If you travel to Morocco with the hopes of stuffing your face with couscous, the most famous of Moroccan dishes, you will be sorely disappointed during the month of Ramadan. Since I’ve been here, I’ve dined on couscous exactly twice, both times in restaurants that cater to tourists.
For those of us who are used to Near East’s three minute boxed couscous (a noble variety), it’s hard to fathom how labor-intensive the dish truly is. Moroccan couscous, traditionally served on Friday, can easily take three hours to prepare: The couscous is stewed in broth and then served with vegetables and/or meat. While I have a soft spot for the boxed variety, to compare the two dishes is truly an insult to the latter.
Anyway, couscous isn’t eaten during Ramadan because the fast is usually broken with other dishes, and, once an afternoon has been devoted to preparing a special Ramadan meal, the last thing people want to do is hunker down and make couscous.
So, what do Moroccans eat during Ramadan? Traditionally, the fast is broken with a sip of water or juice and a date. Harira, a delicious flour-based soup with lentils and spices, is served at every meal, as are hard-boiled eggs (accompanied by cumin and salt). Bread is a must, from plain wheels of white bread to delicious baghrir, the Moroccan equivalent of crepes, which are served with jam and happy cow cheese. Sweets of every shape and kind are ubiquitous – I’ve yet to develop a taste for super-sugary pastries, but maybe it will come with time. Of course, strong coffee and mint tea conclude the meal.
Even though I’m not living with a host family, I’ve still had several chances to break the fast with Moroccan families and take advantage of the famous Moroccan hospitality. Our landlord invited us to his apartment for Iftar, which resulted in a hilarious conversation with his mother about 1980s hair; a fellow Fulbrighter’s host family had the whole gang over for Iftar; and, in perhaps one of my most random experiences in Morocco to date, my housemates and I were invited to Iftar at the home of a nice young man who may or may not want to marry one of us as part of a plan to expand his business to the United States. In Morocco, it’s not strange at all to invite nearly perfect strangers home for Iftar. In fact, it’s rude not to.
I’m always grateful for any opportunity to get out of the house and have a home-cooked (free!) meal, and breaking the fast with Moroccan families inevitably leads to some interesting cross-cultural interactions. To many Moroccans, overfeeding their guests to the point of discomfort is a point of pride. Maneuvering this situation is difficult enough when it’s not Ramadan, but during Ramadan it’s even more difficult to get out of that second or third bowl of harira, since families assume that I’m as hungry as they are. Which I’m not, since I’ve eaten regular meals all day. But, by explaining that I don’t fast, I’m opening up a whole new can of worms. If I’m not Muslim, what am I? (One memorable interaction with a cabbie: Him- “Are you fasting?” Me- “No.” Him- “You are Christian?” Me, emphatically- “Yes!”) Maybe, they suggest without a hint of judgment, I should try fasting. Just to see how it is.
Maybe I should. Everything in Fes seems to run on Ramadan time- The city is eerily quiet when I head to school at 8:30 am, frantic when I leave school at 5 pm, and chaotically exuberant when I try to sleep at midnight. But then again, our class schedule shows little consideration for Ramadan time, and the thought of fasting through 6 hours of class is daunting at best.
And so I sneak snacks at school, continue to furtively drink water, and count down the days until eid al-kabeer, the end of Ramadan, when the city will come alive during the day again. And, in sha allah, I'll be able to get some halfway decent internet again.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Don't take this the wrong way, but...
There’s something oddly satisfying about taking your pants off in the comfort of your own home. Wait, wait. Hear me out. I’m not a nudist or anything, but there’s no denying the moment you peel off a pair of grimy jeans is pure bliss. After a full day of Arabic in a city where nearly everything is challenging for me, being able to walk into my room and change into shorts and a t-shirt is no small thing. Because my room is my space- I don’t have to worry about offending a my neighbors, entertaining a host family, or deal with the inevitable friction that comes with sharing a dorm room. I can just be myself, with or without pants.
I’ve spent a lot of the past two weeks attempting to get settled, to strike a balance between my former and current lives. I, like many Fulbrighters, find comfort in the oddest places. Finding Ramen noodles at Marjane (the Moroccan equivalent of Wal-Mart) was perhaps the highlight of my day yesterday. Drinking NesCafe (powdered) with milk (it comes in a box) in the mornings is nice. And, of course, our cat Marley is pretty much the cutest cat ever.
