In the course of our journey through my service in Morocco, we've talked about a lot of things. We've traveled from one corner of the country to the other, explored the culture of Morocco and the life of a Peace Corps volunteer, and come to understand the meaning of development. Our time, however, has been finite, and I've been busy, or lazy, and I haven't been able to write about everything I needed to. Fortunately, it turns out that there are only nine things that I neglected in all of Morocco. Here they are:
1. There's a book that was spreading around when I first joined called Three Cups of Tea. I never read it, but from what I understand it's about integrating into an Islamic society somewhere in Central Asia (Pakistan, maybe?) and drinking tea. I imagine that the appeal to Morocco volunteers is based on our own being required to drink copious amounts of tea, many times under duress. You, too, probably think that you can only drink two glasses of scaldingly hot tea hypersaturated with sugar at any given sitting, but, let me assure you, when your large Moroccan host mother is standing over you with a look composed of 63% dissapointment, 34% concern for your nutritional safety, and 3% sassy antagonism and refilling your cup in complete disregard to what you're saying, not saying, or say every time the issue comes up, you're going to drink it. Fortunately, there are a handful of varieties to choose from, though, unfortunately, tea is never served individually. Unless you're the world's biggest loser (and not the kind of big loser that's going to get us in trouble with the registered trademark police), you drink your tea from loose leaf form, in a large pot filled with one part boiling water and one part sugar, and everyone else drinks the same. Every family has special tea glasses used strictly for tea (and Coke, on special occasions), and the flavor (of the tea, not the Coke) depends on what time of year it is. The most popular is mint, though few realize that this is a summer (or warm weather) drink only. In the winter, we drink sheeba (wormwood-laced tea), and sit around pretending we're French Romantic-Era homeless people. And pretty much any other green, leafy herb can – and is – made into a special tea, too, though no other is as common. Louiza (lemon verbena) is my personal favorite. There's also z'aater (oregano) to calm your stomach and salmia (sage) to calm your blood. Trendy stalls in the big city souks will market their own blends, which are usually made from just about anything mixed with everything else (usually really good). And if you're really lucky, you might find yourself with a steamy glass of flio (spearmint), which tastes exactly like what you'd expect if you drank a steamy glass of Double Mint Gum, which is to say, awful. On Eid Seghir (end of Ramadan) this year I made a running tally on my arm of how many glasses I drank during my four hours of visiting family and neighbors. I got up to somewhere between hyperglycemic shock and early onset diabetes (twelve glasses). I shortlisted Three Thousand Cups of Tea as one of the possible titles for my Peace Corps memoirs until a friend and I did the math and realized we've had far more than that in our 26months. Then we stopped talking about that and started researching insulin supply companies in Morocco.
2. Islam recognizes Friday as the Sabbath, though in Morocco, that doesn't translate quite like what we do with Sundays in America. Sure, there's a big congregation at the midday prayer, and a lot of people who normally don't do any of their prayers might at least do this one, but in most ways it's just another ordinary day. Kids go to school; government offices are open. It's not even considered the weekend. Some people might close up shop early or in the afternoon, and one person once told me that no one is allowed to work on Friday, but it's basically a day like any other. Except for one thing: lunch. