Summer rain

February 2, 2010

Here it is the second of February and a summer thunderstorm is rolling over the hills.  The soft rise and fall of the swishing rain, the gentle intrusions of far-away thunder.  The temperature matches the mood, a balmy 66 degrees in my house and a warmer breeze coming in the windows…

Needless to say, I’m loving it!

And, of course, 30 minutes later the power goes out!  What an interesting afternoon.  The temperature, the atmostphere, and the light feel just like a mild summer storm.  I’ll just have to enjoy some candles along with it, now.

Is it something in the air?

January 26, 2010

I tell you, I have no idea what the problem was today in Agadir, but my fellow-PCV Megan and I suffered an almost endless barrage of craziness from all sides from the time we landed in town until we left this afternoon.

Why did we go to Agadir?  To receive our second flu vaccination of the winter, this one of the H1N1 variety.  Megan made that little visit with the PC nurse and the other PCVs all the more fun with her wonderful artistry skills.  I’ll hopefully be able to post her delightful H1N1 Happy-Not-Sick Pig here once I get it off my camera.

Berber block party

January 25, 2010

I’ve got that on-top-of-the-world feeling tonight, having had a long and awesome day that gave me a renewed sense of happiness with my current place, in life, space, and time.  Here it is almost 11:00pm and I’m buzzing with energy.

Just left my neighborhood’s maarouf–the exact nature of which is up for debate.  Some told me today that a maarouf is charity, an event at which everyone eats their fill and then takes the leftovers home.  The dish this time was a sort of soup called orqimn, chock full of just about every dried thing I’ve ever seen: peas, lentils, rice, wheat, barley, chickpeas, fava beans, white beans, corn,  and possibly flax seed along with something else I don’t know… and then, sheep’s shins and feet… delicious except for the “meat”!  Others insisted a maarouf’s importance lies in its qualities as a tradition, a bit of long-time culture.  In reality, it comes off as a wonderful gathering of women (or as at my last one, men) and in this instance, as a sort of neighborhood prayer-and-pep rally.  I’m so happy to have been able to spend the whole day hanging out with the women, from 11:00am until 11:00pm.

Other awesome random bits:

Towards the end, when you’d have thought it would wind down, the remaining 13 women busted out a bucket, a tub, and a large metal platter and spoons and started haoushing up a storm–playing and singing their songs, that is.

Some of us took an afternoon break to go have an English class, which went well.  Today I talked about question words and learned a bit myself, about maaroufs.

I was excited to have the excuse of taking some of the orqimn soup over to my host mom’s house to make a visit to her, and it turned out to be awesome too.  She was happy to get the soup and she rewarded me with my first bit of her home-made amlou!  This stuff is amazing, ground almonds mixed with argan oil.  THE hot commodity of the Souss region.  So exciting, I really can’t say quite how exciting.  To get some of Naima’s amlou!  It makes me feel a little more like family!  I sat with her and her two sons for quite a while, playing with them a little and chatting with her some.  Highly enjoyable.  Eventually it was late enough I thought I should get home, so I said goodnight.

I thought the party over in my ‘hood would be over, but was I wrong!  That’s when I sat down again and enjoyed a huge handful of cookies, two glasses of just about the sweetest tea I’ve ever had in my life (I felt like I could feel it oozing through my veins…  I thought I might almost succomb then and there to the most intense sugar coma of my life…), some more roasted wheat (like pop corn, but with wheat grains!), and the grand chatter and singing of the women.

And to top it off, the moon is bright, the stars are out, and the clouds are scudding through the moonbeams ahead of a surprisingly brisk ocean wind.

I could go on and on, but I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow…  I have to start slowing down for bed, somehow!

Well, a little less than 10 minutes later, I realize that I might feel so pumped right now because of my massive sugar intake today.  But that’s not all, really, it’s been a great day.  Something I really needed.  I’d started out the day a little unfocused, and I’ve been gone from town on a lot of trips in the last month.  I’m starting to feel like the settling back in is coming easier, now.  Makes me happy.  And that’s enough for tonight.