How did this glorious cat come into our lives? Roz, one of my two housemates, arrived in Morocco fully prepared to be a responsible pet owner, with a flea collar, cat nip rug, and a book on cat parenting. One of our first days here, we took a walk over to a quieter part of the medina, where we spotted a group of kittens pitifully huddled in a door frame. Marley approached us immediately, which, according to Roz, is one of the best traits in a potential cat. After a trip to Marjane, where Roz bought kitty litter, a litter box, a bed, cat food (wet and dry), and a carrying case, she brought him home the next day. Is this girl together or what?
Marley is, in a word, adorable. He purrs all the time (human contact of any kind will set him off), learned how to use the litter box immediately, and kills cockroaches with glee. The world is his playground. He’s a very welcome addition to my life, even though he’s starting to learn the power of his claws, which is not such a fun developmental stage.
One of the best parts about living in Fes is the bizarre, wonderful coincidences that I seem to experience on a daily basis here. Case in point: Last weekend, a few friends and I were trying to catch a cab at a crowded medina gate. We waited futilely for close to 15 minutes, barely even having the time to move towards cabs before they were snagged by Moroccans far more adept at cab-catching than us. And then- A cab came in our general vicinity! Alas, we were outrun again by a Moroccan family. Again. But luck wasn’t on the family's side, because the cabbie was none other than our landlord, Mustafa, who kicked the family out of the cab and took us instead. Ahh, serendipity.
It’s hard not to get discouraged with myself on a daily basis here: I’m an educated young woman who speaks Darija like a 5-year-old. Consequently, I’ve started treating myself like a 5-year-old. I pat myself on the back for even the smallest accomplishments: successfully using my Arabic to purchase fruits and vegetables in the packed street market near my house. Not peeing my pants in terror when I ride to class on my roommate’s motorcycle. Successfully outrunning Moroccans for cabs. It's all part of making myself feel at home here.
And, if all of that fails, I can always take off my pants.
Monday, September 15, 2008
"230 years of friendship... Let's keep it that way."
After one three-hour bus ride, two and a half days of orientation, five nights spent in two different hotels, thirteen and a half hours of Arabic class, and countless furtive sips of water during daylight hours, I am officially settled in the city of Fes, where I am the proud tenant in an honest-to-goodness Moroccan house in the city's medina (old city). How much is the rent for this glorious three story-plus-terrace house? 5500 dirhams per month, split between three people, which means I’ll be paying around $275 a month.
The roof is by far my favorite place. From it, you can see the whole of the medina, the mountains, and a lot of the new city.
Originally, my roommate and I were a little worried about finding a place to live, since finding a house or apartment in Morocco usually involves going to cafés where simsars (real estate agents) hang out. But, since it’s Ramadan, there isn’t much hanging out at cafes during the day. Amazingly, when we arrived to our Language Institute, we were conveniently provided with a list of available housing throughout city. No simsar needed!
After a few unsuccessful phone calls to landlords, we were in touch with Mustafa, who picked us up 15 minutes later to take us to the available house. It’s a few minutes walk from Batha, one of the main gates of Fes’s medina, but it’s not so far into the city walls that we’ll feel unsafe if we’re walking at night alone (Fes is know as the city of 9,000 alleys, and is notoriously difficult to manage if you’re new to the area).
Once we navigated our four alleys and entered the house, we were greeted immediately with the beautiful interior courtyard I’ve come to know and love in Morocco. As Mustafa showed us around, my roommate and I kept looking at each other in disbelief- What’s the catch? What’s getting lost in translation? Do we have to baby-sit his kids every afternoon? Where’s the shower?
Well, I haven’t found the catch yet. Objectively, it’s not a perfect place to live (It’s the type of place that will never be truly clean, cockroaches, freezing in the winter, etc.), but it’s the perfect place for me to live for the next four months: spacious, in a great location, and cheap. And there’s a private roof!
Now that the stress of finding a place to live has been eliminated, I have the time to focus on studying Arabic and throwing myself into medina life. Arabic classes started on Wednesday after two very long days of Fulbright orientation. We’re talking lectures about every facet of Morocco from 9-5 here, people. I love Morocco, but I think I reached my saturation point somewhere around lunch on day one. The highlight of orientation was perhaps a grizzled, wizened State Department Regional Security Officer, who began his talk with the statement, “Morocco and America: 230 years of friendship… Let’s keep it that way.” (Morocco is proud of the fact that they were the first country to recognize the United States in 1977.) Err, I hope I can do my part to not destroy bi-national relationships, at the very least. I guess it’s important to set realistic goals.
After the Fulbright orientation ended, most of the Fulbrighters made our way from Rabat to Fes to begin our language grant at the Arabic Language Institute in Fes, located in a beautiful building in the nouvelle ville.
