Site Announcement

            Alright, this post is going to be very quick, just a quick correction of my last post, some photos, and my site announcement!  Firstly, despite what a host uncle, aunt, cousin, and sister told me last week was NOT my host sister’s wedding, but rather her engagement party.  Sometimes I think they just like to confuse me on purpose, they laughed pretty hard when explaining the wedding is actually in August.  Apparently it’ll be a pretty similar party, but much bigger.  As the party last week was pretty big it sounds both exciting and terrifying.

            Secondly, my host family gave me permission to put up some photos of them!

My oldest host sister, all bedecked in henna for the party the next day.

My host mother and the next oldest sister.

My younger host brother, the youngest sibling.

My youngest host sister.

My older host brother and me.

My host mother and me.  Notice my host sister dancing in the background.

            Thirdly, my final site.  As before I’m not supposed to give my exact location on a public forum (feel free to ask in private), but for the next two years I’ll be in a small town in the Middle Atlas.  Judging by Google satellite view I’m right next to a mountain, and there should be tons of good hiking.  It’s deeper into the mountain range than Azrou was, so it should be even more dramatic.  It’s supposed to be beautiful, and not too far from a center of Amizigh music, so I’m really excited!  More to come, I’m sure!

Moroccan Wedding

            There was a terrible communication breakdown last week.  Some members of my family told me my host sister was having an engagement party on Sunday.  Others said it was her wedding.  I eventually had my host mother and LCF talk on the phone so I’d know what was going on.  He said she told him it was an engagement party.  Which, of course, meant it was a wedding.  Talking with my LCF and other volunteers who’ve been to weddings it seems like this was what we would call the reception in the States (though it had some ceremonial elements), but the religious/legal portion will happen some other time.  The family was very clear at the event though, she is no longer engaged; she is married.  After a weeklong engagement.  It seems really quick by American standards, but in Morocco this is actually fairly common.  I actually had met the groom once before.  He was at the party the first week I was here.  This might be another communication failure.  When I asked my sister how she met him either I asked the question incorrectly or, since they’re so used to me asking things almost (but not exactly) correctly, I asked it correctly and she assumed I meant to ask if I’d met him.  They were not engaged when I met him, but they do at least know each other better than I thought last week.  Now that I’ve cleared up my misconceptions from the last post I’ll get on to describing what it was like.

            When I got back from class on Saturday afternoon the apartment was full of women.  They were having a bridal party where my host sister was getting dramatically hennaed.  I sought out my host mother and asked if I should leave since it was a women’s event and I didn’t want to appear culturally insensitive.  Her response was to laugh, to order me to sit, and to offer me tea.  Since I’m the American guest I think they exempt me from some of the rules of decorum, even when I ask about them.  I’m also coming to realize that in most ways my family, which still seems so different to me, is fairly westernized by Moroccan standards.  They legitimately don’t care about some of the older rules.  Until I try to help in the kitchen.  I’m glad they let me sit in.  It was a lot of fun, and a fascinating activity I don’t think many male volunteers get to see.  As I said above, the henna work can only be described as dramatic.  My sister was wearing a beautiful deep green kaftan (robe/dress) with gold trim.  Incredibly detailed scrollwork went from the tips of her fingers to the tops and bottoms her palms, and up her arms half way to the elbow.  She was similarly covered on her feet and lower legs too.  She was hennaed everywhere exposed by the kaftan except her face and the bottoms of her feet.  The henna was high quality and she let it sit undisturbed for hours so when she peeled it off it left perfect orange-brown lines across her skin.  My other host sisters got similar, though much less detailed, treatments to their hands.

            While one woman took care of the henna work the rest sat and chatted.  At first I sat and listened, but soon I felt ready to try some Darija and started talking to the older lady sitting next to me.  It turned out she was my host grandmother!  She’s from a town in the Atlas Mountains about halfway between Fes and Marrakech and had come up for her granddaughter’s wedding.  I wish I’d had more time and language to talk with her, because I bet she has some amazing stories to tell.  The start of the real festivities ended our conversation.  My host mother started drumming a rhythm on a platter with two teacups while another woman slapped together two spoons and the rest kept time by clapping.  My mother chanted a call and the others responded.  They went through several different rhythms, laughing and ululating all the way through.  Soon after that a couple of host uncles arrived and I was sent to the man room.  The men were less talkative then the women had been; we just sat and watched the soccer game, a little of the news (an Arabic discussion of possible Republican Vice Presidential nominees…), and a soap opera.  Eventually a sizeable dinner appeared, couscous with chickpeas, sautéed onions, and raisons all topped with a roasted chicken.  Up until then I’d only had one couscous variety, a chicken couscous with seven vegetables that is typically the couscous people associate with Morocco.  This was a delicious variation.  By the way, that thing you see in Moroccan restaurants in the States where they put a tagine on top of couscous or rice doesn’t happen here, it least not in Fes, Azrou, and Rabat.  You eat tagine with bread.

