A Very Merry Unbirthday to Me

My 26^th birthday was February 11^th, which was last Wednesday, unless you happen to be reading this more than a week after that time, in which case, you’ll have to figure out for yourself how long ago that was.

This was also the first time I’ve ever celebrated my birthday outside of the US or without members of my cultural family (ie, Americans). Consequently, this is a perfect opportunity for me to hit you with a little cross-cultural truth about how Moroccans do birthdays.

But I’ll start with how things went down from home. First, I got a few letters and packages from home, and I believe that there may be a few more on the way, that were filled with wonderful items. There are three things that I hope for when opening a box from home. The first is food, of which my older brother and his wife did an excellent job of coming through on. I now have my own bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce, as well as an assortment of hot chocolate mixes and boxes of macaroni and cheese, and I had some Pepperidge Farm cookies and gummy bears for at least a short while after opening the box. The second thing is warm clothing. I didn’t get any of these things, though the weather is starting to get much nicer here in Freedonia, and I think I almost don’t have bone-itis anymore. The last thing I hope for is random nonsense, most perfectly exemplified by the pirate-launching catapult my mother sent, which is impossible to describe, so let’s just say that it’s not at all like what you’re imagining, unless you’ve seen them before. You just can’t get that around here. She also sent a travel book for Tunisia because we’re going to go there in the summer.

The absolute best, however, was a photograph with a poem written on the back from Salma, which had been sitting on my table waiting to be opened for a few days, and was the first thing I did for my birthday.

The second thing I did was to answer the phone and receive the most unexpected of all my birthday “presents:” a phone call from the main Peace Corps office in Rabat. It was short and sweet, but because it was so out of the blue, it really made me feel special on my birthday, so kudos to the person who started that tradition.

As for the Moroccan side, two of the guys I work with gave me presents, both cute and meaningful Moroccan souvenir decorations. One is a little teapot, the second most iconic object for all Morocco (after a loaf of bread, of course), and the other is one of those things that you use to blow air into a fire – I don’t know what they’re called – that has Arabic calligraphy and Moroccan designs stamped into the metal. I also went over to my homestay family’s house and ate lunch, though I might have done that anyway, and we celebrated my birthday like real Moroccans, which is to say, we didn’t do anything about it at all.

Yes, I’m afraid to tell you that birthdays just aren’t really a thing over here. In fact, I know a handful of people who don’t even really know when their birthday is. For example, it was my host brother’s birthday on January 29^th, and on February 2^nd I asked him what he had done for it. His response? “Oh, my birthday was yesterday, wasn’t it?” No, it wasn’t, and it goes to show you that birthdays pass fairly often without any notice. Sometimes people will make a little cake, or at least get some pastry from the store. I think my host mom had been thinking of doing this for me, but then (according to what she told me later), she went to visit some woman and forgot all about it.

For the most part, if someone knows it’s your birthday, they’re liable to say happy birthday to you, and then just carry on as they had been before. In fact, people generally talk about their age as being relative to the year that it is and what age they will be after their birthday this year, not according to whether that day has passed yet or not like we do. For example, we do a summer camp as youth development volunteers, and we can send students to the camp who are between the ages of 14 and 16, but this means we need to ask them what year they were born in, not simply how old they are. This can be very tricky to deal with and confusing, but it’s starting to get me away from my point about what I did for my birthday.

The answer? Mostly nothing. In many ways, it was just another day. But, thanks to the support of the people back home, as well as other volunteers here who sent me text messages all day, I still felt celebrated. And I used the occassion as a justification to take a shower, which felt great.

Post-Apocalyptic Fiction Gets It Right

There’s a man out there by the name of Max Brooks who just so happens to be one of the world’s leading scholars on zombies. He also happens to be the son of Mel Brooks, which increases his academic credentials tenfold in the sphere of things that probably aren’t real.