I’d decided originally to take mostly Modern Standard Arabic classes, with a few hours a week of Darija, Moroccan Colloquial Arabic. But after a few pathetic days of ineptly interacting with Moroccans, I decided I should commit myself to learning Darija. So now I have 20 hours a week of Darija class and 5 hours a week of MSA tutoring. After two days of class, I can confidently say that I am in for a lot of hard work (my tutor told me to photocopy a verb chart and sleep with it under my pillow), but I’m committed to learning and, perhaps more importantly, excited about learning the language for the first time in a long time.
Fes is a maddening, beautiful, confusing, wonderful city. If you get beyond the throngs of European tourists in capri pants and halter tops, the history is overwhelming- there are signs up right now that promote the 1200th anniversary of Fes. 1200 years! That’s ridiculous! It’s incredibly daunting to live here, especially in the medina; I feel like as hard as I try, I’ll never learn enough about the city in just four months. But, as I meet more Moroccans, improve my Darija, and get to know the immense markets better, I feel like I'm always getting a little bit closer to figuring it all out.
The roof is by far my favorite place. From it, you can see the whole of the medina, the mountains, and a lot of the new city.
Originally, my roommate and I were a little worried about finding a place to live, since finding a house or apartment in Morocco usually involves going to cafés where simsars (real estate agents) hang out. But, since it’s Ramadan, there isn’t much hanging out at cafes during the day. Amazingly, when we arrived to our Language Institute, we were conveniently provided with a list of available housing throughout city. No simsar needed!
After a few unsuccessful phone calls to landlords, we were in touch with Mustafa, who picked us up 15 minutes later to take us to the available house. It’s a few minutes walk from Batha, one of the main gates of Fes’s medina, but it’s not so far into the city walls that we’ll feel unsafe if we’re walking at night alone (Fes is know as the city of 9,000 alleys, and is notoriously difficult to manage if you’re new to the area).
Once we navigated our four alleys and entered the house, we were greeted immediately with the beautiful interior courtyard I’ve come to know and love in Morocco. As Mustafa showed us around, my roommate and I kept looking at each other in disbelief- What’s the catch? What’s getting lost in translation? Do we have to baby-sit his kids every afternoon? Where’s the shower?
Well, I haven’t found the catch yet. Objectively, it’s not a perfect place to live (It’s the type of place that will never be truly clean, cockroaches, freezing in the winter, etc.), but it’s the perfect place for me to live for the next four months: spacious, in a great location, and cheap. And there’s a private roof!
Now that the stress of finding a place to live has been eliminated, I have the time to focus on studying Arabic and throwing myself into medina life. Arabic classes started on Wednesday after two very long days of Fulbright orientation. We’re talking lectures about every facet of Morocco from 9-5 here, people. I love Morocco, but I think I reached my saturation point somewhere around lunch on day one. The highlight of orientation was perhaps a grizzled, wizened State Department Regional Security Officer, who began his talk with the statement, “Morocco and America: 230 years of friendship… Let’s keep it that way.” (Morocco is proud of the fact that they were the first country to recognize the United States in 1977.) Err, I hope I can do my part to not destroy bi-national relationships, at the very least. I guess it’s important to set realistic goals.
After the Fulbright orientation ended, most of the Fulbrighters made our way from Rabat to Fes to begin our language grant at the Arabic Language Institute in Fes, located in a beautiful building in the nouvelle ville.
I’d decided originally to take mostly Modern Standard Arabic classes, with a few hours a week of Darija, Moroccan Colloquial Arabic. But after a few pathetic days of ineptly interacting with Moroccans, I decided I should commit myself to learning Darija. So now I have 20 hours a week of Darija class and 5 hours a week of MSA tutoring. After two days of class, I can confidently say that I am in for a lot of hard work (my tutor told me to photocopy a verb chart and sleep with it under my pillow), but I’m committed to learning and, perhaps more importantly, excited about learning the language for the first time in a long time.
Fes is a maddening, beautiful, confusing, wonderful city. If you get beyond the throngs of European tourists in capri pants and halter tops, the history is overwhelming- there are signs up right now that promote the 1200th anniversary of Fes. 1200 years! That’s ridiculous! It’s incredibly daunting to live here, especially in the medina; I feel like as hard as I try, I’ll never learn enough about the city in just four months. But, as I meet more Moroccans, improve my Darija, and get to know the immense markets better, I feel like I'm always getting a little bit closer to figuring it all out.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
My new life!
