My First Ramadan
Oct. 8 Sefrou
This was the first day I really fasted like you’re supposed to. The past few days I have been cheating with water and a small lunch. Ramadan started on Wednesday, but this Saturday is the first day I tried to do a proper fast
I didn’t feel pressured to fast, but everybody is so happy that I tried it. It’s not as hard as I thought it would be, probably because I get to sleep in and have a nap in the afternoon. Schedules are definitely different during Ramadan. We used to start class (Peace Corps language class, learning Darija) at 8:00, but now we start at 9:30. We also have more time to study and I actually have time to get to the internet café because we’re not eating lunch. Afternoon class time has become nap or study time.
We have activity time in the Dar Shebab from 4-5 and everybody is invited. We play Frisbee, card games, chess and generally hang out with the kids who show up. Today Nada and I tutored a woman who speaks quite good English but wants to improve her pronunciation and work on listening to native speakers. I think that’s what a lot of people come to our classes for.
We go home at 5:00 during Ramadan because most people go home an hour or so before sunset to get everything ready for Lftor. Lftor means breakfast and during the rest of the year is the name of the morning meal. During Ramadan we break the fast at sunset, so we have breakfast instead of calling it dinner.
Lftor is a huge meal and we usually start (at 6:10, depending on sunset) with a date or dried fig and a glass of milk. After not eating or drinking all day you can’t just dive right in. We watch prayers on the TV while we eat the date. Every night they show the sun setting over a mosque, sometimes in Rabat, sometimes in Casablanca or another city. The words of the prayer scroll across the bottom of the screen, but I’m nowhere near good enough to be able to read them, as fast as they go across.
After the milk and date, we start in with bread and cheese and meats and olives and all kinds of pastries and sweets. It’s always decadent. Hedirda (my closest spelling to what they say) is a traditional soup that accompanies every Ramadan lftor and we usually have it at the end of the meal. Malika makes the best hedirda and I have asked her repeatedly to teach me how to make it. I’ve had it at several other homes, and hers really is the best. Of course, I’ve been so busy, we haven’t really had time for me to help her cook. Hopefully this Sunday, which is supposed to be my day off, I’ll have time to learn more about Moroccan cooking and perhaps even how to shop/ bargain in the suq (market).
After Lftor I usually go back to the Dar Shebab to teach, since now is the time people come out and have some energy. Class during Ramadan is from 8:15 to 9:15. Prayers at the mosque end at 8, so we tried to give people time to eat and go to the mosque before class. I’m always amazed at how many people show up for the classes, but I’ve been told the numbers go down over time since at first most of the people come just to see the new foreigners in town and watch the show. Eventually, only the ones who actually want to learn English will keep coming.
Tonight’s class was cancelled because of the big soccer game between Morocco and Tunisia. The mudir (director of the Dar Shebab) closed it for the game. I had no idea that Assma was such a hug soccer fan and tried to tell her so. After using the words for a hand held “fan” and a big air conditioner “fan”, and lots of laughing, I finally just told them that it’s the same word in French and we settled on using the word fan in English to describe her love of soccer. I didn’t feel like explaining fanaticism and everything. I’m still trying to learn basic verbs in Darija and that has priority now.
After classes at the Dar Shebab, I walk home and try to help to prepare the night meal, which we don’t eat until almost midnight. It’s much smaller than Lftor and has less sweets. Tonight we had marinated skewers of turkey, a beet and potato salad with parsley and onions, boiled sweet potatoes with oil and cinnamon and plums and apples for dessert. We also drank Orangina which I was very happy to find in the store today. It’s great to be back in a country that has Orangina readily available.
The morning meal has to be eaten before it’s light enough to tell the difference between a white and a black thread outside (Surah 2, verse 187 in the Koran). Malika woke me up at 3am this morning and we had flan and figs and dates before going back to bed. It’s a very different schedule, but not as difficult as I thought it would be.
