Monday, November 29, 2010

A baby, a desert, and umm....Let's give thanks!

The biggest recent event in Morocco was the birth of Narjis, the first child of my dear friends Abdessamad and his wife Fatima. Narjis was born the 24th of November, the day before Thanksgiving.  She weighed 2.8 kilograms and was completely healthy. I got to see her on her 3rd day after seeing the light and she was gorgeous, had her mothers' eyes. Here are some pictures.
Here's daddy admiring his creation. I hope to have that same goofy grin on my face one day. 
On the left is Abdessamad's sister-in-law, Hessna, who came over for the day to help with household chores while Abdessamad's wife Fatima rested and took care of baby.
I've got a new challenge ahead of me: learning Arabic before the Narjis does. I think I can manage that. I'm just glad I got a 3 month head start.

In other news, last weekend I went on a trip to the Sahara desert with a group from the school where I'm studying now. Oh yeah, did I mention that I'm now taking 20 hours/week of Arabic classes at a language institution? It's a terrific program with a class pace that suits me well: FAST! Anyway, on this trip we visited a city called Erfoud in the Sahara Desert in Eastern Morocco (the Sahara also extends into the southern part of Morocco.) After visiting a mausoleum with some old dead people, we headed to a very poor neighborhood that was a historic neighborhood of the region, built hundreds of years ago. We entered this place and toured around, looking at all the "historic" stuff and observing the conditions these poor people lived in. Our tour guide took us through the winding paths between all the houses and took us to all the "hot" spots that a tourist must see in this historic, destitute quarter. As soon as we entered the neighborhood I felt my conscience start burning and I was immediately aware that we were intruding on these incredibly poor peoples' living space to see what harsh conditions they lived in and take pictures to show our rich friends back home. Essentially we were treating those people and their circumstances as exploitable means to have a nice vacation and see the "real" Morocco. To me, that is not seeing the real Morocco. Seeing the real Morocco means interacting with the commoners without exploiting them or viewing them as simple peasants of the "third world." Sit down and have a Moroccan tea with them over a conversation and you'll see more of the "real" Morocco than you ever will going around taking pictures of all the "exotic, strange, crazy" customs and architecture. Aw crap, I'm getting opinionated again...

Saturday night we went to meet another tour guide who had camels waiting for us to ride to our campsite nestled in the sand dunes. We arrived just before the sun set, so for the first 30 minutes of our ride into the desert dunes, behind us was a sky of the most vibrant shades of orange, yellow, red, and pink. We arrived to already set-up camps, so we decided to go climb the dunes and have fun in the sand. We ate dinner together in a community tent and talked about everything from world politics to local cuisine. After dinner we made a fire and told jokes, stories, sang, and had a dance competition (in which I was the only one who participated...but at least I won!) After everyone had gone to bed, an adventurous Romanian guy and I grabbed a snowboard that was behind one of the tents and we headed up the tallest, steepest sand dune around to slide down. We found this to be harder than we imagined, and we found it possible to slide only on very steep slopes, but we were able to find a couple of good spots and slide about 50 feet before slowly coming to a halt. I've never snowboarded or skied before, and that was a blast! I'm ready to try to real thing now.

The next day we got up at 5:30am and headed out to reach the ideal spot on top of a dune to see the sunrise. This wasn't as impressive as the sunset the previous night, but it was still pretty special to witness over the Sahara dunes.

Here are some pictures from the trip to give visual representation to my shanty English depiction.
A gate to somewhere. I took a picture because this is a typical, ancient, Moroccan city entrance. 
This is the door that opens to a Mausoleum. It shows typical, intricate Moroccan artwork.
These are two perhaps not-so-typical Italians girls who study Arabic with me and who also went on the trip. They were a blast!
This is the sight we encountered before entering the dunes.
The shadow to the right is me on a camel taking a picture of me on a camel taking a picture...got it?
There's our guide leading us into the desolate nothingness.
Relax F.B.I.! These things really do help when the wind is kicking up sand and beating you with it constantly.
This is what fell behind us as we wound around and climbed over dunes entering the desert.
This was the sunrise the following morning. The colors don't show here, but I think the fact that we were cold does.
"God, King, Country" painted on the hillside in Arabic, a site often seen on the hills in this region.
A great place to get lost without water, right?

