Ramadan Report #1 (The Old Time and the New)

            Now that I’ve passed through a third (ten days) of Ramadan it seems like as good a time as any to give some description of what it is like to not eat or drink any food or water from sun up to sun down during the middle of summer in Africa for a month.  As you can imagine with that introduction, a one-word description would be “hard.”  Since thinking in complete sentences is one of the first things to go by the wayside I’ll leave “hard” as the basic description.  Hard, but not necessarily because of the lack of eating and drinking.  It’s the lack of work, the feelings of uselessness that are really overwhelming.  Not that the lack of food makes that any easier, other than the first two days, when I was getting over a cold and so took a couple of sips of water, I’ve been fasting legitimately, without a single drop of water all day.  One thing that gets me are the near misses, how I’ll finish a task, go to pour myself a glass and then say “oh right, can’t do this for five more hours.  Ugh.” 

Not that there is very much in the way of task completion during Ramadan.  I find that my regular day goes something like this.  Wake up, tired, around seven-thirty or eight.  I’d like to sleep later, since I go to bed late, but for whatever reason I haven’t been able to sleep later than eight-thirty any day, and most days it’s earlier.  Sometimes I lie around and half sleep for another hour, but usually I find that doesn’t get anywhere so I read for a few hours in an attempt to wake myself up.  Some days I’m successful in getting myself to a state where I’m awake enough to focus on important things, and then I spend a couple of hours studying Arabic, or reading materials from Peace Corps, or trying to think of how I’ll approach teaching lessons in the Fall.  Most days I can’t get myself focused enough to do this, and so I just read more or play the guitar or (if I’m feeling a little more energy) I go over to the artisanal cooperative to hang out with my host mother and a couple of the older ladies as they sew.  Usually by this point thirst is already starting to disassemble my Darija, so our conversations stay pretty basic.  If I have gone out I make sure I’m back home through the hot part of the day, since there is nothing going on outside.  I usually kill this time by reading more.  One day, during the merciful few days before the heat rose again, I got the crazy idea that, since it was a reasonable temperature and I didn’t feel that hungry or thirsty, I should do something and so I took a hike in the hills around town.  I found a couple of vistas that are just as beautiful as any around Azrou, albeit a little harder to get to then any of the fantastic places up there.  Despite these discoveries, the walk was a terrible idea that I will not repeat this month (although I will, frequently, after).  Even on a cooler day the three-hour walk completely wiped me out and I lay around my house in a daze after until breakfast.

At around four or five the first vague stirrings of life begin around town.  I usually go out and relax in the garden with friends and students, but some days it’s still too hot so I go to my host family’s house instead.  One day a friend and I helped a second friend move stuff from his old apartment to a new one, but the three of us all regretted that by the end and collapsed into the garden.  There are two really dedicated advanced students who want to practice their English, so Wednesdays and Saturdays we’ve had conversation sessions in the Dar Chebab for a little while.  Like my Darija, their English is suffering from lack of food and water, but I think they’re moving a little forward.  By around six or six-thirty the garden, the parking lot where some crazy men play soccer, and the market where people can buy fruit for breakfast are bustling.  However, by around seven-thirty no one is in the streets anymore as we all wait anxiously for the call to prayer.

The call (l-mghrb) starts exactly at sundown and people break the fast.  Traditionally most people start their lftor (breakfast) with dates (timr).  I break tradition and usually gulp down a big glass of water before my first date.  From there the fare varies a little bit from family to family (so far I’ve broken the fast with two of my students’ families, my landlord, my mudir, my tutor, and my host family, of which my host family is the one I go to most often, though they’ve all said I’m welcome everyday).  Some families focus heavily on the sweets, though thankfully traditional Ramadan sweets are more often sweetened with honey than with sugar.  Almost every family serves shpeckia, a twisty pastry drenched in honey.  Most of these sweet families also serve milk or a milk based asir (juice), usually banana.  Other families favor more savory treats, like fat bread (xubz shhma), which is bread baked with onions, tomatoes, and animal fat, or sharia (rice noodles).  These families tend to serve asir without milk, usually orange, though I’ve also had carrot, and, once, lemonade.  Most families also serve some fruit.  Grapes are common, and cactus fruit is universal.  Once you’ve stuffed yourself on all of this (all the while drinking copious amounts of water, juice, and tea) they serve the harira, a traditional Moroccan spiced tomato soup with chickpeas and sharia.  Inshahallah my host mother will teach me to make it later today!