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm in Morocco! Rabat, to be exact. After a long day of travel filled with the usual ups and downs magnified by the struggles of Ramadan, I'm sitting in an Internet cafe, eying a bottle of water (I don't want to be cruel to the Muslims who are fasting) and counting down the hours until sunset. Sunset= the break fast. Break fast= fun times. We have the afternoon/evening free; I've spent it getting minutes for my cell phone, changing money (the exchange rate = 7.67 dirhams to the dollar), and purchasing wonderful Moroccan peaches and "ghraif," an amazing fried Moroccan bread-type thing that you slather with honey or jam or cheese.
It occurred to me that some of you may not know what I'm doing over here. In May, after months of work and even more months of waiting, I found out I got a Fulbright grant to Morocco! Which was pretty freaking amazing, considering I had no life plans if this didn't work out. For my grant, I'm starting in the city of Fez for four months, studying Arabic intensively as part of Fulbright's Critical Language Grant. Then I move to Rabat to start my research on Morocco's new family laws and how they impact single mothers. I'll be doing field research and working with a professor at a local university as well. All in all, I'll be gone for 13 months.
I've spent time here before (summer 2006, SIT, woo woo!), but 13 months is a lot longer than seven weeks, and I'm anticipating (hoping?) that this experience will be much different. As wonderful as my last stay in Morocco was, it was very, very temporary, almost a prelude to my semester in Cairo. I was also way less driven and focused in what I wanted to learn and gain from the experience. This time around, I want to explore the country I fell in love with two years ago, answer some of the questions I had at the end of my last stay here, and, of course, stuff my face with wonderful Moroccan food!
Before I left, I was asked constantly if I was nervous about leaving. My response was always, "I just need to get on the plane." Because at the end of day, there's no way to prepare for making a foreign country your home for 13 months; all you can do is ride the roller coaster. And when I got on the plane, buckled my seat belt, and listened to the French and Arabic overhead announcement (understanding only about 50% of the announcement), I knew that one of the hardest parts was over. Even though I'm currently homeless, the only thing that worries me is carting my 80-pound suitcase around until I find an apartment in Fez. In my defense, it gets really cold here in the winter! I needed to pack winter clothes!
And on that shallow note, it's time to return to the frenzy of the pre-sunset hours. Here are some ways to contact me before I leave (please do!):
Skype: elizabeth.hague
Phone: 049002094
Mail:
Elizabeth Hague, Fulbrighter
c/o MACECE
7 Rue d'Agadir
Rabat, Morocco 10000
It occurred to me that some of you may not know what I'm doing over here. In May, after months of work and even more months of waiting, I found out I got a Fulbright grant to Morocco! Which was pretty freaking amazing, considering I had no life plans if this didn't work out. For my grant, I'm starting in the city of Fez for four months, studying Arabic intensively as part of Fulbright's Critical Language Grant. Then I move to Rabat to start my research on Morocco's new family laws and how they impact single mothers. I'll be doing field research and working with a professor at a local university as well. All in all, I'll be gone for 13 months.
I've spent time here before (summer 2006, SIT, woo woo!), but 13 months is a lot longer than seven weeks, and I'm anticipating (hoping?) that this experience will be much different. As wonderful as my last stay in Morocco was, it was very, very temporary, almost a prelude to my semester in Cairo. I was also way less driven and focused in what I wanted to learn and gain from the experience. This time around, I want to explore the country I fell in love with two years ago, answer some of the questions I had at the end of my last stay here, and, of course, stuff my face with wonderful Moroccan food!
Before I left, I was asked constantly if I was nervous about leaving. My response was always, "I just need to get on the plane." Because at the end of day, there's no way to prepare for making a foreign country your home for 13 months; all you can do is ride the roller coaster. And when I got on the plane, buckled my seat belt, and listened to the French and Arabic overhead announcement (understanding only about 50% of the announcement), I knew that one of the hardest parts was over. Even though I'm currently homeless, the only thing that worries me is carting my 80-pound suitcase around until I find an apartment in Fez. In my defense, it gets really cold here in the winter! I needed to pack winter clothes!
And on that shallow note, it's time to return to the frenzy of the pre-sunset hours. Here are some ways to contact me before I leave (please do!):
Skype: elizabeth.hague
Phone: 049002094
Mail:
Elizabeth Hague, Fulbrighter
c/o MACECE
7 Rue d'Agadir
Rabat, Morocco 10000
Friday, September 5, 2008
Disclaimer
The nice folks at the State Department have told us it would be best to put a disclaimer on our blogs, so here goes:
This blog is not associated with the Fulbright grant or program, and the content of this blog is not reflective of the Fulbright program's opinions. The content is mine, and is meant as a way to share my experiences informally.
This blog is not associated with the Fulbright grant or program, and the content of this blog is not reflective of the Fulbright program's opinions. The content is mine, and is meant as a way to share my experiences informally.
Testing
"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." - Kahlil Gibran
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