Duncan Process. I think it has a nice ring to it.

On Development, Part 1

First thing, Im writing this in a cyber cafe and I cant figure out how to type an apostrophe on these ridiculous French keyboards, but rather than write everything like a complete fop, youre just going to have to be clever in your reading.

So, Ive decided to write a little about development work. The first and most obvious thing is that it is slow. Very slow. My group and I are still learning how to do it (though not very quickly as our obvious most pressing need is to speak the language), but the volunteer already serving in this town, who has been here for over a year already, is still struggling to get the people together to work.

The reason for this slowness boils down to a few key points. First, you have the cadre of government officials who arent so much concerned with the development of the country as they are of having a job. That is to say, they care more about having a job than they do about personal advancement and so forth. There is also a good deal of inter-ministry non-interaction as teapot sultans want to conserve any available credit for themselves. The second and most challenging problem - for PCVs - is that real development must be sustainable; otherwise it isnt really development at all. What this means is that it has to be able to reproduce itself without the presence of the volunteer.

So what, you say. Why is that such a problem? Well, the answer is that many have a perception of the volunteer as a charitable institution; someone who comes to teach English and donate books, technology, etc. Unfortunately, this sort of "development" really only takes work away from qualified citizens and builds a "beggar culture" with the country. We need new schools, ask the Americans; we need new soccer equipment, ask the Americans; we need new books, ask the Americans (insert any other Westerners for Americans if you want). This is not to say that this is what all Moroccans think or even the majority, but it is a dangerous enough situation that the Peace Corps refuses to allow us to work without domestic counterparts (and rightly so, in my opinion). Every time that we have an idea for some kind of project, from a girls soccer team to an AIDS prevention clinic, we have to find a local Moroccan or Moroccans to do it. We can work with them, give them ideas, be their organizing force - but they have to be the ones to do it, otherwise the country isnt really growing.

Sometimes you find yourself somewhere that is just waiting for a catalyst to push them forwards, and sometimes you find yourself somewhere that expects you to do everything for them, but regardless of where you are, if youre working by yourself, you arent doing development.

More about that later.

GI Joe

They say that of Peace Corps Volunteers in Morocco, 87.5%, including trainees, have diarrhea or some other kind of gastro-intestinal distress every year.

It’s not fun to be in the In Crowd.

On Ramadan

In case you weren’t aware, we are in the Islamic lunar month of Ramadan. And in case you were aware but didn’t really know what that means, allow me to explain.

Ramadan is a Muslim holiday that begins on the first crescent moon of the month (as do all Islamic lunar months), and ends on the following crescent. Although it lasts for a full month, it is, in fact, a commemoration of a one-night event: the ascension of the Prophet Muhammad to Heaven from the rock in Jerusalem to receive the revelation of the Qur’an from the Archangel Gabriel.

Consequently, the month of Ramadan is one of purification and reconnecting with the spiritual. Muslims are forbidden from eating, drinking, smoking, and having sex during the daylight hours, though many also believe that they cannot gossip, fight, use bad words, have lascivious thoughts, or do anything else selfish or sinful.

In practice, this manifests as people spending the daytime as quickly as possible, using as little energy as possible, and then, when the muezzin (the man who calls the faithful to prayer) signals the sunset prayer, everybody prays, eats breakfast,” and then parties all night long. In a little more than a week we’ll have the Eid el-Fitr – the final night of Ramadan – which will be epic.

For Peace Corps Volunteers in a Muslim country, this means that it’s very difficult to have lunch. I’ve actually been observing the fast, as has one other, but the others are often frustrated by their inability to buy an afternoon snack, as well as restrictions on eating or drinking in public. There is nothing forbidden about non-Muslims not observing the fast (though Muslims seen eating during the sun hours could theoretically be imprisoned), but considering how we are here to work on integration and mutual understanding, it’s pretty much out of the question.

And the most important lesson to learn from Ramadan, in my view, is that not everyone observes it. You have the high schoolers who instead of smoking in the bathroom are popping a quick chocolate bar, and every night at the sunset prayer you can see the cafes that are still full of people (though they only now start eating or drinking). You also have the ones who observe all of the restrictions throughout the month, and then pop open a bottle of alcohol the day after Eid. In short, they are just like the hordes of Jews and Christians that observe (or don’t) their high holidays and then spend the rest of year doing what they want.

And speaking from experience, the fast is not as difficult as you might think, though it is by no means easy. The hardest part is waking up early at about 4 am to have “dinner” and being tired all day. That and the fact that no one else in my group (aside from the Moroccans) is fasting. That will change this Sunday, though, when we all go to homestays and stop living together in a group. Good luck to them.

Welcome to Morocco

First, a little housekeeping. My computer is a bit on the fritz, so I probably won't be posting as frequently in the immediate future as we all would have hoped.

Second, welcome to Morocco. I know it's a bit overwhelming, but that's the way it is for me, too. In all honesty, it's most likely because we have spent the plurality of our time learning the policies and logistics of what will be our new lives here in Peace Corps Morocco. It is all coming at us very fast (though with repeated assurances that it will be all coming at us again later), and jet lag - though only 4 hours - is probably still taking it's toll.

I will give a few first impressions, however, which are likely to be contradicted later on (hopefully, if I begin a political career in the future, my opponents won't find out about my flip-flopping). First, Morocco is full of beautiful cities and stark countryside and many other combinations of mutually excluding descriptions. People have been caring and indifferent and deceptive. Food has been exquisite, unmemorable, and quite unappealing.

I think this is the best possible situation one could expect. Having just left the States listening to exaltations of all Morocco ("the people are beautiful," "the country is beautiful," etc) and condemnations ("the men are sleazy," "the country is dangerous," etc), I'm happy to say that they are all wrong.

The people of Morocco are people, the city of Rabat is a city, and I'm very excited to be here.

More later.

Welcome to My Brain

Hi. I'm Duncan, and this is my journal. There's a good chance you knew that already, or else you wouldn't be here, but in case that you just woke up from a decades-long coma and found yourself staring at this page in terrified bafflement, you don't have to be scared anymore. Anyway, I just like to cover my bases.

And let me introduce my journal, though, to be fair, it's really more of a "blog" than a "journal." If that confuses you, allow me to explain. A "blog" (from the Latin bloggus, meaning "a blog") is a place to write the divers thoughts, feelings, and experiences accompanying a particular adventure. You see, I'm in the Peace Corps (from the Latin corpus peaceaopolis - there's a little Greek in there, too), stationed in Morocco (from the Latin Morocco).

And thus, it is herein that I will record my divers thoughts, feelings, and experiences accompanying my adventure in Morocco such that you, dear readers, may benefit from them. You will laugh, you will cry, you will laugh at each other for crying, you will blink your eyes in earth-shattering wonder at the sheer poetic brilliance of my aimless, meandering mind. All without having to leave the comfort of your plush computer desk chairs.

And now let's kick this old school.