Ramadan is not practiced the same in all countries. In Morocco fasting is obligatory and it is actually illegal for a Muslim to eat in public during this month. On the other hand, often nothing stops during the day when people hear the call to prayer. I’ve been told that in some countries fasting is not as important, but everybody actually stops what they’re doing and prays when they hear the call. FYI, in Morocco, the call is never taped, five times a day a real person gets on the loudspeakers in the mosque tower and sings out the call, which can also differ from country to country. In Morocco the call is sung in a manner similar to the one in Mecca, but I’ve heard recordings of other countries’ calls and most have very different styles of singing.
This is definitely an educational time to be in Morocco and I’ve been trying to pick up as much as I can. I’m also trying to read the Koran, but it’s so long, I think it might take me all three of the Ramadans I get in Morocco to make it all the way through.
On a side note, my reasons for fasting are not exactly the same as the reasons of most people here. It is a large part of the culture, and I want to do it partly out of cultural sensitivity. Another reason is for solidarity of all people, and I definitely feel that here. Everybody knows that everybody else is fasting and they are more tolerant of people moving slower or making mistakes. I was playing chess with some guys the other day and we were all laughing at the stupid mistakes we were making, putting ourselves into check and such. We all were feeling a bit weak and had headaches from dehydration since it was almost 5pm. Another reason is that I like is to feel empathy for the poor who have to choice but to fast much of the time. I really appreciate all the food we have in the evening, when I haven’t had anything all day.
Ramadan has just started and I’m sure I’ll learn a lot more as the month goes on.
One week later
Yesterday I went home for a break from class, since there is no lunch break during Ramadan, just a very long afternoon. I was hoping to take a nap but I hadn't been there for five minutes when a small white pick-up drove up outside and Malika's husband appeared.
So, I have finally met the whole family.
I have to admit I was a bit nervous about the possibility of him showing up. Not only do I not know enough Darija to really ask much about him, but I also got the impression that Malika didn't know when he might come home. Also, I had really gotten used to the relaxed atmosphere of an all female house. Things aren't too different now, but there is a more formal feeling in the house now. I have to be more careful about what I wear too.
My first impression of him is that he is nice, and a good listener, but also a bit intense. Last night when I really wanted to go to bed, he decided to give me a Darija lesson over stuff I had down a week ago. Malika and the girls know exactly where I am in my language learning, but since he hasn't been here, he doesn't know. At least the women are helping me to keep him from speaking French to me. It's always a challenge to not resort to French, but Malika understands I really need to hear only Darija and is helping me to enforce that.
My other topic for this blog doesn't get any photos because I would never take a camera inside a hemmam. It's the public bathhouse and Assema has taken me there every Sunday so far. The first time Aisha went also and the second time we took Nada for her first hemmam experience.
I can't begin to describe how clean you get in a hemmam.
On the women's side (I obviously can't describe the men's side for you) we strip down to our underwear and go into the bathing room with stools to sit on, buckets to carry and pour water, soap, shampoo, brushes, et cetera. There is also a rough scrub cloth/ mitten thing that everybody brings and usually a softer puffy sponge.
There seems to be an order for the cleaning and I just do whatever the girls do. We start by washing out hair, then soap up everything and rinse off. Periodically we take turns going to fill up the buckets from the pools in another room. The hemmam by my house has three rooms, and the further back you go the hotter they are. The final room has the water, and a spigot for cold water if you want to mix it with the scalding water in the pools.
After what I would call getting clean we spend about an hour scrubbing with the rough mittens to take off the majority of our skin. They say we're taking off the dead skin. I think we take off quite a bit of live skin also. This can go on for a long time, but the nice part is that they take turns scrubbing and massaging each other's backs.
When I think I'm going to pass out from the heat and that I couldn't possibly have any skin left to scrub, it's time to wash our hair again and soap up once more. Then there's more scrubbing. I'm not kidding, this can go on for over two hours.
I've heard that the hemmam is very popular in the winter since it can be the only place to get really warm in some villages. for now once a week is plenty for me. I can get by with sponge baths in between.
Immouzzer-Kandar
I am back in Immouzzer for a week of training with the rest of the Youth Development trainees, and this quote really sums up a lot of what we're told in training. Our trainers are the LCFs, Moroccans who work for Peace Corps and are our "Language and Culture Facilitators." Bureaucratic lingo is very Peace Corps, since it technically is part of the US government. There are also quite a few current Volunteers who help with the training. While in Immouzzer, we attend meetings about what we're supposed to be doing over the next couple years and how to get started. There are lots of sessions covering basic living skills for surviving in Morocco.
