family visit and a workshop

The past month has been a pretty busy one, which has been a nice change. In the middle of March, my family arrived! We had a really great time all over the country, including Casablanca, Marrakech, Essaouira, Ouarzazate, Azrou, and Fes. Highlights included lunch with my CBT host family in Idelssane, outside Ouarzazate. I hadn’t been back since we swore in almost a year ago, and it was really nice to see them. My host mom had gotten pregnant and had a baby girl since I left, which I somehow managed to never understand on the phone. It was also nice that my family got to see what I think of as “real Morocco”, since I live in such an abnormal Peace Corps site. I also celebrated the year in country mark in Ouarzazate with a few other PCVs who were around—almost unbelievable to think I’ve been gone for that long.

Lily, Ayoub, and Hamid

two families

            Another highlight was bringing my mom and sister to my English class in Azrou. At the end of the class the women all of a sudden whipped out complete a complete Moroccan teatime, including lemonade, banana smoothies, and about twelve different kinds of cakes and cookies, all of which had been coordinated as a surprise. My family also ate dinner with my two favorite Moroccan families in Azrou, my landlord’s and my former tutor and now friend Aicha’s, so there was no shortage of Moroccan hospitality. It was great to have my family meet some of the people that are important to me and understand a little better what my life is like here.

Mom and Lily come to English class

Right after my family left, the cooperative that I work with attended a two-day workshop, funded by a grant through Peace Corps. The workshop was conducted by a professor from an agricultural school in Meknes, who taught the women how to make shampoo, lotion, and two different kinds of soap. The cooperative currently makes a few different kinds of couscous and herb waters (essence of lavender, peppermint, chamomile, poppy, thyme, lemon balm, and other herbs,) which are cool but don’t sell all that well with tourists. The idea behind the workshop was natural herb bath products would sell better both with Moroccans and with tourists, so the co-op would be a little more profitable.

            I was expecting the processes to be more along the lines of traditional and all-natural, so I was surprised when the professor whipped out his containers of lauryl sulfate and potassium hydroxide. The workshop was also more technical than I would have liked, which is difficult since only one of the women in the group is literate. Some of the others don’t understand numbers longer than one digit, meaning they can recite phone numbers but can’t read a scale when weighing out ingredients. (They also can’t total prices or make change for customers.) The shampoo and lotion processes were simple enough that I could follow them in Arabic, but the soap was way more complicated and involved calculating proportions of different ingredients to get the right “indice de sabonificacion” (one of several French terms that I never really figured out.) Another obstacle is that the chemical ingredients are pretty expensive and have to be bought in bulk, so the initial costs are high. Despite all this, the women are excited and have high hopes for the products.

the professor demonstrates part of the shampoo-making process

Laziza (the cooperative president) tries it out

the women try out the lotion they just made

            Since the workshop, I’ve mostly been working on lesson plans and teaching, planning the next steps for the cooperative, and exploring a few other project ideas. This week I’m taking two women from the co-op to a craft fair in Fes, so right now I’m helping out with that. Almost immediately after, I’m taking my first out-of-country vacation, to Madrid for a week with three of my friends. There are no words to express how excited I am for that, except: Tapas! Sangria! Grocery stores! Hot showers! I can wear a t-shirt in public and not be hassled! Also, hopefully we’ll get some nice weather, since did I mention it snowed last week in Azrou?

            And that brings me pretty close to May 25, which besides being my sister’s birthday and the date of my college commencement is also our Swearing In date, and therefore the exact halfway mark of my service here in Morocco. As I’ve said often here, the days are often slow but the months are flying by.

            Let me end with a reminder of how happy it makes me to hear from family and friends at home. Every email and letter I get makes my day, so, please, send me an update or just a hello. Love from the Maghreb.

contradictions (and a last minute visit)

It's been a pretty busy few weeks here, which has been a nice change. In addition to some real work days (!), a last-minute trip covered at the end of this post, and some brief visits with new and old PCV friends, I've been gearing up for my first official vacation in the country: my family's coming tomorrow! I'm very excited to see them, and show them a few of the places I've been in the country. Pictures to come after they leave ...

In the meantime, I thought I'd share a random Morocco anecdote.

I've thought many times that Morocco often feels like a country of contradictions. It's deeply conservative Islam mixed with European cosmopolitanism, traditional Berber life mixed with Arab pride, unbelievable hospitality competing with aggressive harassment, jellabas and skinny jeans, veiled hair and high heels, proper French and slangy Moroccan Arabic, people who grow up speaking three languages fluently but can't read or write any of them, I can't hug my male friends in public but I have to tolerate practically sitting under three strange men in the back of a taxi ... I could go on and on.

