9 More Things

1- Everything we do is informed by our culture. It’s not just the big issues like religion and work ethic, it goes all the way down to color preferences, how we sit, and the way we carry things. In the States, we tend to put heavy burdens on our backs and shoulders. I’m not saying it’s a corporate conspiracy of Big Schoolbag, but it’s a given with us that that’s where we’re going to hold what we can’t fit in our hands. We’ve all seen the pictures of other cultures where they carry their parcels on their heads. In Morocco, the default way to walk around with heavy items is to go tandem. I’m used to strapping it all around my shoulders, so it’s one of the hardest culture shocks for me to deal with when someone grabs one side of a massive bag and expects me to lug the other. And it makes me look even more incompetent in the eyes of my community that – never mind that I talk like a 5-year-old, that’s excusable – I don’t even know how to carry a bag of vegetables back from the souk.

2- Buying things is a very stressful process. Not only because you have to haggle for just about everything (and still likely be well on your way to the cleaners), but also because of change. Money comes in the form of completely insignificant cents, half dirham coins, one dirham coins, two dirham coins, five dirham coins, ten dirham coins, twenty dirham notes, fifty dirham notes, hundred dirham notes, and two hundred dirham notes. Anything worth fifty or less probably isn’t going to get you into any trouble (though sometimes a fifty can be even too much for the vegetable souk), but your hundreds and two hundreds are hard to break. Most hanoots (general stores) and boutiques just have a drawer where they put their money, and most souks and taxi stands are manned by a guy with a pocket full of change. They like exact change. Unfortunately, ATMs and banks like to give out one or two hundred dirham notes, so you find yourself very frequently having to excuse yourself for handing the guy a big note. He usually either begrudgingly tosses you your change or happily has it ready and makes you feel ridiculous for even imagining it would be a problem, but on the occasion that he doesn’t, he gives you a run for your money. Literally. He takes your (generally) two hundred and just walks away, leaving you there wondering if you just got had. Some five minutes later he’s back with change and everything turns out fine (he just had to go make change), but I can tell you it’s one of the most stressful parts of buying things, especially the first time.

3- One thing that always confuses (and entertains) me is the variety of street commerce. A good chunk of our produce comes seasonally (as you’ll soon see), and a fair number of those are really cheap. Particularly cactus pears, so it’s easy for venders to get their hands on them and put them on the market, and so a lot do. You’ll find yourself walking down the street in summer, and everyone’s mother has a cartload of prickly pears for sale. You can easily find them just meters from each other, especially if you’re at a taxi or bus stand. And it’s not just cactus fruit; it’s orange juice, popcorn and sunflower seeds, beach coffee, and convenience stores. The favorite economic model is “That’s working for him, so I’ll do it, too.” Some people are disparaging of the why-don’t-you-diversify sort, but what they fail to realize is that everyone wants cactus pears. It works.

4- It’s tricky sometimes speaking Arabic in Morocco, mostly because you aren’t really speaking “Arabic,” you’re speaking Darija (as we’ve discussed plenty), but they’re kind of mixed up, so you don’t always know if what you’re hearing standard or dialect. We volunteers are taught a pure form of Darija, but most people here are so used to switching the languages around (they’re all Arabic, after all), that they can catch us off guard with some of their Fos-ha Arabic words. One of those words is “maybe.” In Darija we say “yumkin,” which everyone understands, but your occasionally careless host country national might toss around a few standard versions: “robama.” I think you can see why this catches our attention. He we are having an ordinary conversation, when the other guy all of a sudden wants to start talking about our President. Again. It was bad enough taking the heat for Bush when he was still in office (why don’t you try explaining how despite Obama being voted in, W was still in the Oval Office for a three more months), but now you’re bringing up our new guy just about every other sentence. A friend of mine was running for local office in last year’s elections and I happened to be over at his house for dinner one night when he decided to make a campaign speech to the neighborhood. When he was finished, I was convinced that his entire platform hinged on the President of the United States of America. He must have invoked Obama about sixty times, and I was starting to worry that I might have to deliver something. Of course, it wasn’t until some time later that I learned about robama. Turns out that he was more of a politician than I’d realized.

5- The word for “head” in Darija is “ras.” You could say “kei darni rassi” (“my head hurts”) or “’andek ras kebir” (“you have a big head”), for example, if you wanted to use that word. But ras doesn’t only mean “head,” you can also use it for “self,” and around here, you will plenty. You’ve got your “talla fe rassek” (“take care of yourself”) and “kan tekelm ma’ rassi” (“I’m talking to myself”), just to mention a couple. Unfortunately for our language comprehension (but fortunately for our sense of absurdity in everyday life), we learn about “head” before “self,” and so we’re ingrained with completely new expressions. Now, when I’m sitting alone at home, I’m talking with my head, so it’s not crazy. And one of our most successful jokes is to follow up “take care of yourself” with the hilarious “with shampoo.” (Let it sink in.) Yeah, brilliant.