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, and Friday lunch is the biggest lunch of the week. The whole family is gathered together (before the kids run back off to school at two and parents go back to work), which calls for something special, and that means couscous. Tagines may be the national dish, lamb and prunes may be the way to impress your guests, and chicken with onions, raisins, and euphoria-inducing amounts of LSD may be what's served at your wedding, but only couscous is good enough for Friday. The couscous making starts around ten in the morning (unless I plan on coming over to learn, in which case it always seems to start earlier), and lasts until around one, or until everyone who's coming home is back home. It's served in a massive bowl-plate called a ksa, and everyone gathers around and digs in the second it touches the table. And it's important to note that couscous is the only dish that is officially sanctioned to be eaten with a utensil (a giant spoon, to be precise, that's about the equivalent of a tablespoon and a half), although the truly hardcore will use their hands. Not bread in their hands, mind you, but go straight for it with their fingers. If you want to blow the socks of your Moroccan friends, the next time you go over for couscous, make a big display of refusing to eat with a spoon (it helps if you take the one offered you and throw it across the room), and plunge your hand (right hand) into the bowl. This works especially well when the couscous is supersaturated with marqa', the liquified butter cream sauce that fell from Heaven, and doesn't work at all when it isn't. Scoop it around for a moment and pull it back out with about a golf ball’s weight of couscous. Sauté this in your hand once or twice and then launch it into your mouth. It really only takes once to prove that you're the baddest couscous eater at the table, though you're welcome to go the whole meal to formally cement your superiority. When you're finished, you can demurely tap your hand clean on the side of the ksa, or you can full-on lick it down. An important safety tip, however: the latter option is not as sexually enticing as it might sound. When you're finished, you can wash it all down with a tall glass of lebin. Lebin is pretty much the same thing as buttermilk, though it translates more closely as “Satan's nightcap,” and drinking this with your couscous isn't so much hardcore as it is an exercise in gastrointestinal hubris. I'd recommend just a simple glass of water, though I wouldn't wait until the end of the meal before quenching my thirst. Don't forget, Morocco has space for individual tea (or soda) glasses, but there's only one cup of water on the table, and it's going to be hard to drink once everyone else's semolina grain backwash is floating in it, no matter how thirsty you are.
3. As in any other society, there are some things you can do in Morocco, and others you can't. For example, you can go to the bathroom, but you can't let anyone hear you (we've talked about this before). And, in those cases when you do something that you shouldn't, you're going to hear people telling you “hashuma.” “Hashuma” basically means “shame.” It also sounds a lot like “shame,” which is convenient for remembering. You can “hashumaed” for just about anything, too, in no small part due to how much fun it is to say. It can mean: “Act right!” as in, “Hashuma, don't eat with your left hand!” “You know better than that!” as in, “Don't grab a girl's butt when she's walking through the souk, hashuma!” “Watch your mouth!” as in “Hashuma, you said 'donkey,' 'toilet,' 'trash,' or one of a long list of other words without asking for pardon.” “This is the end of society as we know it,” as in “You were attacked by hoodlums? Hashuma.” (This one should be followed by “gaa',” which translates most closely as “to an absolute degree, either negative or positive, with great emphasis,” and is my absolute favorite word to say, gaa'.) It can be your response to seeing someone stumbling drunkenly down the street, or a weak attempt to save face when you've been bested in a verbal battle of wits. And you actually don't need to say it at all, as, like all Moroccan communication, it can be conveyed in a simple hand gesture form. It's a lot like our “I'm sad” gesture except instead of tracing a tear away from your eye, you pull the skin down from your eyeball to emphasize that someone is watching. Unfortunately, this can get you (or me) in trouble if you try to tell someone you're sad without saying it. Morocco doesn't have that gesture, and isn't going to get it. Trust me.