            The next day was the big day.  We spent most of the morning and early afternoon setting up my host family’s apartment.  The actual wedding would take place in the larger apartment across the hall (I think the family that lives there is the building’s landlords), but my host apartment was going to be used as a staging ground for the caterers.  Since there was a lot of work to be done my host mother even let me help!  I know I sound like one of Tom Sawyer’s schmucks, but when someone says you can’t help whitewash the fence you get very excited when they finally let you. 

Around four o’clock the event started.  The bride’s party all stood out in the street, dressed in our finest and watched as the groom’s group approached.  Actually, for the men, finest is a stretch.  While the women were mostly in beautiful djallbas and kaftans, a lot of the men just wore khakis and a dress shirt.  Some even wore jeans and a polo.  Since the Peace Corps told us to bring nicer clothes for when we were invited to weddings I was wearing a jacket and tie, which my family seemed to really approve of.  The only other person wearing a tie was the groom (in a suit), but they told me not to take it off.  Not that it really mattered; there were very few men in total and besides no one focuses on what the men were when all the women are so beautifully attired.  Their robes came in all different vibrant colors.  Most complimented them with a matching headscarf, though a lot went bareheaded.  Since my family is somewhat westernized a few wore western dresses (one or two of which would be considered pretty slinky at an American wedding), but the traditionally garbed women well outshone them.

As the groom’s party drew closer the two groups started to shout a call and response to each other.  After a bit of singing everyone processed inside.  Once we were all (more or less) seated the bride and groom met up and sat together in a place of honor.  My host sister was wearing the first of two kaftans she would wear in the course of the evening (a green and a red).  In Moroccan weddings brides can change clothes often.  Having a lot of changes is a mark of wealth.  I’ve heard that some families take this to an extreme and the poor girl will have to change six or seven times.  The big problem is, most of the time the family can’t afford that, so all of the kaftans are actually very cheap looking.  My family avoided that.  Instead of going through a ridiculous amount of changes my host sister limited herself to just two kaftans, both of which were stunning.  It also meant she could enjoy more of her wedding, since she wasn’t constantly changing.  The ceremony was very simple.  About an hour into the party, someone brought the couple a bowl of dates stuffed with almonds, two cups of sweetened milk, and a pair of rings.  They fed each other a date each, served the other from their cup of milk, and exchanged rings.  Soon after that my sister retired to make her costume change and they danced together when she came back.

Before and after the ceremony and while my sister was changing the party was wild.  The apartment was bigger than my families, but not by much, and there were probably well over a hundred people stuffed into it.  Couches (called ponjs, they’re used to sleep on too) encircle Moroccan rooms, so there was tons of seating.  In the middle of the room, surrounded by ponjs, people danced.  While I’ve heard in more conservative families men and women can’t dance together (I’ve heard that at really conservative weddings the men and the women have separate parties) there wasn’t any proscription on that here.  I did notice that while women of all ages danced only two of the men above thirty did.  The younger men danced with extreme vehemence to make up for it.  Not that the women were any less energetic.  Even my old host grandmother was phenomenally limber.  Everyone danced together in a big group, though occasionally people of either gender would pair up and spin in circles together or hold hands.

While I don’t know enough about traditional Moroccan music (yet) to tell what type exactly the music was, I noticed that it sounded like the music that accompanies the traditional Amizigh dance that my host family constantly watches on video.  Most of the lyrics were in Darija, but some were in another language I couldn’t recognize, presumably one of the Amizigh dialects.  The wedding guests danced the same wild dances that people dance in the videos.  While a lot of the dancing involves kicking out your feet and gesturing with your hands the most exciting part is when the women with unbound hair start throw it around.  In a move that’s basically head banging’s more awesome older sister they whip their head around quickly in all directions, creating a wild vortex of swirling hair.  After a lot of encouragement (read: everyone pointing at my head and saying, “Hey, you have enough hair to do that too.”) they even got me to give it a whirl.  It’s actually a lot of fun, though you feel very dizzy afterward. 

