On Foul Weather

The street outside is more river now then road. The sky is torn and falling. I received the following text message from Rabat:

"Expéditeur: Peace Coprs

It is officially announced

that Morocco is expecting

very bad weather. PLZ keep

high vigilance and contact us

4 any information and

assistance. Stay warm and

safe. PC/SSC"

The truth of the matter is that there is nothing to do at the moment but hunker down and say ‘thanks be to god’. With no irrigation, the survival of the crops depends on a strong rainy season. And when the heat of the summer comes, there will no doubt be a longing for the rains of winter. However, at the moment its disappointing knowing that the dirt roads have all been transformed into muddy rivers and if you want to go somewhere, you can’t. But on the plus side the strongest gusts of wind have died down, the electricity is back on and the rain has managed to find its way in in only two places. 

On Tajine

tagine |təˈ zh īn; təˈjīn |

noun

a North African stew of spiced meat and vegetables prepared by slow cooking in a shallow earthenware cooking dish with a tall, conical lid.

ORIGIN from Moroccan Arabic: ṭažin from Arabic ṭājin 'frying pan.'

Today was a momentous day in my Moroccan life. I cooked my first tajine.

I burned it.

Actually, that is not an entirely accurate statement. Through culinary ingeniousness I managed to both burn AND undercook it.

A tajine, for those who don’t know, is the traditional Moroccan dish, served in my region at almost every lunch, save couscous Fridays. I bought my tajine at souq on Wednesday for about $3 (Dh 25). The artisan who made it was from a dwar just 9 kilometers up the road from me and was so impressed that there was an American living in his valley that he took me around the souq to make sure I bought all the right spices and then spent a good ten minuets talking me through how to cook with it. Needless to say I shamed his teaching by not adding enough water and oil. Nonetheless it still smelled great. Live and learn.

On Edmund

In January I discovered that my house was not cat-proof when the bedraggled Puddle made his way inside on one nondescript weekday morning. This morning I further discovered that my house also is not frog-proof. I awoke this morning to find a fairly medium sized and nonplussed frog meditating just inside my front door. Though not as affectionate as Puddle, the frog clearly did not feel obliged to hurry out upon being discovered uninvited. I named him Edmund.

On Diversity

Last weekend I visited the town of Ifrane, the location of my Community Based Training. This was the town where, after only five days in country, I was place in a host family to begin my total emersion in Morocco. Having now spent three months in my final site, I realize Ifrane, despite being no more then five hours drive from my final site, is very different. This brought home the idea that Morocco is diverse. From the languages spoken to the traditions observed no town is the same. Even the volunteers nearest to my final site are in towns that emphasize different languages, such as Tamazight instead of Darija, and expect different social norms to be observed amongst the locals. Variety is the spice of life, but who knew there would be so much variety that I would have to learn two different words for bread (hobs, agraum) and water (lma, amen) to communicate in different towns, seven miles apart.

On Musical Themes

The American traveler in Morocco will notice some significant differences in the themes that make up the majority Morocco’s musical traditions respective to those that comprise America’s.

For an example, if one listens closely, it is impressive how many references to cars and driving are to be found in the music coming from America’s mixing studios. It seems almost every song in the rap genre has a line about a Chevy impala or shiny cars or something along those lines. And it is not just limited to that genre. What would country music be if one were to remove all the vehicular references, particularly those about a man’s truck being destroyed as part of a lover’s tiff?

Morocco enjoys no such automobile related lyrics. Instead it has its own, often-referenced themes, namely those of tea and bread. All the most ingrained and popular songs coming out of Morocco tend to have a line about baking bread early in the morning or having a wife whose duty it is to make the tea.

Different strokes…

On Werewolves

A while back I mentioned that werewolf references were a routine part of my experience here.  That bears explaining. The PCVs in the province I work in have chosen as their anthem the song ‘Shewolf’ by Shakira. Through her awkward dance moves and in front of a San Francisco skyline, she sings about how she suffers through her lycanthropic life. Secondly, there is a town in our province whose name is archaic French for werewolf, a name, no doubt given when Morocco was a French protectorate, used to warn away French visitors from its untended mud streets and crumbling mud houses. I routinely go to ‘werewolf’ to visit the PCVs there or see the Gendarmes. Lastly, there was recently a wolf moon, a full moon that occurs in January, named for the hungry wolves who howl to it in the bitter cold of night. Having noticed all these werewolf references, it has become a routine joke to mention the werewolf threat in our province. We joined Peace Corps to help humanity, but there is always the danger that we might, while in Peace Corps, join werewolfkind.  

Super Bowl Monday

In the wee hours of Monday morning seventeen Peace Corps Volunteers in Morocco gathered together at a café, especially open for them, to watch Super Bowl XLIV live, in Italian.  Upon the tables, strewn with empty coffee cups and backgammon and Connect Four sets, the flickering lights of the stadium in Miami shown as the Indianapolis Colts fell to the New Orleans Saints. The five-second lag between audio and video, not noticeable when the commentary was in Italian became perturbing as ‘The Who’ took the stage, their mouths moving to words they hadn’t sung yet.

The game ended at 3am, and the PCVs walked back through the deserted streets, having shared one of the unique facets of their culture with the few groggy regulars of the café, who stayed to see what all the fuss was about. However, those regulars missed out on one of the best traditions of the Super Bowl. The whole game was shown commercial free.