UPDATES

In order to help those interested in finding out what’s new on the site I’ve decided to keep up a post with info on my erratic updates.

January 11, 2010

• Updated/renamed page: “Info for New Invitees”.  Trying to get some info together in the interest of addressing the questions I had when I was getting ready to come to Morocco, in case it would be helpful for those coming in the future.

January 3, 2010

• Added new post: (03/01/2010) “Men’s maarouf“.

December 12-14, 2009

• Added new posts: (12/12/2009) “Funk with a capital ‘F’”, “Anzar Amzwaru“.
• Added new post: (13/12/2009) “The cold, hard truth”.
• Added new posts: (14/12/2009) “Life without water!”, “Creeping coolness”.

November 28, 2009

• Added new post: (23/11/2009) “Strokes of luck”.
• Added new post: (28/11/2009) “Mbark l’awayshir!“.  Good culture, but GRAPHIC images! 

November 17, 2009

• Added new post: (13/11/2009) “A little on culture, genders roles and relations”.  Check it out and shoot any comments or questions my way.
• Added new post: (17/11/2009) “A troubling theme”.
• Added new PAGE: “Berber Banjo!” Check it out, over on the top of the menu on the right-hand side.  Hope to update it from time to time!

November 15, 2009

• Added new post: (15/11/2009) “Soucsou by starlight”.
• Added new post: (18/10/2009) “Trans-Atlantic Family Portrait!”.  A must-see!

November 11, 2009

• Added new post: (11/11/2009) “Time to settle back in”.

October 18, 2009

• Added new post: (18/10/2009) “Making a few more rounds”.

October 17, 2009

• Added new post: (17/10/2009) “A little long-awaited village hopping”.
• Added new post: (17/10/2009) “The next step in integration…?”.

Men’s maarouf

January 3, 2010

I got to enjoy around turn-the-corner-and-come-upon-a-party experience today, this time short, sweet, and involving men.  That’s a first—the soucsou gatherings I’ve stumbled upon have all been held by women.

This time I was on my way home from a vegetable-buying excursion when I took a round-about way back, hoping to see if another shop was also stocked with vegetables.  As I passed the second shop, I decided I’d just go with what I’d bought at the first place.  I was committed to my new return route, however, and as I turned the corner of a building I found myself being beckoned by two elderly men.  One of them was my neighbor, a friendly if sometimes gruff guy.  I’d seen the other man around, but I don’t know who he was.  They were sitting in the usual hangout place of the older and more distinguished men in town.

I walked up as a couple of kids were just finishing their last handfuls of soucsou.  After a rough start (the little punk kids wouldn’t bring a bucket of water to wash my hands, the way the men were telling them to; after they finally did, I dropped half of my first little ball of couscous all over my jeans), I managed to enjoy a few delicious balls of goodness.  This was the tastiest abadez I’ve had.  Usually abadez, made from corn, is more like pasty cornmeal.  This stuff was like your average soucsou, moist and soft.

After several handfuls, when I thought I’d had enough to satisfy the men and there was still plenty left for any other passersby, I said the usual “baraka, al-hamdulillah, aykhlf rbbi” (that’s “enough, thanks to God, may God replenish you”) and made to go.  The men then asked me to push the remaining grains all back into the middle of the plate for anyone else who might come.  I did as I’d seen the women do so many times over the past several months, and received some hearty praise.  My two hosts were impressed that I knew this little bit of “work”, as they called it.  It’s always nice to please people with something so simple!

Creeping coolness

December 14, 2009

In the glow of my computer’s screen, I see my breath wafting off into the dark.

It’s only 17 degrees in my house, Celsius that is, but it’s still a little strange to be watching a movie and catch glimpses of drifting fog.  It took me a couple times to figure out just what I was seeing.

