What a weekend!

September 26-27, 2008

So tonight was the first presidential debate, and I had an election debate party. A few friends and I watched CNN International and stayed up late/got up early to watch the coverage. The debate itself aired at 01:00 here, but the pundits stayed up late and so did we!

This was one of my excuses for splurging for satellite: I need Grand Slam tennis and election coverage. The tv is one of the few luxuries I allowed myself in my house and seems a bit excessive, but it's also a big part of entertaining here. It's also a nice paradox when you take into account that I have no running water in my house, but I have a really "zween" (very very nice) satellite.
It's so much fun to be with this group during such an important election year. I think I'm probably one of the most moderate PCVs in the group, but that's normally the case at home, too. We had a great time picking apart the candidates. You can probably guess which one we were supporting... : )

On election night itself we'll be at our In-Service Training and hopefully have coverage of the results. All the PCVs who trained with me will be there, and excepting one or two most of us have a leftist slant.

The plan is to watch debates with other PCVs and have little get-togethers in the run-up to the big night. It's fun to tell my community that we're staying up late to watch the election news from America. Some of them have definite opinions on who should win!
For the first of the debates we made an Indian feast, which was quite a feat considering all the food was cooked before we broke fast and there was no taste-testing allowed. We left that up to the one of us who wasn't fasting, so thanks, Emmy, for ensuring that we didn't gag on the results of our guesswork dinner ; )

September 27-28, 2008

Tonight was Laylat al-Qadr, or the Night of Power. It's a night when the men stay up all night at the mosque reading the entire Quran and the women all get together outside. This is done because in the Muslim tradition, it's believed that the Prophet Mohammad was transported on the 27th night of Ramadan from Medina to Jerusalem and back again. The entire Quran was revealed to him on that night. Muslims commemorate this miraculous event by reciting the Quran at mosque. The men go to the mosque together and the women take them food (here it's either couscous or lamb tagine) throughout the night.
It felt oddly like a wedding, because we sat and chatted and ate tagine. I hadn't had tagine in about a month because of Ramadan, so it was nice to eat with the women. We started out at the well near my house where I sometimes draw water. Then a group of us moved to another house and stayed until about 1:30. We sat outside the whole time, and it was a beautiful night.

It's great to spend the holidays with the people in my douar and I can't wait until Eid next Wednesday!

wedding season

August 15, 2008

I'm told by PC staff that in my site being invited to weddings means that I'm integrated. I wonder what they'd say to a 16-hour three-wedding marathon...?
My site is huge, which means there are a lot of people to meet. A great way to do this has been going to weddings. In the summer, because there's traditionally not as much work to do after the harvest, there are tons of weddings in Morocco. There were multiple weddings to attend every weekend in August!
On a side note, the Tash words for wedding and harvest are very similar. "Tmgra" is a wedding and "tamgra" is harvest. Usually the weddings in Morocco happen once the harvest season has ended, because then people aren't working all day.
I've had henna done every time someone knows I'm going to a wedding and they see it's faded too much. There are several styles of henna done, and the one most common in my site is the one in the Facebook album. So far, I've seen three techniques of applying henna.
The first involves using a syringe to draw flowery patterns on the palms, the backs of the hands, and, on married women, on the feet. In Ouarzazate and regions further north than here, unmarried girls can get henna on their feet, but in the south it's reserved for married women. Sometimes the girls will get a small design just above the ankle though. Henna on the feet covers the soles and tips of the toes, including toenails. Around this block of henna, a pattern to match the hands is done.
The other kind of henna design involves a form pattern that you can buy in souq. It's a stencil made of tape similar to black electrical tape. You tape the pattern on and cake henna on. When I had this done during homestay, it was just before bed and plastic bags were tied around my hands so it wouldn't rub off in my sleep. I woke up the next morning and washed it off. You have to leave henna on for several hours so that the stain takes hold.
The only kind of henna I've not yet had done is the type that completely covers the palms. You just smear the henna across the palms and leave the backs of the hands uncovered. I'm sure it'll happen in the next two years.