After gorging, everyone falls into a food stupor and drift off a little while watching T.V.  At around nine or nine-fifteen the muedin (the man who makes the call to prayer) calls l-aesha, the last call of the day.  Ramadan is a time when people really focus on their faith, so there is a brief period of time afterwards when a lot of people pray.  It’s only after then that the cafés start to get lively, just like during the days before Ramadan.  Most days I’ve met my friends at our favorite café, though even after breaking the fast both their English and my Darija are not where they normally are.  After a bit of tea we go and hang out with students in the garden.  Some days I skip the café and go straight to the garden with my guitar, acting pied piper like around the children, who are not at all used to live music and, therefore, fascinated.  Sometimes the younger kids are too fascinated, they come close and bang into the guitar, knocking it out of tune, so I generally sit myself in the middle of an older group who act as a buffer so the younger ones can see that they should listen, but not touch.  I had hoped that by bringing my guitar to the garden other musicians would come out of the woodwork, but so far it has been a no go and I remain my town’s sole nightly beatnik.  After awhile I let the music die down and we talk for hours.  Since it’s Ramadan, and religion is on their minds, they ask a lot about Christianity and tell me a lot about Islam.  This lasts a long time and I usually don’t get home until around one-thirty or two in the morning, sometimes later.  Most Moroccans wait, but at that point I’m exhausted so I usually eat sohr (the last meal before the fast) then.  Usually for me it’s just some fruit (sometimes accompanied with the peanut butter mom and dad sent!), but a few days ago I stopped being lazy and cooked myself up a big stir fry, which has lasted the last couple days and will probably last a few more.  I also start to chug water.  I’m asleep by three at the latest, well before the morning prayer (l-sobh) since I know I won’t be sleeping in as much as I want.

So that’s a Ramadan day.  A time when nothing gets done.  I’d like to say that this is exacerbated for me since I’m a non-Muslim and have never done this before, but the plain fact is that with those occasional classes I’m teaching, and the bits and pieces of work I’m doing before I get overwhelmed by hunger, thirst, and exhaustion I’m actually as productive or more so than the average person in my town during Ramadan.  I wish I could get more done, but it really does just become impossible to focus on anything.  Ramadan in winter is supposedly a more busy time, since they spend less time not eating and it’s cooler, but summer Ramadan is pretty much a month when Morocco, at least rural Morocco, doesn’t work. 

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, it is a very spiritually fulfilling time for most Moroccans.  Even the concept of time shifts.  During the rest of the year Moroccans go by the clock, just like people in the West, although during day lights saving time there is some disagreement as to whether to use DLS, the new time, or just stick with the old time.  The government, and people who work with it, go by new time, but a lot of the older generation uses old time.  During Ramadan the clock is set back, temporarily ending new time (and thereby settling the old time/new time debate), but people shift to an even older way of telling time.  Almost no one talks about what hour it is, or what time to meet somewhere.  Things are done around the calls to prayer.  We’ll eat at l-maghrb.  Meet me after l-aesha.  I didn’t even wake up until duhr (the noon time prayer).  At asr (midafternoon prayer), oh, I wasn’t doing anything.

There you have it, a non-Muslim’s take on the experience of Ramadan.  It actually is an interesting experience, and, despite my frustration at my inability to get any work done, I like the challenge.  I also like seeing the holiday spirit take hold of the country.  I’m glad I decided not to work at any camps during Ramadan this year and just stayed in site, it helps my community integration.  People see me fasting, I’m meeting tons of new youth with my evening guitar sessions, and I’m getting much closer with the families I break the fast with.  That being said, next summer, when I’m more part of the community and integration will not be a paramount goal, I think I will try to work at one of the camps that occur during Ramadan.  I’ll still keep the fast, but hopefully feel more productive.  Then, once the camp ends, I might use that as an opportunity to take a trip out of country and beat the heat and the fast.  But that’s a year from now, and who knows how I’ll feel when it actually comes around!