When I'm in Sefrou, I'm only with four other people: Brian, Bart, Nada and Michael. The LCF who lives there with us is Mina (Amina). We have language and culture classes in the morning with Amina teaching, then in the afternoon we prepare lessons and in the evening teach at the Dar Shebab.
I've had some questions about what is different between what I do in Sefrou and what I do in Immouzzer, so I thought I should clear that up.
The training in Sefrou is very practical, and is great preparation for integrating into the site I will be assigned to in November. The sessions in Immouzzer are fun and inspirational. I love hearing about the experiences of the current PCVs and especially their success stories. Some of them have been here only one year, and some have been here for two already and will be leaving in December. My group will be replacing them in their communities.
One thing we have been learning in training this time is how to start and run clubs in Morocco. They don't function much like clubs in the US, but there are some similarities. The current volunteers are great at telling us about what they've done and helping us to figure out how to make our ideas work within the parameters of the Moroccan system and the Peace Corps restrictions. Of course, we have to keep our non-partisan, non-political status, so discussing things like current events and religion with our Moroccan students are almost impossible. But there are so many other things I want to do, I don't think I will miss the political discussions too much. Theater is very popular in many Dar Shebabs, and I hope to be able to get together a group in my future town. No matter what the club is, many volunteers use it to talk to their community about issues like hygiene, the environment, gender issues, AIDS et cetera. Some of the workshops I've attended, especially the literacy and gender issues ones, are so inspirational I just want to get out there right now and get to work. It's a good thing they won't let me yet though, my Darija just isn't good enough to do it yet. We are expected to be professionals here, and professionals don't speak the way I do now.
Last Sunday, I went on a hike with several other trainees. It is beautiful in the hills around Immouzzer, and it reminds me of the Owyhee mountains in southern Idaho. The vegetation is a bit different, but the land and hills look very similar. It felt very good to be outside, moving around. We are so busy with classes and such that we never have time during the day to get outside. In the evenings we can escape to town a bit, but only for a couple hours. Sunday is our only day off, and I actually spent quite a bit of it doing homework (studying Darija). The weather has turned and it is definitely fall here. The trees are turning and most of the past week has been cloudy and even rainy. I really didn't believe it could rain here, even though I was told to bring a rain jacket. I thought of the stereotypical Saharan climate and figured the jacket would be for wind, rather than rain. It turns out, the weather the past week has reminded me much more of Portland, Oregon than anywhere else. This country has a lot of surprises.
So, when we had a crisp, but warm and sunny day on Sunday we took full advantage of our day off.
Some other random information: we started with 25 Youth Development Volunteers in Rabat, and are down to 23 already. One left a while ago, mostly because Peace Corps just wasn't for him. The other left because of a family issue back home in the US. It's hard to see people go, but everybody says it's normal. Peace Corps isn't easy and it's definitely not for everybody. I would be surprised if there had ever been a training group who all made it to the end of the full two years. It just doesn't happen. It's demoralizing to think too much about the statistics. There are a lot of reasons for being sent home, from breaking PC policies to breaking a leg. It's not uncommon to be sent home for medical reasons. If you have to go back to the US for a medical reason you have only 45 days to get "perfect" again to come back, otherwise you can't come back to service.
So, after that depressing thought, I have to say that things really are going great here. Today the PCVs taught the trainees the Moroccan national anthem, and it was super fun! I can't wait to get back to Sefrou and sing it with Aisha and Assema. I'm loving it here and am very excited by how fast I'm progressing in the language.
Phase 3
Phase 3 sounds so official, but all it really means to me is that I have less than two weeks left in Sefrou with all the friends I've made here. Training is hard and busy, I'm working 12 hour days and my brain is overloaded with the language and everything else I'm learning here. So, it will be a relief for this phase of training to be over, and yet I know it will be very hard to leave. I still don't know where my final site will be, but hopefully they will decide soon.