6- Family is confusing. It’s hard enough in America or with English, but out here families aren’t only huge, they’re all around. You need to know who’s who, so there’s a different expression for each relationship. There are four different words for each of our “aunt” and “uncle:” “my father’s brother/sister” (‘ami/‘amti), “my mother’s brother/sister” (khali/khalti), “my father’s brother’s/sister’s wife/husband” (mrat ‘ami/rajel ‘amti), and my mother’s brother’s/sister’s wife/husband” (mrat khali/rajel khalti). Not to mention the eight different ways to say what we call “cousin:” the son or daughter of my father’s or mother’s brother or sister. Eventually, people get used to it, and one way that helps is that the older will call the younger by the younger’s relationship to the older. For example, I have some friends whose brother just had a baby, which would make them her uncles (they’re guys). Instead of calling her “the daughter of their brother,” however, they call her “‘amti” – “aunt who is blood-related by my father.” I know another guy who calls his daughter “baba” (“my dad”), so you don’t even really need to switch the gender if you don’t want to. Not everyone does this (other times you just call all men “my father’s brother” and all women “my mother’s sister”), but this way, in my opinion, keeps things from getting impersonal. I’m thinking about calling my new little nephew “uncle” when I get back to the States. The problem I can see is that if I was married, she’d have to call him “wife of my father’s brother.” It’d probably be best for her to just say “Gavin.”

7- There are grocery stores in Morocco (they’re something of holy ground for volunteers), but they’re usually far removed from our sites (hence the pilgrimages). We buy pretty much everything direct from the source, which isn’t only cheaper, it’s more fun; every time I go to the souk I laugh at how all the yuppies back home would be paying thousands of dollars for this kind of organic, locally grown, free-range food that I’m getting for mere rials. The thing about the souk, though, is that you don’t get as much choice in what’s available, it pretty much all depends on the season. We’ve got watermelon season, strawberry season, cherry season, date season, and just about everything else season when the produce is so fresh it’s ridiculous. Of course, the downside is that you pretty much can’t get the seasonal fruits and vegetables when they aren’t in season, which can be hard, but also makes them even more delicious when they’re finally here. It’s like the beginning of baseball season. The only downside is right now (late winter) when the oranges and clementines are gone, and nothing else is in to take their place. That kind of sucks.

8- One of my favorite things about living in Morocco is going over to people’s houses. That probably seems fairly obvious, Morocco being so well known for its hospitality, and it’s usually pretty good, but that’s not the part that always makes me smile. My favorite part is knocking on the door. In Morocco, when you want to know who’s there, you ask, “shkoon (who)?” And wait for their reply. You aren’t waiting for their name, though, because the answer is always “qreeb,” meaning “nearby.” The idea is that the person visiting is a neighbor, and thus by extension friendly, and their response gives the host a chance to recognize their voice. No one ever seems to have any difficulty recognizing my voice, but it never works for me. I just have to trust that they really are my neighbor. These days, since I live on the other side of town from my host family, I like to respond with “b’aid (far).” No one else thinks it’s as funny.

9- Another of my favorite things to do is to talk about what other people said. It wasn’t always this way; actually, it was one of the most conceptually frustrating parts to start with. I’d ask someone “What did the king just say?” and they’d always say “Gal lik …” “Gal lik?” “He told you (me)?” I don’t think he was talking to me, though it’d be nice, I suppose to get a personal message from the king. This went on for a good half year, with untold zany misadventures, until I figured out that you can’t say “He said”; you have to say “He told you” even if what he said has nothing to do with you and he doesn’t even know who you are. I love it, almost as much as I love to tell people I have something to tell them. To say that literally, you’d have to say “’Andi shihaja li bghit ngoolek,” but no one would listen because they’d be too busy perfecting a what-you-talking-’bout-Willis face. You can’t say “I have something I want to say to you,” you say “Aji ngoolek.” “Come here I’ll tell you.” I’m trying to get my community to say “Aji nsoulek.” “Come here I’ll ask you.” We’re still working on it.

Moroccan Gazetteer: The Sahara

Sometimes, it’s important to remember that Morocco is mostly desert. When I look around at the green and the rain in my town, it’s easy to think that I live in Oregon (or what I imagine Oregon to look like), and even easier to wish that I didn’t, which is why I took myself on a little vacation through the more overtly desert parts of Morocco.