Travels and Successes

            There is quite a bit to write about since my last post, so much so that, as usual, I’m a little daunted about where to begin.  Although I originally intended to start with the camp there are a few stories from my town from the days before I travelled that I just don’t want to leave out.  Two or three days after my last post a great thing happened.  The Euro Cup finished.  It really had been one of my biggest frustrations, distracting even my most dedicated students, so I’m glad it ended.  The way my town handled the final was incredible.  There is a public garden in the middle of town where a great swath of the town hangs out every evening.  They set up two projectors and a screen and showed the game live on both sides of the screen.  Even so, it was so packed that by the time the game started it was impossible to move into or out of the garden.  I mention this altar of soccer only to emphasize how obsessed most Moroccans are with the game.  It is possibly even deeper and more overwhelming than Americans’ obsession with professional athletics.  Maybe not with athletics in general, but no one sport has the same kind of popularity in the States that soccer has here, even basketball and football.

            The other event of the week before I left was my tutor’s sister’s wedding.  Although I didn’t get to go to the wedding itself, (my tutor’s final exams detained him, and I haven’t met his sister, so it would have been weird to go without him) but I went to the men’s dinner two days before.  A traditional Moroccan wedding lasts three days.  On the first day the sexes each eat a separate meal, usually a ladies’ lunch and men’s dinner.  The second day is a day for the family.  The last day is the actual wedding.  To beat the heat my tutor’s family set up a tent on their roof for the meal.  About fifty or sixty men sat in a big circle around the edges drinking tea and eating sweets.  Every few minutes a group of four men dressed in white djellabas started to chant sections of the Quran (this chanting is called tejwit l’Quran).  The chanting was very plain, a straight chant with little melody, but so perfectly in tune that they sounded an overtone an octave above the chanted tone, a haunting effect.  This was the first time I’d heard more than a single voice chant the Quran, and the end result was beautiful.  After awhile one of them gave a sermon in classical Arabic mixed with Darija.  I could catch a few words, but not the gist of the sermon.

            Eventually dinner was served.  I became separated from both my tutor and my site mate, which left me to fend for myself in Darija at my table.  By sheer coincidence I ended up at a table with two of the chanters.  The term for them is fkkir; it more or less translates to holy wise man.  They were impressed that I know a little about Moroccan Arabic and culture, and quizzed me through dinner.  When they asked, early on, if I knew who Allah was I, of course, said I did and pointed up to indicate the heavens.  They laughed and said it’s not important that he is there but rather that he is here and pointed at their hearts.  A little, light theology with my lamb.  I would gladly have talked with them more about religion, but we shifted to them asking all about the U.S. instead.  Still, it was a very fun dinner.

            A few days later I was on my way to work at the summer camp in my friend’s site.  She lives way up in the Northern part of the country, near the Rif Mountains, in a fairly sizable town more than ten times the size of the one I’m in.  I had a fair bit of culture shock.  Firstly, as I’ve said before, the pronunciation, word usage, accent, and even grammar of Darija varies widely from region to region.  Just six hours north of my site I found it was harder to understand and make myself understood, at least with the older generation (I’ve found that students are always much more forgiving of our mispronunciations).  The shillha (Tamazight) words that lightly dust my Darija in site were useless, the vowels were pronounced differently, as were the harsher sounds of the language.  After a couple of days I adjusted to it, just like I had to adjust my Fes Darija to the mountains, but the third dramatic difference in the one language was stunning.  Over a shorter distance than the one between Boston and D.C. there are at least two changes in accent much broader than anything we see in the U.S.  The second bit of culture shock came from how liberal the town is, comparatively.  While the vast majority of women there still wear headscarves the minority that doesn’t is much larger than in my town (percentage wise), and much older.  In my town after the age of about 13 only six or seven women out of several thousand consistently don’t wear the hijb.  There are also a few cafés and restaurants where women can go.  While still largely a male space the change from none to some is pretty dramatic.  Thirdly, many more people spoke a decent amount of English (a boon, given my accent problems there).  Lastly, the sheer relative activity of the town.  It was much more bustling than my site.  There is a very active shopping district, two huge weekly suq days (one for animals, one for everything else), and people hanging out in the streets late into the night.  A huge change from my sleepy rural town.