One thing I have to add here is that when I arrived at the cyber (internet café) it was full so I sat down next to Ali, the owner, to wait. He was looking at Google Earth and asked me where I was from in the States. I couldn't believe how detailed it was, we actually found my parent's house and you could see everything. It was almost scary how much was on there. Sefrou is on there too, but not with such precision. There's not enough detail to see the house I live in or even the streets. I had never played with Google Earth before, but people here seem to like it a lot.
As for my recent adventures, I tried to do some baking here and was reminded of my attempts at chocolate chip cookies and carrot cake in France and the Cambodian pumpkin pies earlier this summer. What I made did resemble the apple walnut cake that was very easy to make in the US, but it was definitely not the same. It's going to take some time to figure out how Moroccan ovens work. There is no way to gauge the temperature and the door doesn't stay shut very well. On top of the baking issue, the baking powder here is very different, as is the flour and even the sugar, and there were no Granny Smith apples in the suq (market). But I'm not too discouraged and I think the next attempt will be even better. At least the family here loved it and we ate the whole thing. I tried to double the recipe, but since I was using a tea cup to measure with, I don't really know if my measurements were very close to what the recipe called for.
Another learning experience has been watching Malika make buttons. These are not what I would really call buttons, but I can't come up with any other word for them. They're used to decorate the front of jellabas - the Moroccan hooded robe. She starts with a small piece of tube that she cuts off so it looks like a bead, then she sews thick thread around it to make a little bobbly button kind of thing. They're not easy to make and take quite a bit of time, but she is only paid 5 Dirhams for 40 of them, and that's a good price. 5 Dirhams is about fifty cents in the US, and doesn't go very far here. Sefrou is known for these buttons and almost every woman (and girl) here makes them at home. The women here work very hard, all the time.
As for teaching, things are still going well. I don't teach every night, because I have to take turns with the others in the group and we can't teach five classes a night. There are enough students to support that many classes, but we just don't have the space. The Dar Chebab has two rooms we can teach in, so we can only do two classes at a time. Peace Corps also requires us to observe each other, so even with more rooms, we could only teach two classes. The rooms are always packed, and often unmanageable. There is a lot of interest in learning English here, partly because of the US Green Card lottery, which I will explain as soon as I understand it better. We teach two beginner classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and one intermediate and one advanced class Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I've seen as many as 50 students packed into the bigger of our two rooms. Most of the students are in their early 20s, but there are also many high school students. A lot of them are great and participate and take notes on everything, but some tend to come to classes that are a level above them so they are lost the whole time and disruptive because they're asking their neighbors to tell them what's going on. It's annoying, but not a big problem. These are free classes and they don't have to be there, so if they get too disruptive we can ask them to leave. It's much simpler than dealing with students in the US school system, with required attendance.
My homestay is still going great. The father is there all the time now, I think because it's Ramadan. He's a very sweet person and quite revolutionary by traditional Moroccan standards. I see him help in the kitchen almost every day. He is very welcoming to the other trainees and especially to Mina, my teacher/ LCF. He says that since he works away from home most of the time, he receives a lot of hospitality from other families and he is happy to welcome her to his home. During training, the LCFs have to live with the trainees in our town, and most of them are quite far from their families. He is also a help with learning the language and is very concerned about me learning enough now to be able to make it on my own once I leave Sefrou. He actually stopped my fasting because he said I wasn't learning as well when I fasted. He didn't have to tell me twice. I've heard that most trainees don't fast, but that the next year lots of volunteers do, to be culturally sensitive and such. So, now Malika packs me a little lunch, usually a small cheese sandwich and an apple, to eat in the Dar Shebab during the day. So, I'm not really fasting, but I'm not eating real meals either. It feels like cheating, but it's true I was having a hard time concentrating for 4 hours of class when I fasted.
Ramadan has been very educational for me, and it's the first time in my life I've been happy to see the days growing shorter. Breakfast is significantly sooner now than it was when we started, since sunset is so much earlier now. Fasting is not easy, but I think since people do it every year, and they grow up with it being such a normal part of the culture, they're good at it. The evening meal is full of sugar to wake us back up and there's always hard boiled eggs so we have a little protein and soup, coffee and water to rehydrate us. Coffee here isn't what I would really call coffee. It's a glass of hot milk with a little coffee poured in, as if for color, more than anything else. They usually put in way more sugar than I can stand, but now Malika knows not to add sugar to my coffee flavored hot milk.