To celebrate Thanksgiving this past Thursday a proper meal complete with turkey, ham, mashed 'taters, green beans, cranberry relish, dressing, and pecan pie was prepared at the American Club in Rabat for a group of us from the school. Fewer than half of us were Americans, but we all came together to enjoy an American meal on an American Holiday and enjoy each other. We Americans did our best to explain the origin of the holiday, but most of our conversation circled around culture and the silly things we have in each culture. Here are a few pictures of the meal we ate:
I can't say I was expecting a terrific Thanksgiving meal overseas, but I have to say I was quite impressed. It couldn't hold a flame to my mom's cookin', but it was delicious nonetheless. And check out the big mug of sweet iced tea! That's how I kept the meal Southern.
And voila the group of international students who decided to partake in the Thanksgiving meal.


Thursday, November 18, 2010

A Bloody Great Festival!

By dinnertime yesterday I'd helped slaughter two sheep and skin and gut three. I'd also prepared and ate "shwa" -barbecue - with the liver, lungs, and fat of the sheep we slaughtered. Is the title of this blog entry starting to make sense?

Jiull Ian (my Romanian roommate) and I headed to Temara Tuesday night to participate in the Eid al-Adha preparations with my Moroccan family. We went out and bought all the utensils for the slaughtering, skinning, gutting, butchering, and cooking of the sheep, including: knives, skewers, grill racks, cutting boards, spices, and an axe. It seemed the whole town had the same idea, and the streets were full of vendors with all the essentials for the Eid and shoppers with all the essentials for buying these essentials. When we had bought all we needed, we headed home to eat dinner. The intense night activity reminded me of Ramadan when everybody was out socializing and feasting until 4am because of daytime fasting. I was beginning to see the importance of Eid al-Adha for Muslims, but its significance was hammered home when Khalid, one of my brothers in my Moroccan family, refused to eat very much dinner so as to have as much room as possible for the feast the next day. I laughed when he explained why he had stopped eating, but I quickly realized he was serious. Wow, I was anxious for the ceremony to begin.

My Moroccan family and Jull Ian (bottom right) eating tajine Tuesday night before Eid. Everyone scrunched around a little table...what a way to share a meal! Khalid is the one putting food into his mouth. This was probably his last bite before leaving the table to save the maximum amount of room for the next day.
As we approached the family's house, this is the scene we encountered. Everybody was burning the heads of the sheep they had just slaughtered.
Jull Ian and I went back with Abdessamad to his house and were up until 3:30am, goofing off and generally enjoying the feeling of anticipation before the huge event. Because of this, we overslept and missed the slaughtering of the first sheep, so we arrived to a bloody, headless mess. In good-ole Moroccan fashion I jumped right in with a knife and started hacking away at the skin of the beast (actually I was watched carefully and criticized often for bad or unnecessary cuts, but I sure learned fast!).
And this is the scene I walked in on when I arrived to my family's house after waking up late at Abdessamad's.

So I joined right in!

Khalid and a friend taking off the horns.
After slaughtering and cleaning the family's sheep, we went to Abdessamad's to slaughter his two sheep. Voici les photos:
Abdessamad's sheep.

Haziza (Abdessamad's sister-in-law) and her husband Mbark horsing around on the sheep.

A man with special religious significance (and talent with a knife) came to do the actual slaughtering. He came, we held down the sheep, he cut the throat, and he left, quite literally that fast.

You eat meat? Well here's the first step in it arriving to your plate!

Hassan, Abdessamad's brother, began gutting the sheep, taking out first the fat that would be used for barbecue and other dishes, then the stomach, liver, kidneys, intestines, and lungs. We ate all of that, by the way, except the intestines. And I liked all of it! Maybe it was the delicious fat and spices that made these new foods so tasty, but I think the fact that I took part in the entire process of the food arriving on my plate had a lot to do with it as well. (Oh yeah, look at all the blood splattered on the wall in the background. That is due to the sheep kicking out the last of its life and kicking with this all the blood that had been liberated from its imprisoning veins.)
The experience of eating food for which I personally partook in all the processes for preparing was immensely more meaningful than when I have bought meat from the store and cooked it. To know exactly where my meal came from was to be completely responsible for how I treat my body and how I treat the animals that supply the nutrition my body demands. In Spanish and French there are two verbs for the English "to know." One is used when referring to the recollection of information or knowledge of skills. The other is used for things you are familiar with from personal experience. It is this connotation I wish to use when I refer to knowing where my food came from. I knew the sheep, I helped kill, skin, gut, butcher, skewer, and cook its meat, and when I ate it I felt all the work, effort, and emotion that had gone into that bite of delicious energy. I'm no writer, and I'm certainly no wordsmith, but am I conveying how divine this experience was for someone who has grown up so far removed from his food?