Through the maelstrom of dancing the poor caterers tried to serve tea, coffee, dates, and hlwa (small cookies and candies).  I don’t know how they got through people with their gigantic platters, some combination of determination and luck.  Around ten thirty or eleven o’clock the party broke up (it does no good for the landlord to get a noise complaint, especially on a school night), but that didn’t mean it was over.  It just moved across the hall to my host family’s apartment where we sat and talked and ate more hlwa.  We also gave gifts at this point.  I gave a traditional gift, a big cone of sugar.  I mean giant.  The cone almost reaches my knee, and it weighs a ton.  Since Moroccans eat and drink so much sugar it apparently doesn’t last very long.  It makes me want to go jogging just thinking about it.  The party continued into the early morning, thankfully breaking up just early enough for me to get a decent night’s sleep before class.

So that was my first Moroccan wedding, it was quite the adventure!  It was a great ending to my fantastic training.  I’m now in my last week; next Saturday I leave Fes and find out my posting!  The week after that I swear in and set out on the real adventure.

P.S. The photos below are of the house I’ve been living in the last two months.  If I can get my host family’s permission, I’ll put up some photos of them too.  I’m not going to put up photos of the wedding if they have anyone other than my host family or me since I can’t get everyone’s permission.  If people are interested I can send some photos so you get a sense of how a room stuffed full of brightly colored djellabas looks.  I also have videos of the dancing (not with me in them, of course), including one with the head-banging move, if people are interested in that.

Kaskrot and a Discussion

            There was a divide between the women and us, linguistic, cultural, and spatial.  We all sat on one end of the long series of couches that girdle the inside of most Moroccan family rooms.  They sat on the other.  They were three of the five women who host PCTs in our community, and one of their daughters.  My host mother couldn’t make it, but there’s a very exciting reason for that which I’ll tell you later.  We were having a discussion on gender roles and child rearing in Morocco.  It was very informative.  Sometimes they said things we expected, sometimes they didn’t.  Sometimes they didn’t seem to understand our question, or we didn’t understand their answers, even with the help of our LCF translating; the vast cultural gulf left us questions and answers that were technically correct but still couldn’t be understood.  I will try to summarize some of the information here.

            These women are very, very busy.  They wake up early every morning to fix breakfast for the family and help their children get ready for their day.  I say get ready for their day (rather than for school) because children in Morocco stay attached to their homes much later than they do in the States.  Most don’t move out until they marry (some not even then) and most don’t impose on their mothers’ job of chief caregiver.  After their children and husbands leave for school and work they start to prepare lunch, the largest meal of the day.  It’s only after everyone has come home for lunch and left again that they get some time for themselves.  They spend most of it doing chores and watching TV.  Then they have to prepare kaskrot and dinner.  While their work is primarily inside the house they are also responsible for filling out their children’s school paperwork, along with any other paperwork that might come the families way.  Their husbands work outside the home and are the primary breadwinners, sometimes helped by their older children. 

All children’s main responsibility is to study hard, hopefully so they can eventually get a good job.  Beyond that, they have their gender roles enforced at an early age.  When girls help out around the house they do the same housework as their mothers.  When boys help out they do the “outside” housework, going out to buy food and other supplies from shops.  Until the women pointed it out I hadn’t noticed, but this is largely true in my family as well, although my youngest host sister is often the one sent out to get bread.  They said that boys actually are allowed to do housework if they want, but they cannot be compelled to.  That hasn’t been my experience, but I have the double difficulty of being both a boy and a guest.  The mothers’ say that their main goal in life now is to care for their children.  They hope that the children lead happy lives, that they can continue their educations, and that they meet good spouses.  They think these old ways are changing, which is good because they don’t think their children could bear the work they have bourn.  The one host daughter who was there agreed, but of course what else could she do in that crowd.

When they were girls, the host mothers hoped that they would lead happy lives, that they would continue their educations (sadly, none of them did), and that they would meet good men.  One of them told us the story of how she met her husband.  She was out one day when he saw her walking.  He followed her home.  Then he went home and asked his family to propose to her family that he marry her.  They didn’t see each other for three months, and then they were married.  This sounds really weird to Americans, but it wasn’t that unusual in the last generation.  It still happens sometimes in rural Morocco.  Even occasionally in the cities.  She says that their marriage has been very successful, though of course it required a lot of patience at the beginning as they got to know each other.  All of the mothers agreed that in their experience these types of marriages were more successful then ones that followed a long courtship.  The daughter had no comment.