I’m going to attempt to explain what I have learned so far about gender relations here. It is a traditional country, and an Islamic monarchy, but things are changing nonetheless. I just remind myself of the gender relations in the US in the 50s and how far we have come. There are feminists here, like the professor at the university in Fès who teaches Nathanial Hawthorn's "The Scarlet Letter" and is very outspoken. I haven't met her, but one of my students studies in Fès during the day and told me about her. My personal opinion is that gender relations and the issues surrounding them in Morocco are more a result of the culture than the religion. I think the biggest problems are spousal abuse, harassment in the street and the amount of work that women are expected to do in the home. These are cultural issues, and now that people are talking about them, I think change may happen more quickly.
It has been easy for me to learn how to cook, but I've heard that some of the male volunteers have to really insist to be even allowed into the kitchen. I've learned to cook tajine and some other things, and Malika promised to teach me her version of herrira tomorrow. The food is great and I haven't been sick at all yet. It's nice to be able to eat at home all the time and not have to ever go out. I don't have much time for cooking between my learning and teaching classes, but I do get a little free time. During Ramadan, there's more free time in the afternoon since I'm not expected to go home and spend a couple hours having lunch with the family. In the evenings I end up doing homework, studying and preparing lessons.
A trip to Fes
I got to travel to Fès on Sunday with Asmae and spent the night there with her at her aunt's house. It was wild how much her aunt reminded me of my mom's sisters. If my grandmother had had another daughter, she could have looked just like Asmae's aunt. While in Fès, we went to the suq and I bought a jellaba, one of the big hooded cover-all Moroccan robes. We spent the afternoon at the house cooking, like any other day in the life of a Moroccan woman. I discovered that it is possible to make apple walnut cake without a recipe or any attempt at measuring the ingredients. It even turned out better than the first one I made. I hadn't wanted to make it, but Asmae really wanted one, so we gave it a shot.
Other Fès observations: Sunday night was "Lwasher" an important night in Ramadan. They burned some special kind of incense and carried it around to every room in the house. Everybody dressed up and we went out on the town after Lftor (the sunset break fast meal). There were a lot of people out, and the people watching was great. There were also a lot of tourists, I couldn't take my eyes off them. It was so interesting to see faces that looked as foreign as me. They didn't look back though. Asmae had me all dressed up and I blended into the crowd. With my hair covered it's hard to pick me out as a foreigner - you would believe me if I had taken any photos.
So today, when we got up at the crack of dawn to catch a ride back to Sefrou and I actually made it to class on time, I had forgotten that it is Halloween. When Bart reminded me this morning I decided that I'm dressing as a Moroccan this year. Considering my limited wardrobe at the moment, it's the only costume possible.
Tonight I'm teaching a beginner class at the Dar Shebab and I've decided to focus on culture rather than grammar this time. They're going to get a Halloween lesson tonight and learn the phrase "take it easy" because I'm too tired from the Fès trip to give them the energy I usually put into lessons. I'll explain it's a holiday in my country and we're not going to work too hard at 8pm on a holiday.
Other mentionables:
- The roosters in Sefrou are very loud and often sound like elephants in the distance.
- There are a couple guys in the suq (market) who yell at me every time I go to and from the Dar Shebab, but they haven't figured out which language to hit on me in yet. Every day it's a new mixture of "Ich libe dich" "Welcome la gente" "bonjourno" and other phrases I don't understand. I get a lot of French and English from them too, but since I don't respond to any of it they haven't fixed on one language yet.
- Out of the towns that the other trainees are in, Sefrou is the biggest and the only one with internet cafés. On Sundays there's usually PCTs from other towns visiting Sefrou.
L-Eide Saghir
The day after the end of Ramadan is a celebration, mostly because we can now eat whenever we want. Another tradition is for everybody to have new clothes. I got the impression that many people only get new clothes on L-Eide. I had my new jellaba and the shoes that Malika bought for me in Fès. In the morning, Asmae dressed me up in the Pakistani shvar-kameeze that was a gift from Anisa. In the afternoon they dressed me up in a kaftan (traditional dress a lot like a jellaba, but without a hood) and Mina put on the Pakistani outfit.
