Our days of going to pool halls after school and to the beach at 11 o'clock at night are long gone, replaced with never ending Arabic "tamriins", readings on feminist theory and family structure in the Maghreb, and-- my favorite-- french novels by Moroccan authors. Hard to believe, I know, but we actually are supposed to be studying while we're here for the semester! Who would have thought. It would be a lot less of a drag if I didn't have a crazy woman named Fatime for both my MSA and Darija classes... she's a bit of a space-case, which isn't an ideal quality for an Arabic professor. And it's tempting to learn about contemporary Moroccan culture by socializing and exploring the city with our new Moroccan friends as opposed to reading endless articles. Et voila, one paragraph of the mundane academic grind.
Hotel dinner before Hurricane Fatima hit...
Day at Controbondi Beach
Apparently my frustration with classes and sheer exhaustion that characterized the last week was a symptom of the "fifth week" of being here in Morocco. Doha, our program director/travel agent/den mother/troop leader warned us that around this time, we would begin to feel not home sick, but maybe a little overwhelmed and worn out by certain aspects of daily life here. Maybe it's just that the differences of carrying out a daily routine here as opposed to back home (in "the States", as I've scarily caught myself calling it), are becoming more and more apparent. For me, things like diet and exercise are drastically different here-- that is to say, they're non-existant-- so that's probably a big part of it. My friend Anna keeps saying she's going to join a gym and asking us to come with her, but to be honest I wouldn't go, I know it. It's not that I'm being lazy, really, it's that it's such a foreign concept, literally, for Moroccan women. People stare at the few joggers that pass by like they're walking through the street naked or something. So, I walk home from school instead of taking the bright blue petit taxi, and call it a day. So to back-track, two weekends ago (the first weekend after Eid al-Fitr), Nora and I decided to be tourists for a day in Rabat. We went to the Tour Hassan and the Mohammed V Mausoleum, the largest monuments in Rabat both dedicated to past kings. The Tour Hassan was built to be a minaret of a great mosque towards the end of the 12th century, but when the sultan overseeing its construction died, the construction stopped. The minaret is only halfway built, along with the rest of the walls and columns which now create a sort of maze pattern where people mill about taking pictures and kids play. When we were there, our 12 year old neighbor Mamoune (who looks like he's about 9) popped up in front of us on his bright red roller blades, and proceeded to use the columns as an obstacle course. The Mausoleum was equally impressive, if not more-- elaborately tiled in green zeliij patterns on the outside, you climb the stairs from the ground of the Tour Hassan mosque columns are to get inside, and find yourself on a balcony of the perimiter of the building. The inside walls are an array of colors and patterns of tile, and stained glass windows. If you look down over the railing from the balcony, you see the tombs of the late King Mohammed V and his sons King Hassan II and Prince Abdallah. There is a place at the back end of the floor where a man sits reading the Qur'an for most of the day. The whole expereince of being inside was very humbling: the obvious love and admiration that the Moroccan people have for their king and the beauty of both the royal and religious traditions were overwhelming.
That Sunday, we had a small field trip to a rural village about 40 minutes outside of Rabat where one of the AIMDEAST professors lives on family farmland. This was a stark contrast to the traffic and urbanity (?) of Rabat. It was Sunday, so we walked through the big weekly souk where stalls stretched for rows and rows, selling food, clothes, items of incomprehensible use, and meat-- lots and lots of animal limbs, heads, livers, just lined up for the taking. We all marveled after at how the meat section of the souk was not as jarring as one would have thought, because why wouldn't fresh meat be on display in a weekly souk? Guess that's called assimilation... After the souk we went to our professor's house, where we met his wife and daughter and proceeded to sit on oneof about 20 pouffy chairs and low couches. She cooked delicious vegetable, raisin, and meat couscous for lunch, which we all ate from the same bowl with our spoons, as is customary. We were served buttermilk to drink, which I did not drink... I can only go so far with some of the food here. Nora and I have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for the food our mom makes us, because it's so delicious but I know that if I knew what was in it, I might not be able to eat somethings.
Anyways, after lunch some people made homemade bread, the kind we use to eat our dinner at night and have as a sandwich sometimes. We left the rounds to rise, and walked over to the barn to see all the cows and goats and sheep. It reminded me a bit of the farms back home, except the cows were much bigger. On our way back we checked on the bread, which some of the women who worked at the house had put into the big earthen oven outside to bake. By the time we were back inside, the bread was done. We had fresh orange juice and bread for a snack (because it was necessary after all of that couscous...) and then we went home. It was refreshing to get out of Rabat and into such a rural environment after having been in the city for two weeks, and it was eye-opening to see the other half of the country at work.
To be continued...
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