The “Sahara” (put the emphasis on the “sa” and rush through the remaining “hara” to get a little closer to the Arabic pronunciation) is not quite as uniform as most souvenir postcards would lead us to believe. My experience has led me to three different types, rocky desert, sandy desert, and technically-but-not-fulfillingly desert, something along the lines of your xeric shrubland or shrub-steppe, which are beautiful in their own right, but not the subject of today’s story. Concerning the rocks and sand, there are two famous routes (within the Peace Corps travel zone) that can meet all of your desert-seeking needs: from Erachidia to Merzouga and from Ourzazate to M’hamid.

There is no real describing the feeling of crossing over the mountains and into the “desert.” The Ouarzazate route follows the Dra’a River through a series of stunning valleys. Red and purple mountains tower above the road, which hangs over a never-ending chain of deep green oases, a stark contrast between barren rock and jungle-like lushness. Ancient kasbahs of red clay are scattered throughout – many long-abandoned and some still inhabited – and everything in between is filled with as many date palms as physically possible.

I never made it all the way to the sandy desert at the end, but I got close enough to stage some sand dune photographs in Zagora. I stayed in Tinzouline for the most part, and got to finally become Indiana Jones. My group and I set out first thing in the morning heading directly west into the desert with only our determination and an unpaved road to guide us. We’d been told that there were some ancient 3000-year-old rock carvings to be found beyond the stony wasteland about seven kilometers away. There are, and we found them. It took about four hours of walking (there and back) and about ten bottles of water, but we reached the cliffs scattered with animal drawings, Tiffinagh etchings, and horse-mounted warriors. Neither we nor the guide book could tell you exactly why they were there, but we weren’t too overly concerned. The highlight was crossing the burning desert and discovering this place that had no guides, no gift shops – not even a fence to keep people off the artifacts – even if we did have to call a friend to tell us exactly where it was.

The sand came much later. The road from Erachidia to Merzouga doesn’t have the same canyon-like feel of the Dra’a Valley and there are long stretches that are nothing more than broad expanses of yellow. It’s worth the journey, though, to make it all the way to Merzouga. Unlike Tinzouline, Merzouga is one of the centerpieces of every Morocco tour. The surrounding towns are packed with fake guides (and real ones) looking to take you out into the dunes and help themselves to your dirhams. Fortunately, we have a volunteer friend who lives in the general area, so we gave him a call and he set us up with a guide that he knows and, more importantly, knows the Peace Corps. He met us in Rissani, tossed us into his 4x4, and it wasn’t until we were well out off the road that he told us the plan: we were going to one of the desert’s edge hotels, hoping a camel train out into the dunes, watching the sunset and eating dinner in traditional nomad tents, sleeping, waking up ridiculously early, and trekking back in with the sunrise.

That’s just what we did. Don’t get me wrong, it’s about as touristy as you can get, but it also just one of those things you have to do. Later, when we were back north, a sandwich master asked us if we ate out in the desert. “Of course we did,” we said, “but it was awful.” The tagine was about as bland as imaginable, the tea was burnt and weak, and – the greatest insult to our culinary sense of decency – they served it all with plates and silverware. Our friend couldn’t believe it. The Saharawi are known for their cooking, and they’re pretty much the gold standard of Moroccan tea. Then again, the tourists don’t know that they’re getting slop, and the guides aren’t eating that. One of the benefits of being a volunteer and speaking the language is that we get to chill with the locals. The tea we drank was excellent.

It also didn’t matter (to me at least) what our food tasted like by the time we’d reached camp. We traveled with an Italian couple, their two young sons, and two other Spanish girls, which had the added benefit of making us leave later than we’d hoped. By the time we were up on the camels, the sun had pretty much already set, which was beautiful, but also allowed us to complete the hour-and-a-half journey by the light of the full moon. Every so often someone who offer some observation or comment, but it was otherwise completely silent. There was none of the heat and oppression of the desert sun like in Tinzouline; it was a sort of communion with nature interrupted only by the rhythmic plodding of the camels. I have never felt so much in awe of the world. Even the next morning’s sunrise, which was absolutely gorgeous, could not possibly match the profundity of the desert at night.

Before you run off and join the caravanserai, though, let me tell you about the downside: camels. Camels are the foulest of nature’s monsters and living proof of a Vengeful God; the tragic reminder that survival of the fittest can as often as not be a pyrrhic victory. They make sounds that only a Hollywood sound effects mixer could love and emit a stench to which it would be impossible to acclimate even during the 52-day journey to Timbuktu. There’s a reason the guides walk in the front, and I don’t think it’s strictly so that they know where they’re going. It’s said that camels were once the most beautiful of single-celled proto-organisms until they were cursed for a trillion years by Natural Selection for their vanity. If you offered me the choice between riding a camel and participating in a ritual castration, I’d have to get back to you about it. Ultimately, though, you don’t really have a choice. No matter that you won’t be able to walk for a few days, nor that you won’t want to for a few more after that, as a friend of mine said, it’s just one of those things you have to do in your life to make yourself a badass.