Our biggest misunderstanding came when they asked us how child rearing and gender roles were different in America.  We tried to explain that in America we tell girls from a young age that they can do anything that boys can and that either gender can perform any job.  They said it was the same in Morocco now, but in the same breath they reminded us about the different gender roles in housework among children.  We couldn’t get them to understand that to us this seemed fundamentally inconsistent.  Regardless, it was a pleasant and informative discussion, and was followed by a fantastic kaskrot feast including all my favorite breads and teatime snacks.

The last thing to mention is why my host mother couldn’t make it.  My oldest host sister just got proposed to!  I have the feeling that while she knows her future husband better than the mother from the above story they still don’t have the close relationship we consider normal in America.  Of course, that could just be me misunderstanding her when she told me about him.  During the discussion my host mother was out with her downtown buying things for the engagement party this Sunday.

In other news, I’ve had an exciting landmark in my language development.  I’ve heard and understood two Moroccan folk stories in Darija, one of which is a Joha story.  I’ll tell them both here.

            Halim had sixty eggs.  He put all of his eggs in one basket and hung it on a nail stuck in his wall.  Before going to market one day he was sitting in his house and thinking.  He thought, “Good, now I have sixty eggs.  I will sell these eggs at the market and buy two chickens.  I will breed these chickens for two or three weeks and then I’ll have a lot of chickens.  Then I will sell the chickens and buy some sheep.  I’ll keep the sheep for three or four months and then sell them and buy some cows.  I will breed the cows for two or three years and then sell them too.  Then I’ll have a lot of money.  I will get a beautiful woman to marry me and we will have a son.  I will raise him well, but if he defies me I will hit him like this!”  When he said the word “hit” he raised his hand and struck the basket of eggs.  The basket fell off the nail, dropped to the ground, and everything was lost.

            The Joha story is a more modern story than the ones I’ve told before.  Apparently people still occasionally wrote new ones even into the last century.  Maybe they still do.

            One day Joha decided that he wanted to travel from Fes to Marrakech with his donkey.  It was the first time they had travelled together.  When he reached the train station, Joha left his donkey outside to go buy a ticket.  He asked the man at the ticket booth how much a ticket to Marrakech cost.

            “Fifteen dirham,” said the man.  Joha thought for a moment and asked how much a ticket for a donkey cost.  The man said, “For a donkey, only ten dirham.”  Joha immediately asked for tickets for two donkeys.

            One last thing.  I won the “Stache-Off” I mentioned in my last post.  For once the absurd amount of hair that pops out of my face got me something.  A cardboard trophy.  I’ve shaved it off now.  My host sister told me in no uncertain terms that she would be very upset if I had a moustache at her engagement party.  She was the only one in my host family who didn’t like it (my youngest host brother is very upset it’s gone), but it’s her party and there’ll be no moustache if she doesn’t want it!

Monkeys in Morocco

            I was in a forest on a foothill of the middle Atlas when my phone rang.  It was one of my fellow PCTs, checking up to make sure that I was growing out some facial hair for the Fes trainees’ moustache competition (or, as we call it, the Stache-off).  Almost simultaneously Eugene (my roommate from Rabat, since we keep appearing in each other’s blogs we’ve decided to use some names for each other) yelled from the front of our group that a troupe of monkeys was approaching us.  Of course, I told the other PCT I had to run, but for a moment I was talking about growing out a moustache while some primates with hair everywhere but their upper lips cautiously inspected my friends and I.  As per usual, the only adjective I can think of is surreal.

            We were in the hills surrounding Azrou, a small Amizgh town nestled in the foothills of the Middle Atlas.  This weekend was one of the only weekends where we PCTs were allowed to sleep out of cite, so a bunch of us from Fes decided we’d explore this other region, which is about an hour by taxi (two or more hours by bus) south of Fes.  Shortly after our morning language session on Saturday we caught a taxi to Ifrane, a town near Azrou and favorite vacation spot for Moroccans.  Ifrane is a weird town, it was built in the 1920’s as a resort town for the French; Moroccans weren’t even allowed to live there until the end of the protectorate.  The architecture there is dramatically different from other Moroccan cities.  It wouldn’t look out of place in Europe.  I now call it “Geneva-in-Atlas.”  It’s a fairly small town, after a few hours walking through the town and surrounding hills and the obligatory stop by the stone lion that a German soldier carved during World War II when Ifrane was a prisoner of war camp we caught another taxi to Azrou, arriving just before dark.