            For all of its big town charm the site also has a few problems that my smaller town doesn’t.  The biggest one issue is drug use.  The North of Morocco is known for being a producer and exporter of hash and kif, two marijuana-based products, but it also has a lot of users.  On our day in Chefchaouen (which I’ll talk about below) two or three different drug peddlers each tried to get me to buy kif.  In her town, people would smoke marijuana out in the open in the public park, with no concern for any kind of policing.  The amount they smoke is truly terrifying.  Sometimes in Morocco people will smoke so much they go brain dead from the stuff.  There is actually one beggar in my site who that happened to, according to people in town.  It happens in the States too, but not to nearly the extent as it does here, mainly, I’m sure, because the people who get that messed up in the States usually do it with harder drugs.  While there is some drug use among children in my site the difference in scale was truly overwhelming.  The other problem was with harassment, both of women and of foreigners, neither of which I’ve seen much of in my town.

            I arrived Thursday evening.  The trip had been long, especially since I’d missed my bus in town, even though I was five minutes early.  Buses here almost never leave on time, but every once in awhile they will depart early.  Schedules are more guidelines.  Luckily my grand taxi got me to the next stop ahead of the bus so I was able to catch it there.  In Meknes I had to change from bus to another grand taxi and had a funny interaction with a pair of drivers.  I walked up to one to ask where to get the taxi.  He didn’t understand and asked if I spoke French.  I said I couldn’t and he said he couldn’t help me.  The other driver then pointed out to him that this entire exchange was in Arabic.  The first driver, looking suitably embarrassed, gave me directions.  This actually happens a lot; people assume that foreigners don’t speak Arabic but do speak French and so when we try Arabic with them we take them too much by surprise for it to register.  

I arrived in site to discover that there was only one kid signed up for the camp, which was more than a little frustrating since we’d been told to expect a lot.  I started to worry I’d made the trip for nothing.  Still, camp wasn’t starting until Sunday so there was still time to get more students.  On Friday my friend’s mudir (supervisor) invited us to cous cous and then took us out with his family to gallivant around the hills outside of town, the foothills to the Rif.  He had a friend up in the mountains whose house we stayed at, though the mudir himself actually left the entire time!  It was fun, we had some great kaskrot, helped them sort rocks out of their barley, helped load up the mule and walked it down to the mill.  The mill was actually really cool, a giant machine that does in five minutes what a big rock and a river used to need several hours for.  Leading the donkey was also a new experience for me.  He was pretty docile, even when the younger kids hopped on for a ride.  When we got back the two eight-year-old boys wanted to play soccer.  I intended to let them win, but to be honest there didn’t have to be too much letting!

            The next day (which was supposed to be the last day before camp) we went to the famous blue medina of Chefchaouen, a quick grand taxi ride through the gorgeous mountains away.  The name literally translates to “Look at the Peaks;” mountains surround the town.  Although Rif Amazighin founded the town, its main growth started when Moors and Jews came from Spain after the expulsion in the late 1400s, so it has a very Spanish flavor.  The famous blue coloring is actually fairly modern.  It only started in around the 1920s.  It is stunning.  It is not just one blue, but actually hundreds of different shades of blue that all run into each other all through the medina.  As per usual the only thing for it is to show pictures.

            At one point we ended up stumbling into a nedi nesqwi (women’s club).  These, like the Dar Chebabs, are under the direction of the ministry of youth and sport, and in fact some volunteers do their primary work inside of them (there is one in my town where I’ll probably end up doing some side work).  This one was fairly bustling and we got to watch some women use looms to do traditional spinning.  Another highlight was the small waterfall in town.  Here people enjoy cafés, do laundry, and even play soccer in the cool water.  If I had a little culture shock in my friend’s site it was even bigger in Chefchaouen.  Since it is a major European tourist site we were almost exclusively talked at in French and Spanish and had to really work a lot to get people speaking to us in Darija.  There were also the overwhelming numbers of tourists, all dressed in Western styles.  To be honest, they struck me as underdressed and culturally insensitive.  I think this country is slowly making me more conservative, at least in all the ways that don’t matter.