4. You might be surprised to know that the vast majority of people don't own cars, though you might also be surprised to know that far fewer have camels that they can use to get around with. No, a good 85% of Morocco lies in between, having only their wits (and the occasional bicycle) to get them to work in the morning. So what do they do? Well, most just walk. This is as true of city folks who walk a matter of blocks as it is of country folks who walk a matter of miles to get to school, usually uphill. But when money is available and time is not, people got with what they know: taxis. Within cities, these are called “little taxis,” which are usually a cute little Fiat and always a pain in the ass. Depending on the city, there's either a set rate to ride or a counter, though in either case you can count on having to argue over the price and probably being ripped off. Between cities you need a “big taxi,” though, and that's where the fun is. Big taxis are all old Mercedeses (Mercedi?) that were run to death in Germany before being sent to scrap, reassembled for Morocco as part of a development outreach, and currently held together by the collective faith of everyone riding on that particular day. And perhaps that's why these [debatably] five-seater vehicles are crammed with seven people: because no one knows just how many more rides are left in it. The front seat includes the driver, a passenger in two thirds of the passenger's seat, and another passenger in what's left plus straddling the stick shift, and the back is crammed with four people and whatever luggage can't fit in the trunk. Again, though, this is a Mercedes, so if you've got four small-to-medium-sized passengers, there's plenty of room to ride comfortably. Unfortunately, though women are more successful, both sexes aspire to huskier sizes, which can make for some tight riding conditions. Usually, one has to lean forward the whole ride, and that's usually the American (who's less comfortable with a lack of personal space). Of course, if you don't like taxis, and trust me, they can be next to unbearable in the summer, you could always take a bus. There are a few national bus lines that cater largely to tourists, but most are local lines or run specific routes, and it's not unheard of for someone to just run their own bus. Similar to big taxis, buses have set passenger limits, though unlike big taxis, this number is equal to the number of seats available in the bus. However, compliance with these set limits is much harder to verify, so what usually happens is that passengers are crammed into the bus until it is physically impossible to add any more, and everyone not sitting in a seat is commanded to hide whenever the bus enters town or passes a well-known traffic stop. Amazingly, though, it's only on the fancy national lines that you ever have any problems with seating. Despite there being as many or more seats than people riding, there's always some neurotic Westerner up in arms about having the seat number that's on their ticket, and you can count on your PCV getting in a fight about how if everyone would just sit down in an open space, we could already be halfway there by now.
5. Morocco's currency is the dirham, which during the course of my service, has fluctuated between eight and nine to the dollar. Of course, being more permanent residents, we don't usually worry too much about the exchange rate. Five dirham is a cup of coffee, one and a half is a wheel of bread, and it goes on from there. And you'll probably be surprised to hear that despite never having to exchange money, we're still constantly worry about conversions. Not between dollars and dirham, but between dirham and rials. I've heard a lot of stories about where rial come from. Some say they are the “old currency;” others that they're “Islamic” (the Saudi Arabian currency is also called the rial). The truth, however, is that they're entirely fictional – a figment of the collective imagination that's taken root in Morocco. A single rial is one twentieth of a dirham, or the equivalent of a Moroccan nickle. Of course, Morocco doesn't have nickles (or five-centime pieces) in its collection of legal tender. (Point of technicality: actualy, there is a five-centime piece, though its use is about as common as that of the two dollar bill in America, which is to say, nonexistent. I found one once, however, so I can prove they do exist, though I can't find it anymore – I certainly didn't spend it on anything – so perhaps it was just a souk-induced hallucination.) No, rials are a way of counting, not a currency. Basically, you take whatever amount of money you're concerned with, and multiply it by twenty (or the number of nickles involved in the transaction), so bread is actually thirty, and a cup of coffee will run you one hundred. At first we thought that people would try to give us prices in rials to take advantage of our gullibility, but in the end we've found it much more likely to meet someone who honestly does not comprehend prices in dirham. My host mother is one, and in the course of selling her my furniture, I had to convert all the prices. Fortunately, two years of practice has made me an expert at the 20s table. Up in the north they call rials “douro,” but they count in centimes instead,which they call “franks.” That means a carton of La Vache Qui Rit cheese will cost you one thousand up in the Rif Mountains or two hundred in Freedonia, but you only have to take ten dirham out of your wallet. But in all this, the thing that doesn't make any sense is what Morocco does with really large quantities of money, specifically for ten and hundred thousands of dirhams. You'd think that 10,000 would be called 200,000, but everyone – not just the north – goes for the pennies on this one and calls it 1,000,000. I recently heard that my dar shebab was going to be getting 16,000,000 this year for improvements, and almost fell out of my chair. 16,000,000 dirham (roughly 2,000,000 dollars) is enough to build a center four or five times the size of what we have now. Forget about cosmetic improvements, let's tear it down and start again from scratch. Of course, it turns out that we aren't getting 16,000,000 dirham, we're getting 16,000,000 franks, which is 160,000 dirham (about 20,000 dollars). That's still a lot of money, but not quite the same, though I suppose I only have myself to blame for getting so excited. My friend didn't say “dirham,” “franks,” or “rial,” he just said “16,000,000.” It makes me wonder though what would happen if we were getting that much in dirham. Would they have to say 1,600,000,000 to avoid confusion? The world may never know.