I don't really want to touch the subject of "women in Morocco", because, really, there's too much to say and I don't understand enough of it. But there is one particular contradiction that fascinates me more than all the rest. Because the vast majority of Moroccans are Muslim, and Islam prescribes that women be covered to a certain extent, women here don't show very much skin. There aren't too many chadors and face veils, and lots of women don't cover their hair, but even in relatively liberal Azrou, you almost never see a Moroccan women show even a forearm in public, much less a sternum or calf.

There is one and only one exception: it is completely acceptable to breastfeed in public. The first time I saw it, I was on the way back from souk in my old site during the summer, which involved a mile-long walk entirely up a steep hill in 100 degree heat and direct sun carrying a week's worth of food in my bag. Needless to say, I took the tranzit, or gutted van meant to hold maybe 15 people that instead carries about 35, so everybody is squished in shoulder to shoulder, men and women. And to my surprise, the woman next to me adjusts her jellaba, whips out a breast, and feeds her baby, in full view of all the men around us. Nevermind that she can't show them her hair.

I've heard this and similar stories from all my friends here (think awkward male PCVs staring at their tea cups while their host sisters breastfeed.) The best explanation I've heard for it (from another PCV, not from a Moroccan) is that a mother's breast is completely desexualized, as its purpose is to feed the baby, and so it's not offensive for others to see it. This is backed up by how many female PCVs have told me about having their own breasts evaluated, either with looks or a few squeezes, by the women in their community, with judgments about how well they're suited to breastfeeding.

Anyway, I've always thought we're way too squeamish in the States about breastfeeding, so I certainly have no problem with it. It's just another contradiction to wrap my mind around here.

And on a totally unrelated note, here's a picture from Secretary of State Clinton's last-minute visit to the U.S. Embassy in Rabat a few weekends ago.

She only spoke for about three minutes, but she did say the following: "I also want to thank the Peace Corps volunteers, because wherever I go, they always can bring a crowd of enthusiasm. When in doubt, bring on the Peace Corps and we'll get the energy going."  She was right--we were almost half the crowd. The "meet-and-greet" was a little anti-climactic, but given that she's more or less who I want to be when I grow up, so to speak, it was worth it.

Stay well, family and friends, and enjoy the beginnings of spring. Love from the Maghreb.

long-overdue update!

Hi all,

I've gotten pretty bad at this blog thing recently--I would say I've been very busy, but that's not really a good excuse. It's more that I've been waiting for something exciting to write about, but with most of the cultural adjustment and major holidays out of the way, nothing has come up recently. So, I'll give a quick update about a few developments in my service, and then I'll try to just post random thoughts and anecdotes about life here, even if nothing big is going on.

The major change in my life is that I moved at the beginning of January, from my mid-sized town to a small city called Azrou that's only about half an hour down the road. All of my work has been there, and all of my potential work is centered around Azrou, and I was essentially commuting, so it made sense to just make Azrou my home base instead. My new house is small but much cozier than my old one (and not infested with roaches, spiders, and centipedes, which is a plus) and I have more friends and contacts in Azrou than I had in my old site. All in all, it's a positive change, and worth the several months that it took to make happen.

As far as work goes, things are picking up a tiny bit, with not much happening now but a number of things in the planning process. Starting next week, I'll be teaching English to a group of female elementary school teachers from the school across the street from my house. I hadn't really intended to be teaching English here, but it's a good in at the school, which will hopefully make it easier to do some environmental education there (which is technically my program description, even if I haven't done any of it yet.) I'll also probably start working an orphanage/youth center soon, teaching English a few times a week and maybe doing other things as well. Things with my medicinal herbs and couscous co-operative are coming along, and we're planning a workshop so they can learn how to make shampoo, soap, and lotion, which is what they decided to spend the rest of the grant money on to expand their product selection.

On a slightly humorous note, I was contacted in January by the U.S. embassy in Rabat, whose media outreach program was doing a series with the national TV station on American aid projects in my region, and they sent a crew to film my cooperative and me. It aired across the country a week ago, so we're famous now. It's in Arabic, but you'll get to see a few of the women I work with, and some amusingly staged shots of me fiddling around with herbs and equipment. Also, the comments on the YouTube page for the video demonstrate an unfortunately persistent view about Peace Corps volunteers, but don't worry, my real name isn't in the video, so the "sleeping lion" won't be able to find me all that easily.

That's all for now, but I'll try to be more diligent and post again soon. A very belated Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year's to all!

Love from the Maghreb.

PS: to all the wonderful, wonderful people who send me snail mail sometimes, I have a new address:

[My full name]
B.P.332
Azrou, Province Ifrane, 53100
MOROCCO

If you sent anything to my old address since Christmas, let me know, since I'll be closing that box soon and I'm not sure I trust Moroccan forwarding services.