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.


2 comments:

  1. Great post and some nice pics. I just updated the background. Let me know if you want something different.

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  2. I am seriously living vicariously through you right now. Although I have no desire to have children of my own, that dad will sure be a great loving one, he looks soooo excited! And I could not be more jealous of you walking around in such beautiful places! Segui reportandote Jacobin, que rico que seguis aprendiendo mas idiomas!!

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