            Both drives were spectacular.  Fes stops very suddenly; one moment there is city, and then the next there isn’t.  Once outside, you drive through a broad and bright green plain until you reach the edge of the mountains (the ones you can just make out in the distance from my photos of the Medina from the Merinid tombs a couple of posts ago).  Up in the mountains past Immozer, you pass through a strange lunarscape that reminds me of Connemare in Ireland, rocky, barren, and breathtaking.  When you reach Ifrane it looks almost Alpine, though this perception could just be a residual reaction to the houses there.  From there you pass by a series of spectacular vistas on the drive to Azrou.  It’s especially dramatic to do this drive just before sunset.

            The word Azrou is actually an Amizgh word meaning “Big Rock,” and the town is, somewhat predictably, built around a really big rock.  With a crown on top.  While this might be the focus of the town it is far from the only giant rock in the area.  Sunday morning we started to trek through fields full of similarly giant rocks.  We’d been told that to reach an area with the monkeys that live in the middle Atlas we’d have to take a taxi and then hike on further, but the PCTs who live in Azrou have a Moroccan friend who said he knew a shortcut up the mountain through a forest.  He told us that in the forest we were just as likely to see monkeys as in the more touristy spot we’d heard about.  These were the monkeys that found us while I was on the phone.  It was really cool to see them in the forest.  Up in the tourist spot the monkeys have no fear.  They come right up to you with an expression that says, “Hey, I’m a monkey, now give me a peanut.”  In the forest they’re still cautious around people, and children aren’t swarming them.  They’re also a whole lot skinnier.  We noticed just one at first, but soon a troop of three or four adults and several babies came up around us.  They pawed at each other and played in the trees, and gave us just a narrow enough berth.  We spent several minutes working on our National Geographic shots and edging our way closer to them.  Then we heard barking and a giant black dog bounded out of the underbrush and started to chase them.  They each rushed up the nearest tree, taunting the dog by swinging just out of reach.  We looked down the trail and saw two donkeys bearing supplies and a man climbing up.  The dog was with him, meant to keep the monkeys from bothering the donkeys.  We climbed on.

            We had our lunch up at the picnic tables near the touristy area.  As I said before, the monkeys there are brazen.  One stole a whole bag of almonds right out one of my friend’s hands.  While they let you get much closer to them I actually preferred hanging out with the monkeys down in the forest; it felt more natural.  From lunch we walked into a cedar forest, the only one in Morocco.  The forest and vistas were amazing though our goal, Arz Gorou, supposedly the oldest standing tree in Africa, was a bit of a bust.  While it is rumored to have been standing for longer than any other tree on the continent it is long dead, the bottom is covered in graffiti, and a terrible tourist trap of shops has grown up around it.  There’s even a road for people too lazy to hike.  Also, the signs around it don’t give any specific dates or information, which makes it all a bit of a disappointment.  However, the route to reach it is really pretty and once again, as in Moulay Yacoub, I got a chance to play my ocarina while overlooking a dramatic vista, so the excursion was worth it.  From there we walked back to town, got an asir avoca (avocado milk), and caught the grand taxi back to Fes.

            Short post this time, but the pictures will do more justice to the hills around Azrou than anything I can write.  As a teaser I’ll say that Monday this week was worth a post in itself.  After morning class we spent our afternoon at an extended kaskrot (tea time) with most of our host mothers together and had a discussion (with our LCF helping with translations) on gender roles, relations and child rearing with them.  It doesn’t fit with this post, and I need a couple of days to process it anyways, but for those of you interested in these issues expect a post on it later this week!

Between Notes

           This will be something unprecedented, a short post.  I have a feeling I’ll have a lot to write about after this weekend, so I’m taking advantage of this rare piece of free time to write about the last few days.

            This weekend was nice and low key.  It was raining, so I spent it mainly inside with my host family.  Since I spent so much time with them, and especially with members of their extended family I haven’t seen in awhile, I could appreciate how much my language has improved in the last few weeks.  When a host aunt asked to talk with me we could actually have a conversation, rather than a scramble to find mutually intelligible phrases.  It felt good and I finally got to get my family to laugh on purpose through Darija (needless to say, they’ve been laughing since day one at statements that weren’t meant to be funny).  One of the neighbor’s daughters came in just after I finished writing in my journal and asked me what I was doing.  I responded, in what I hoped was an internationally sarcastic tone, “Kan-gls,” I sit.  Not really all that funny, but the combination of sarcasm and surprise at my ability to say something correctly put the room in hysterics.  This is a major step forward; my attempts at sarcasm are no longer wasted!