As it happens, Brooks (Max, not Mel) is also an author of books, two of which are of particular interest here. The first, The Zombie Survival Guide, is an unimpeachable source of information for anyone even remotely concerned about the dangers posed to him or her by hordes of the undead (and not, as its name might suggest, a guide for survival or fine living as a zombie). The second, World War Z, is a hypothetical (or prophetic?) account of humanity’s struggle against a zombie holocaust, as well as a clarion call for the global community that is so horribly unprepared to deal with zombies.

And in the course of presenting this thesis, Brooks argues that one reason why we are so inadequately situated to combat the undead is due to the lack of useful skills so many of us have. There are plenty of lawyers, customer service specialists, and taxidermists, but how many of us know how to wire a generator, install functional plumbing, or do so many of the other things that would be required of us in the process of fortifying and rebuilding our nation? The answer is that we would find ourselves in a complete reversal of social strata, in which the blue collar class, who are relatively less equipped to send out for and pay the necessary specialist (aside from the fact that said specialist is often enough blue collar himself), would become the instructors and coordinators of labor, while the white collar class, now completely useless, would do the manual work.

The evidence for such an argument is readily available in the states, but it is equally present here in Morocco. I have been amazed to see people taking handymanship to whole new levels. My host father, who is a landscaper, can frequently be found repairing the radio in the living room. My host brother, who has a degree in hair dressing, will often enough have to go up on the roof and repair the motor for the satellite dish. And everyone I’ve met knows how to mix concrete and construct walls. This is as much because of a similar lack of disposable income for calling upon specialists as it is due to a general lack of said specialists (most likely due to a lack of anyone hiring them). At least someone’s ready to deal with the zombies.

There’s also a movie called Waterworld, which just happens to be the best testimonial to the theoretical difficulty of living in a world devoid of dry land that also stars Kevin Costner. According to the film, one of the side effects of such a life would be an exponential increase in the value of otherwise very mundane objects, such as paper and interesting dialogue. A similar phenomenon seems to take place in the Peace Corps. Now that I’m living on my own here in Morocco, I could kill someone for their Tupperware and a handful of ziplock bags, and I’ve read the entirety of my predecessor’s alumni magazine, merely for lack of other English-language text, despite the fact that I had never before heard the name of Beloit College, nor do I now care about it in the slightest bit. And I’ve basically turned into your senile grandmother that saves every little bit of string or paperclip she finds, and sometimes get as excited about the ribbon on the outside of a package as I am for what’s in it.

But the scariest thing of all is to think that my life has not taken on any semblance to Waterworld. Unless it was gills behind my ears. That would be really cool.

It's Not Just Me

One of the most vindicating moments of my service has been sitting here in my host family’s house, watching one of my little cousins – who can’t be more than 2 and a half – eating. Well, trying to, anyway. As you know, we use bread instead of utensils, and it has been my experience to eat far more bread than whatever it is that I’m trying to eat with it. Sometimes, I’m pretty much just eating bread and sauce while everyone else is enjoying delicious vegetables and meats, and that’s when nothing is more rewarding than to watch a two-year-old chasing a hunk of potato around a giant plate with a piece of bread, desperately trying to pick it up. Eventually, he had to get it with his hands.

I grabbed a piece, too. It tasted like sweet, sweet, cross-cultural justice.

The Fortress of Solitude

The first two months of volunteer service are probably the most challenging. The language is still new; the culture is still somewhat mysterious. You don’t know the people you need to work with and the people you need to stay away from, you don’t know the shortcuts through town or where everything is, and you can't get the things that you need or want without asking someone for help. You haven’t developed your emotional support network or found your groove yet. You still don’t even really know what it is that you’re doing here. It’s hard, but it’s also the Peace Corps.

But to deal with all this, they don’t expect us to rely solely on our superhuman moxy. They know that we need a local refuge and advocate, and so they put us in host families. The irony is, however, that although the family is beyond saintly in the way they take care of you, the level of cultural submersion that comes from living within the folds of a Moroccan family can – and almost always is – one more stressor for the volunteer. There are a great many differences between the way the stereotypical American and the stereotypical Moroccan like to organize their lives (as I sincerely hope you’ve figured out by now from everything else I’ve written). American life generally prides independence and the individual, whereas Morocco revolves around the family and communion. All too often, this means that your American Peace Corps volunteer is stripped of his or her escapism that we rely on so much back home. Hospitality in Morocco means spending as much time as possible with the guest, so it’s not always easy to go out for a walk, run, or bike ride when the family wants you to be with them, nor can you just read, write, paint, or find much “alone time” when all the family is there in the room with you. Over here, when someone wants to be by themselves, that usually means that there’s a problem, so you have to double the amount of attention you give them until they feel right again.