The day of the Eid (Wednesday) I spent mostly killing, skinning and gutting sheep. I helped prepare the lungs and liver, which we wrapped in fat and barbecued to perfection, and this was our lunch (at about 3pm, our first meal of the day.) We devoured it, and afterwards Mbark and I took a little nap. Killin' aint easy, and we needed rest. We sat around with the family relaxing and chatting, and later we had a special dinner that consisted of the head of the sheep. Let me tell you, the tongue is especially delicious! The cheek and nose aren't bad, either. (Please forgive me for not posting any more pictures of the best part, the food. I haven't yet found batteries that work for more than about 15 pictures in my camera, but Mbark did get a lot of pictures of the rest of the event, so as soon as I get those from him I'll post them!)

The next day (today) I spent 75% of the waking hours eating, or stuffing my face as they say here. I ate three meals first with my Moroccan family before going to visit their other family members and eating more. I don't even remember now how many times I ate - I just know it was more than I've ever eaten in one day in my life. Moroccans sure have a way of treating guests, especially foreigners. Every house I visited I was offered food and drink. In fact, it's almost unheard of for a guest to come over and not be served at least tea (even if it's close family.) You'd think the least healthy people in Morocco would be those with the most friends, or at least those who visit their friends the most. Darn these good looks! (or more like "darn these people's loving character and hospitality for foreigners!")

Much of the last 2.5 days I spent away from Abdessamad and Jull Ian, who stayed at Abdessamad's house while I was with the family at their house. Therefore I either spoke in Arabic or just shut up and listened, because only two people in the family speak French. However, the fact that a lot of my time was spent just sitting and listening and not partaking or even knowing what was going on or being said doesn't mean I didn't thoroughly enjoy myself. In fact, it's the most comfortable and content I've felt yet in Morocco. That can't make since to a normal person, but maybe that's why it makes so much since to me - I reckon I aren't normal! When I'm with this family, I know I'm with people who love me, who accept me as a family member, and whom I can trust with my life - So who needs verbal communication to be at ease and comfortable amidst such folks? We did often engage each other in conversation, however, but, as always, it was so rough that we mostly ended up laughing at my confusion and forgetting the original purpose of the conversation. This is the kind of language practice I need. This is the cultural experience I hunger for. What an awesome two and a half days!

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Preparations for Eid al-Adha

For those who don't know, one of the most important events for Muslims will happen tomorrow: a festival called Eid al-Adha. It's a celebration in which Muslim families slaughter a sheep to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son in obedience to God. Before Abraham went through with this act God gave him a sheep instead to sacrifice, and so Muslims now sacrifice a sheep to signify this obedience to God. Traditionally the family keeps a share of the meat for itself and distributes the rest to extended family and the poor who cannot afford to buy a sheep. Today, however, this tradition isn't followed much in Morocco because almost every family buys a sheep, either by saving up specifically for the event, doing extra work, or taking out loans (there are signs everywhere here advertising loans for sheep.)

I'll be celebrating Eid al-Adha with Abdessamad and his family. I'm so fortunate to be able to spend it with such an awesome, traditional, Moroccan family. I'll post pictures of the event as soon as I can. For now, here's a couple of the sheep staying at Abdessamad's family's house. The family is keeping the sheep on the patio until tomorrow. Most families get their sheep a few days before the ceremony and keep it/them tied up somewhere around the house.
Khalid, Abdessamad's brother-in-law.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

A look at Casablanca and Fes

Here's a visual representation of trips I took with friends to Casablanca (business Capital and largest city of Morocco) and Fes (first city and cultural Capital of Morocco.)
Mosque Hassan II, the biggest Mosque in Africa. It is in Casablanca and rests right on the ocean.
This is a Catholic Cathedral in Casablanca. It's probably not the biggest Cathedral in Africa, but it's impressive nonetheless.

These kids snuck past the security railing and were jumping off this wall into the ocean below. A security guard came over and tried to get them to come down and return the the pedestrian area, but they mocked him and jumped off all the same.


If you look hard you can see all the local boys speckled throughout the giant rocks. What a fun swimming hole to hop in for the local boys (and probably year-round.)

My roommate Jull Iann and I eating snails. So hot but so delicious.

This is where the boys landed when they jumped off the Mosque 'patio.'

A view of Bab Bou Jloud, the main entrance to the Medina (old city) in Fes. This Medina is an awesome labyrinth of twisting, windy roads that pass by all kinds of shops.

A cemetery right outside the Medina in Fes. Not too different from cemeteries in the Unites States, huh?

An open area in the Medina where people come to people watch, relax, or play soccer, like these kids in the picture. One female member of our group decided to go play with the kids after a few minutes of watching them. She plays soccer in College in the states,  so she was quite talented and showed those kids a thing or two about the game. She drew some attention (whether it was because she was a foreign girl out-playing local kids or because she was a woman playing soccer in Morocco), but people enjoyed the event and cheered when she returned to our group.