6. What would you consider a busy day? You get up before the sun so you can get to work or school on time, bust your rump finishing whatever project you need to get done in a few hours less than it's going to take to finish, blitz through all the errands necessary for living, and go spend the quality time with your parents or girlfriend just so that they don't walk out on you, despite being exhausted to the point where you almost wish they would if only just to simplify your life. At the end of it all, you fall asleep still wearing your clothes, which, conveniently turn out to be the pajamas you were wearing the night before and didn't have time to change out of this morning. That probably strikes you as pretty busy. To me, and the majority of Peace Corps volunteers that I know, that's more along the lines of a ludicrous impossibility. A busy day around here (and I should note that I'm speaking for volunteers here) is one when you have to pay your electric bill, buy groceries, and teach an hour and a half of class. Do all that, and you deserve a break. But that's not to say that there's nothing to do as a volunteer, nor I am necessarily calling us all pathologically lazy (though there are a few). The truth is that pretty much everything you have to do is exponentially harder to do hear than it is for all of you back in cushy America. And why is that? In the end, it boils down to culture, or, perhaps, a lack thereof. You have the luxury of buying stamps at the post office in English, and according to culturally enforced rituals that you've been acclimating to all your lives. We, however, have the relatively simple challenge of translating our words into Darijia or some variety of Tamazight and the great challenge of translating our modes of thinking and cultural touchstones into Moroccan before we can even begin to ask the clerk for a book of stamps. Even going over to your parents' house for lunch is exhausting, and that's before they start asking why you never call and what happened with that sweet girl who seemed so nice and why can't you just settle down and start making grandchildren? And that's why I exclude Moroccans from my definition of a busy day, because they, like you, are working in the system to which they were raised. Going to the souk isn't going to be use the day's energy, though I wouldn't be surprised if a Freedonian needed to take a nap after only a one hour expedition to Wal-Mart. So bear that in mind the next time you're feeling wiped from a “long day.” Over here, we're fighting against a lifetime of being indoctrinated into a different way of thinking of just about everything. All you need is a Red Bull.
7. Morocco is know for many things, but television programming is not one of them. Every so often you'll read an article with some Moroccan railing against the two-dimensionality of Moroccan television characters or how they reinforce out-dated gender and cultural stereotypes, or with some American bemoaning how completely asinine – à la “Full House” – they all are. It shouldn't come to you as a surprise, then, that the star of the Moroccan television screen is not Moroccan at all. Turkey stands tall with their hyperdramatic and well-mustachioed soap operas dubbed and transmitted via Syria, who throw in a few struggle-for-independence era dramas while they're at it. South Korea has a historical epic every once in a while, and India usually packs enough tension into a single half hour each day to induce seizures, but none of these can topple the megalith that is the Mexican telenovela. They aren't as frequent as the Middle Eastern shows, but somehow they've learned to capture the Moroccan attention in a way that probably hasn't been done since the first Arabs started showing up talking about Islam. The first reason is probably that these are dubbed into Darijia rather than Standard Arabic (for some reason, the Indian ones are, too), but I would wager that the short skirts and massive cleavage that you don't get from more conservative societies plays their part, too. Whatever the reason, the Mexican soap opera slot has achieved a level of sacredness bordering on a sixth call to prayer. Take “Margarita,” for instance, which isn't even the show's real name but just the name of the main character. This summer the souk featured t-shirts with her face and key chains with everyone else. And now it's “Diablo” – set in New York – that holds Morocco hostage every evening at around seven and preventing any sort of regular dar shebab English schedule from being put in place. And it's convinced us volunteers that if the Peace Corps is a cultural exchange program, then it's wasting its money. Forget about volunteers, our effectiveness could be increased twenty-fold if we just dubbed a cheap plot line into Darijia with lots of hair gel and leather jackets. And cleavage.