Two months don’t last forever, though, and eventually every volunteer reaches the point when they have to move out on their own. Actually, you don’t have to move out if you want to stay with the family, and nearly every host family hopes this will happen, but nearly every volunteer finds themselves facing the Peace Corps Housing Paradox: I love my family, but I can’t wait to live by myself. (There are some unfortunate exceptions who aren’t burdened by that first part or a difficult decision, but this isn’t their story.)

And that’s where I am. In fact, tonight is going to be my last night sleeping in the host family home, though that could easily have been a week ago by the time you start reading this on the internet. Like everyone else I know, I found myself a new place and spent many long nights explaining to host mama Mahjouba that American culture just works that way, and this in no way means I won’t be coming over to visit all the time, staying warm at night, or eating well. I have no doubt that she thoroughly disbelieves the latter two, but I’ve managed to convince her well enough on the first that she’s not going to call the headquarters in Rabat and file a formal complaint. Anyway, she approved of my choice of house.

So let me tell you about it. For those of you still uncertain where I’m going with my choice of title, I’ve decided to name the new house The Fortress of Solitude. Now, I admit that this name does lend itself to a certain measure of teenage angst, but I assure that there is no better description readily available in the English language. Also, it’s supercool.

The house is more of an apartment, really, located in a neighborhood called the “Rosemary Condos,” a fitting name since all of the shrubbery in this tiny enclave about the size of two football fields is wild rosemary bushes. My particular part of all this is found on top of a big market, which has a massive two-story indoor courtyard (filled with rosemary) and all of the various things I’ll need in the stores located around the bottom. The apartment itself is not very big, but I’ve recently learned that despite what I’ve always heard, smaller is actually better. Big houses apparently require divine intervention to keep warm, and nothing is of greater importance to me after this past winter (which is far from over).

The front room is the kitchen, convenient for grabbing a quick bite and running out the door – something I haven’t done in a long time. Also useful because the stove, oven, and water heater (located in the kitchen) run off of butane gas, so you need to keep a window open while using them or else you’ll die. The kitchen is fortunately located next to a window. Next to the kitchen is the bathroom (excuse me – you aren’t supposed to say “bathroom” without excusing yourself, either). The bathroom is particularly important because it contains a shower, not something to take for granted around here, which is allegedly attached to the hot water heater. This means that I’ll be able to start taking showers more than just 1.5 times a week, not that I necessarily will.

Moving along you come to a room that I like to refer to as a pregnant hallway. I’m pretty sure this is the technical term, but I’m not at all certain what to do with it. For now, it’s just a place to put things that I also don’t really know what to do with yet. At the end of the hall is the salon, very useful for sitting and holding discussions about the prospects of a popular uprising among the French peasants. It also has a beautiful window across the entire back wall looking West across the mountains that I hope will be as fantastic at sunset in the summer as I like to imagine it will be.

The coolest part, though, is the bedroom. Going back to the kitchen, you see a flight of tiled stairs spiraling upwards, which, if you follow, will lead you to the command center of the entire apartment. A cozy little room with a vaulted ceiling and built-in cabinets (hooray for not having to waste my living allowance on that). And the best part is that everything will be beautiful when it’s filled with furniture the way that I’m picturing it now. For the moment, though, I have only a small table and an empty canister of butane, but it’s the big kind, so that’s something. Actually, I’m fairly certain that this house is going to require a good amount of work to get it up to the level where I want it, but it’s the principle. Despite the fact that I’m still here in my host family’s place because the bed salesman won’t bring the bed to town on account of it’s raining, I still have a place where I’m in charge of everything.

It’s going to be cold, though, probably until June, I’m told.