            The other fun part of the weekend was when various family members pulled out their photo albums for me to look at.  My host mother is one of nine siblings.  There is a huge backlog of family photos.  It was fun to get a look at them all, especially to get a chance to see my host siblings growing up and the fantastic shots of one of my host uncles playing goalie on the Moroccan army soccer team.  My weekend largely involved sitting around, talking, eating bread, and looking at photos.  Not much to write about, but actually one of the best weekends here.  I should describe the bread.  It’s called mulwi bsla (some Moroccans say mulawie instead of mulwi, my host family is in mulwi camp, along with the local bakers.  It leads to confusion when talking with people whose host families use the other term).  Mulwi itself is a simple bread, just flour, oil, and water fried together in a pan, but when made as mulwi bsla it’s cooked with onions and various spices to make a delicious kaskrot (tea time) snack.  Up until this weekend I’d only had it from the local bakery, but my host mother and her sisters and sisters-in-law make an even better version.  I’m trying to build up good will so I’ll be let in the kitchen to watch next time.  I do this, conversely, by not helping in the kitchen or doing my own laundry.  My family members get annoyed when I do “women’s” work like that.  I’m coming to understand that, while very different, this is not as offensive as it feels to a modern American.  My host mother is a stay-at-home mom; when I try to help out around the house I’m taking her job.  She doesn’t want me to help because I’m straying into her sphere and taking her work.  It’s really different from how we’re used to thinking as modern Americans, where housework is largely in addition to our real jobs, and therefore shared.

            The other event I want to write about happened Tuesday evening after class.  I was hanging out at the local hipster café with my Moroccan metal friends.  I realize I’ve misrepresented them.  They are in their first year of university, not late high school.  They just all look really young.  Moroccans in general, at least Moroccan youth, tend to look a whole lot younger than they are.  I would assume pretty much all my host siblings are two or three years younger than they are based on how they look, especially the nine year old.  They study a mix of subjects, though the boy I met first is an English major (why his English is so good).  It’s a very different course of study here than in the States, obviously, since it’s a foreign language.  While it does include a comprehensive study of English and American lit (we talked about Chaucer the other day!) it is just as much a linguistics major here.  My LCF was also an English major.  He wrote his senior thesis, in English, on Moroccans’ perception of their native languages, Darija and Amizgh.  I hope he’ll let me read a copy; it sounds fascinating.

            Sorry, I got off topic, but that was something I wanted to mention.  In any case, we were hanging out at the café when one of their friends, who I hadn’t met before, showed up with what they called a Moroccan guitar.  At first glance it just looked like a nylon stringed classical guitar and I couldn’t tell what made it Moroccan.  Then I noticed the extra frets.  Between the 2^nd and 3^rd fret, the 5^th and 6^th fret, and the 7^th and 8^th fret there were small, wooden frets only for the 2^nd through 5^th strings.  These frets allowed him to play notes not available on a regular guitar, quartertones that aren’t in western scales.  He showed me his favorite scale used in Middle Eastern music.  For those of you interested in theory, it was basically the Phrygian mode but with both the minor and major thirds and instead of a major or minor second it used the quartertone in between them.  It was hauntingly beautiful.  He showed me some chords to comp with it on the other guitar (a regular steel stringed acoustic).  They sounded like flamenco chords.  He also let me play around with his guitar.  It was awesome, but very difficult since sometimes I’d miss and play the quartertone rather than the real note or vice versa.  I actually found it was a little easier for me to play the scale on the regular guitar with a small string bend to raise the pitch of the minor second to the new note, but that’s probably a matter of practice.  It was a really fun jam.  I think I’m just going to start bringing my recorder to the café and hope he shows up again.

            So that was my last week.  I think I’m starting to get more attuned to the more subtle cultural differences between Morocco and the States.  Like the quartertones in the Moroccan scale, these differences, though slight, are cause there to be a huge difference in the overall the impression of the country.  I think this is a big step in my quest to integrate because it will help me understand why things are different.  I should hope it’s obvious why that’s so important.