My goal for the next two years is to always have orange-stained fingernails all the time. When the henna covers your nails it stains them permanently and they have to grow out before it's gone completely. I think my goal is realistic. There are a lot of weddings here! And henna is done before holidays, too.

So... Berber weddings. You've seen my pictures from the fake Oz wedding. Basically here it's the same. Everyone gets all dressed up. I go and sit with the women, and the men sit somewhere else. We chat and eat tagine. Sometimes there's dancing and music. Usually this involves the younger girls playing drums or recorded music and getting in a room together to dance. Dancing here is something that has to be seen; there's a definite style to it that I can't describe. The bride, who enters the room with her face covered, wears several outfits and makes her rounds so everyone can see her.

At really nice weddings, there are men who perform a traditional dance called Ahwash. They have various instruments that they play and there was a wedding I went to that was really fancy because they had a singer and band and dancers! I met the bride from another wedding on the same day who said she was leaving hers to come to this one because it was going to be so ifulki! But apparently in a site with so many weddings this isn't all that uncommon. Also, weddings last several days so leaving for a few hours probably wasn't a big deal.

I'll post more details on weddings later but this, along with the pictures, should give you some idea.

Ishqa!

August 10, 2008

So a key word in my life, a phrase and idea around which everything revolves, is "ishqa". It means "it is difficult." People ask all the time if this or that is difficult for me: life in Morocco, drawing water, the heat, learning Tashelheet. You name it. Mostly the questions center on shared experiences like aspects of life in my site, and it's a great way to commiserate. I tend to agree that things are difficult, and that it's a lot of work, sometimes, to live in the bled.
This is such a good thing, I think. Every experience I have is both a challenge and opportunity to learn.
Here's a little story to serve as an example. You'll see what I mean.
Recently, my phone decided to rebel against my need to use it and stopped holding a charge. Unable to figure out what was wrong on my own (duh), I tried several times to take it to the phone guy in my site. He's very helpful in such matters. But by the time I finish at the sbitar every day, he's closed for lunch. I live far away and the heat is intense, so I never can muster the energy to walk back to souq a second time. And usually I spend the afternoons and evenings in my douar, getting to know people.
So I took it to Tiznit with me one week, and the guy I took it to had no clue what was wrong. I explained the problem, and he just couldn't figure it out. I didn't want to blow my monthly budget on a new phone, so I took it home again and kept it off most of the time so it would have a charge for emergencies.
I was kind of frustrated because my phone's become an important lifeline. I'm lucky to be in a country with generally good cell phone coverage, or coverage at all for that matter. I've come to rely on my cell and text other PCVs pretty often (calls are pricey here, but texts are 1 Dirham apiece :)
One day I happened to pass my usual in-site phone guy, and ran over to his tahanut to ask about the phone situation. He listened patiently as I explained in broken Tash, Arabic and English what the phone was doing. He said maybe it was the charger, and proceeded to open a new charger and test it. Turns out that's exactly what the problem was, and (Hamdullah) new chargers are only 15 Dirham- totally in my budget!
So the phone debacle was remedied, and I was ready to start texting and talking to people Stateside once again!
You're probably thinking, "What a boring story!" Maybe you're thinking, "Wait; what's a tahanut again?"
But there's a point, I swear!
People keep asking how life is here. If I had to give an answer that encapsulates every day, it would look a lot like this story. The details vary, but this is how it goes. Life is "ishqa". I've relearned how to cook, clean, dress, speak, and go about every aspect of public and private life. If I have a problem that'd be easily remedied in the States, like the thing with my phone, usually it takes a bit more time and care here.
This is great, and I wouldn't change it at all. It means that I have to learn to be more patient, and think about things in different ways. I'm constantly calling everything I think I know into question and reevaluating things. Luckily there's a lot of time to think here.
Oh, by the way, at the end of the day I also found 20 Dirhams! Now do you think it's a good story? ; )