Most people here dress very well and always wear their best clothes, but they don’t have many. In the house, it’s common for women to wear their pajamas all the time, but outside the house I can hardly recognize them sometimes. Not only do they wear robes or jellabas or long dresses over their clothes, but they also cover their hair and the most nishen women also cover their faces.
Nishen is almost an all-purpose word here. It means ‘following the rules,’ ‘respectable,’ ‘square,’ ‘straight forward,’ ‘exactly,’ and ‘on time.’ In religious terms it can mean a person who follows Islam to a T.
But back to L-Eide. (It can also be written l-Aide, it depends on how you transcribe the script.) Since during Ramadan not only can people not eat during the day, but they also should refrain from touching a member of the opposite sex or doing anything that could lead to sexual actions or thoughts. So, on L-Eide women wear makeup and perfume, since they haven’t done so all month. We ate pretty much all day, since another tradition is to go around to all of the neighbors and family and wish them a happy Eide. You can’t go into a Moroccan house without being offered food and tea.
My favorite Eide tradition is the pardoning. Even if you have been on bad terms with someone all year, you are supposed to wish them a happy Eide and call the fight off. Like with all traditions, I’m sure not everybody follows this, but Abdelhaq (the father of the family I’m living with in Sefrou) told me that it is written in the Koran. If it’s in the Koran, I bet most Moroccans abide by it, since this is a very pious culture in most respects. They love their king and their king is a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. It is also a police state, so much of the religion is actually enforced. I have been told that it is illegal for a Muslim to eat in public during Ramadan. Of course, children are exempt from this, but I never saw anybody eat in public all month and most children start fasting by the age of ten.
Many women also get henna designs done on their hands and feet for the big day. Malika actually hired a professional to come do my hands, as a present to me. She wanted to get it done and said that she, Asmae and Aisha usually do, but since somebody close to the family had died, that would have been disrespectful - hashuma. Hashuma is another fairly general term that means shame. You can say hashuma to a person for ripping you off, for breaking some rule of Islam, or for any number of things. It is also often used facetiously to tease somebody for doing something wrong.
Since L-Eide is a day off and a holiday, there were no classes in the Dar Shebab and I got a day off. Peace Corps policy here is that Volunteers get the same holidays as the Moroccans we work with. This means L-Eide is a holiday, but Thanksgiving and Christmas will not be.
During the day, I went around with Asmae and Aisha to see their grandma and other friends and family. We ate countless little pastries and cookies and sweets. Moroccans make the best little pastries and cookies ever. I helped bake things for days in my house, and there was everything from little rolls filled with crushed peanuts and walnuts to something that resembled Cheese Nips to big cookies covered with powdered sugar. That’s not half of what we had, and every house we went to had different kinds of sweets to stuff us with and wash down with cup after cup of very sweet mint tea. It was all very good, but I can see why there are so many people here missing teeth. The amount of sugar they consume here is mind-boggling. I know there are many Americans who eat a lot of sugar also, but personally I did not eat like this in the States. Luckily it was only one day, so I enjoyed it for the time being.
In the evening, I went with several friends who work at the Dar Shebab, LCF Amina, Bart and Brian up to the overlook above town. It was a good excuse to get out and move around a bit. I needed to walk off some of the caffeine and sugar in my system. It was also very beautiful. Sefrou looks so much closer by night. During the day it’s pretty, but there’s something about the lights at night that make it look like it’s right under my feet. It felt good to get out of the house. It’s not that I was really trapped in the house like many Moroccan women, but I was so busy with the Dar Shebab and such that I never had time to go out like I did during L-Eide. I got to go to a café for the first time in Sefrou, and I was told it was okay for me to be there, since I was with a group and on L-Eide many families go to cafés. Norally, I would not be allowed to go by myself to a café, as a woman. Today it was “mashi moushkil” which means no problem. It’s one of the first phrases I learned, and I use it all the time.
I’ve been learning proverbs too, and they come in very useful here. I can’t translate most of them, since they’re idiomatic, but my favorite is “lazerba ala slaH.” (The H is an aspirated, kind of heavy whispered h.) It means “no hurry” or something close to that.