I’ve been thinking about it now for a while, and I’m going to say that despite how much I loved being in the desert, I think I prefer living where I do. It’s not that I need the trees and cold so desperately or that I’m so particularly worried about the scorpions (the only ones I’ve seen in Morocco have been less than five kilometers away from my house). It’s more that I’ve never before experienced that harsh majesty of nature in such an overwhelming way – the sun and the moon; the red, purple, blue, and green – and I would hate to think that I could take such grandeur for granted.

Of course, it was raining when I got home, so I might be tempted to risk it.

Speaking of God, a Response

Dear Readers,

Thank you for reading, and commenting; I appreciate your thoughts. That being said, let me tear them apart, and I’ll do so in a post rather than a comment because Blogger insists that my response violates the character limit, despite my strongest protestations. Please do not see this as an attempt to exercise a greater degree of power over you. Rather understand that I feel very strongly about this topic and want to continue to discuss the issue without limiting my reply, and I hope that you will continue to post your ideas and responses, particularly when they conflict with mine.

Actually, I whole-heartedly agree that (a) the religions are significantly enough different from each other that despite a shared origin, they have plenty to disagree about; (b) Peace Corps volunteers use language in far more complicated ways than the average "normal;" and (c) many uses of the word "Allah" are done with the intention of showing solidarity with the Islamic community.

What I want to address, however, is what I think is a misunderstanding of my purpose in using so many different languages - "linguistic elitism." I'm not entirely sure what that even means, but I certainly never claimed that people shouldn't use their native languages to speak with others of different linguistic traditions. Girls from a [nedi neswi] ("women's association" for non-volunteers) can - and should - greet foreign guests as "Hello my sister" or "bonjour ma soeur" or whatever. I'm raising the issue that they should not say "Hello ma soeur."

I don't really care, however, if people want to mix their language around in innocuous settings, such as concerning the word "sister," "house," or "director." I'm talking about significant political issues, such as God and religion. My use of the Arabic alphabet is not to say that people need to read Arabic to speak it, but rather to show that the Arabic word that transliterates as [allah] is appropriately used in the context of speaking Arabic, not English. I whole-heartedly encourage all volunteers to say [allah] as a part of the many Darija "God phrases" when greeting their Moroccan friends. I certainly do, and I am neither Christian, Muslim, nor Jewish, either (in fact, I'm not even atheistic - I don't particularly care one way or another if there is or is not a supreme being).

I'm speaking about the political baggage of the words "God" and "Allah" as they are manifested in English. Christians and Muslims have vastly different beliefs of the desires of God, but so too do Catholics and Protestants. Even Episcopalians, Catholicism's closest Protestant relatives, scoff at Transubstantiation, Original Sin, and the Pope. We don't say "Catholic God Concept bless your heart." Judaism and Islam are greatly similar in many of their practices, such as dress and eating regulations (Christians have essentially none of these, excepting Fridays and Lent for some) to name a few. The point I'm making is that we don't tell our Jewish friends "Allah will be pleased" they didn't eat that bacon cheeseburger even though Islamic theology similarly forbids pork. We also don't use "Yahweh" when we speak with them, nor do the majority of English-speaking Jews. I'm trying to point out the irregularity of accepting Judaism as "same" within in the Christian-majority English community while continuing to label Islam as "other." They're either both on the inside or both on the outside.

Nor do I intend to imply that volunteers should necessarily know about the interrelationship of the Abrahamic faiths. I'm chastising my colleagues for encouraging the perception that the Islamic "God" is separate from that of Judeo-Christianity. A volunteer claiming that they use "Allah" rather than "God" as an English word because they appreciate the subtleties of the language makes me think of a parallel. Supposing we had been Teaching for America in some inner city school instead? We'd do what we could to integrate into our student community, including adopting their "language," and so when I speak with my fellow volunteers, I would tell them about the amusing anecdote provided in class by of my niggas. Well, maybe I wouldn't. It’s not that I don't wish we lived in a world where everyone understood that I was using the colloquial definition of "friend or compatriot;" it's just that we don't. Until then I’m arguing it's best to include Muslims within our monotheistic community rather than exclude them, and that acknowledging our shared tradition with the same word for the same meaning is greater than hoping for others to appreciate my culturally-sensitive nuance.

Finally, a Darijian transliteration of "hope to see you after you cross the big pond" would be: "entemna enshofek fesh doozti addaya kebira. inshallah."