8. My grandfather is a man of routine, and he used to go to the same sandwich shop and order the same sandwich so often that they named it after him. The “Coddy special,” it's called (his name is Frederick, but prefers to go by “Coddy,” for his middle name, Codman), and you could go into whatever sandwich restaurant this was in New Orleans and order it off the menu, though it may not be there anymore, as the logical conclusion that it contains codfish (which I can attest it does not) can only have led to confusion. Peace Corps volunteers are similar (to my grandfather, not codfish) in that they too strive to be regulars everywhere they go, and for similar reasons. My grandfather couldn't hear, and was too curmudgeonly to want to talk if he could, and Peace Corps volunteers hate to explain why they're in Morocco. Obviously, a Darijia-speaking foreigner is an oddity around here, and encountering one inevitably leads one to wonder why, where are you from, what are you doing in Morocco, are you married, are you Muslim, do you like Morocco more than America, do you support Bush or Obama, did you know Michael Jackson converted to Islam right before he died, and all I really wanted was to grab a candy bar before going to class and not recite my life story and make empty promises to join your religion just so you'd stop talking to me. Of course, these are all great questions, and I'm happy to answer them, but I've answered them before, and Michael Jackson did not, in fact, convert, he merely produced a cd for Bahrain because they agreed to host him after he was kicked out of America for being an unproven child molester, which he never even delivered on, and I've been here for two years and haven't you all figured out what I'm here for already? And that's why we take every opportunity to be regulars wherever possible. We go to the same corner hanoot, the same cyber, the same cafe, the same barber, the same popcorn guy in the souk, the same phone recharge vendor. Essentially, once you've “broken someone in,” you stick with them, and not the least reason for which is how much effort it takes to get to the point where you no longer have to read an autobiography just to buy a half liter of milk, and that's a beautiful thing. And, for the record, I too have a sandwich named after me. In a little town outside of Sefrou there's a guy named Sandwich Mohammad, and if you go to buy a Sandwich Mohammad sandwich (which I highly recommend as they are the best sandwiches in Morocco), you can ask him for “sandwich Amin,” and he'll know what you're talking about, and you'll know that I know what I'm talking about, too, because sandwich Amin is the best Sandwich Mohammad sandwich.
9. I love teaching English to dar shebab students primarily because of the unmitigated joy it brings to their faces, secondarily because it's really easy for me to do, and tertiarily because it's desperately needed in Morocco. Students are given about four years of English and then expected to pass an exam that's a close second to the TOEFL as a certificate of fluency, which is obviously incredibly hard, but that's not even the real problem. The texts they are forced to use are not only written in British English – it's bad enough imagining that they're going to learn to speak like Hugh Grant – but they're written in incorrect British English. Ask a Moroccan English student their name, and I guarantee you'll hear this, word-for-word: “My name is [Mohammad] and my family name is [ben Mohammad]. I am from Morocco, exactly in [Fes].” It's a travesty that they do this to students who we can assume want nothing less than to sound absolutely ridiculous when they speak English. I mean, it makes sense why this would happen, especially since the Arabic word for “name” is “smiya,” which is uniquely distinct from their word for “last name,” “kinnaea,” but has really no one with any background in English ever read the textbook? The cake-taker, though, is the Moroccan English way of asking how you are. In Darijia, you would usually ask with “la bas?” and answer with “la bas.” Of course, there are other exchanges you could use (such as “bekhair?” and “bekhair”), but they too tend to be the same word just inflected differently. It's not too surprising then that people are going to imagine that English behaves the same way, and thus the birth of “Are you fine?” Myself and almost fifty years of Peace Corps volunteers before me have fought to slay this demon, and I am here to say that we have failed. Rather than admit defeat, however, I propose that we adopt this formally into English, so that we can say that the English spoken by our dar shebab students in fully correct. So do your parts, people, and whenever you see someone, ask them “Fine? Are you fine?” They'll appreciate knowing you care, and I'll appreciate having a little bit of Morocco with me back in America.