60°F in the house really isn’t bad at all.  You get used to it.  Here at the end of fall I’m finding another reason to be thankful for being close to the coast–I can’t imagine what it’s like up in the real mountains.  We’ll see how the winter gets to be.

Life without water!

December 14, 2009

I received an email in which someone asked me how I’ve adapted to life without running water.  I thought that would be a good question to address here on my site, too, so below is my response.

To answer your question, adapting to life without running water has been much easier than I expected.  Before I ended up giving it a shot, I thought it would be even worse than living without electricity.  I’m really lucky in my set-up, though, and it’s not too bad.  I have a cistern (basically a big hole in the ground that’s covered except for a few little holes that let rainwater run in and fill it up) down below my house.  I use a bucket on a rope to draw all the water I need, and then carry the water up my steps and into the various rooms in my house as I need it.

The cold, hard truth

December 13, 2009

I have a confession to make.

Ever since I arrived in Morocco I’ve had trouble distinguishing between donkey calls and calls to prayer.  About half the time, I think the sound that I hear blasting is one, when it’s really the other.  After about a second or two of sound, though, I realize what I’m hearing.  The confusion comes from the fact that both donkey calls and calls to prayer quite often begin with a sort of wind-up, a long note that either breaks into a passionate round of hee-haws or, in the other case, flows into a heartfelt “allahu akbar.”  Given the style of the usual calls to prayer here in Izran, I get confused a lot.  Even after having been hearing both of these sounds for the, what is it?  Nine and a half months I’ve been here.

Well, I suppose some might see this as culturally insensitive.  But, it’s really just the frustrating truth.  It eats at me when I make the mistake.  I have no idea how to prevent it!  Maybe I’ll get it down by the time my service is up.

I’m really intrigued by the response this post seems to be getting from random readers!  It appears that it might be beneficial for me to add a little more to the story.

I am not a Muslim, but I have a firm appreciation for the call to prayer and the Muslim ritual of prayer.  I’ve mentioned this previously on my Sounds page in the Azan section, which you can find here: http://easternedge.wordpress.com/sounds/ .  Located on that page you can also find a number of sound clips of calls to prayer and more information about the azan itself, if you’re interested in learning more about it.

If, after reading this post, you have questions or comments, please leave me a message here.  I’d like to explore any conversations that might come out of this post, and I’d particularly like to answer any questions that people might have.

Anzar Amzwaru – First Rain

December 12, 2009

Today was a good day, better than I’d hoped for and definitely better than my earlier post suggested it might be.

Writing was a nice way to start things off. Brunch consisted of an egg salad sandwich, made with no less than real French’s mustard, thanks to my sitemate Hanneke. Delicious. Next I did the work I told myself I needed to do to feel productive. Today’s project consisted of creating a legal-sized calendar sheet for each of my remaining 18 months here in Morocco. That took quite a bit of work, but now I can start to feel a little more organized and do some serious planning. After some work, I thought I should do a little something to relax. I watched Say Anything, the 1989 film with John Cusack that’s absolutely crawling (and cringing) with high school awkwardness. I’d never seen it and I got the sense that I should give it a shot after someone expressed surprise when I didn’t understand their reference to the film. It was different, I enjoyed it.

From there I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew I needed to get out of the house, with seven hours still before my usual bedtime… My sanity was about to start suffering from cabin fever. I gave the ‘rents a call while I debated my next move.

Funk with a capital “F”

December 12, 2009

I may have set a new personal record today.  That would be for length of time spent hitting the 10-minute snooze button on my cell phone.  I went from 6:00am all the way until 7:56am, when somehow I managed to make myself roll up and out of bed with four minutes to spare on my final snooze session.

(Not to break the flow of this post too much, but I do want to point out early on that this isn’t going to be a horribly depressing post.  Just descriptive of a slow time in my life here.  Figured I should throw in as much about my reality as I can motivate myself to write from time to time.)