            We got back as the third volunteer working at the camp arrived, to discover that there were still only eight kids signed up and that the mudir wanted to delay the camp a day in the hopes that more would show up.  We started to get really nervous.  We needn’t have been.  In typical last minute Moroccan style almost twenty more kids signed up that extra day off and we ended up having a great bunch to work with, aged between 17 and 25 (with a few outliers on either side).  Every morning we started with an English class.  With one exception the students were all around the same medium beginner level, so instead of dividing them into multiple classes, like we first thought we would, we had one big class which we all took turns leading.  This was a great opportunity for us to watch and learn a little from each other’s teaching styles.  We tried to keep the classes light and upbeat, learning through fun.  After the English class we had lunch, where we spoke pigeon English-Darija with the students.  One day they asked me to tell them a joke and I translated one of the Joha stories that I’d first learned in English back into Darija.  They really liked that, though I was sad to discover they didn’t have any Joha jokes to trade back.

            In the afternoons we ran activities.  These ran the gamut from a goals workshop, to resume writing, to a screening of Wall-E with a follow-up discussion of the environmental implications of the movie.  They enjoyed it a lot, and were really passionate about the environment.  One day we led a discussion on volunteerism and had snuck in some trash bags so that they would have an opportunity for a volunteer experience.  Before we mentioned our plan they said that one thing they’d really like to do was a trash pickup.  It was perfect.  While outside we ran into a man who works with a local association dedicated to cleaning up town.  He supplied us with gloves and larger trash bags and the students insisted that we have another cleanup day!  In the wake of that they decided to found an Environmental Education club.  A hope I can find this same passion in my site, it was great to see in someone else’s.

Our other two most successful days were on gender development.  The Gender and Development (GAD) committee in Morocco has some great resources.  One day we used a series of discussion questions on sexual harassment written in both English and Darija.  Since our students were older we named a boy and a girl as discussion leaders and got out of the way, so they could do it in Darija.  Although we couldn’t understand a lot of what they said the passion was extremely evident.  It was good to see that they didn’t fall into opposing groups along gender lines, but rather remained unsegregated.  However, there were a few key differences between girls and boys.  The biggest one was that the boys thought their town was pretty much free of harassment while the girls had personal stories that said otherwise.  It was an important discussion for them to have, and the first time a lot of them had been in a free, open, and safe forum like this.  A lot of them told us afterwards how much they liked it.  One even thanked us not just for running it, but for coming to Morocco so there was a chance for it to run.  On our other gender day we showed a video (again provided by the GAD committee) that tells the stories of six successful Moroccan women.  Again we provided them with Arabic discussion questions from GAD and let them self-moderate a discussion.  Both days were great.

After camp was over for the day we would plan the next day and explore the town.  We met some colorful characters: an English teacher who told us the translations of all our Arabic names, an optometrist who made my friend a free new pair of glasses (with frames from his own brand), a girl with good English (learned at the Peace Corps camp in El Jedida) with a lip piercing and a love of metal (even in Fes I didn’t find any female metal heads), a university student who likes country music.  I know all these musical tastes since I finally got around to buying a guitar here.  At last, it’s been much too long.

We also went to a few local events.  My friend’s host brother works at a center for disabled youth, and one night we went to a pageant the center put on by and for the youth and their parents.  Professional musicians and comedians swapped acts with the kids.  It was very heartwarming, though in that strange Moroccan fashion they dragged all three of us PCVs onto stage to have photos with the kids at the end, even though my friend is the only one who ever has or ever will do work with them.  They just wanted to remember we were there.  A few other times the optometrist took us to the English class he is attending in the evenings.

After a fantastic couple of weeks camp ended and I had to repeat the long trip back to site, which was somehow four hours longer than the trip up.  Luckily the guy sitting next to me was interesting, a Moroccan who works as a waiter at a restaurant in Valencia, Spain back home for a holiday for Ramadan.  His sister works in Manhattan and it’s his life goal to save up enough money to go visit her, so he was very excited to find himself next to a New Yorker.  Ramadan started just after I got back, and I am participating in the fast.  It is day six now.  From morning prayer (sobh, just before dawn) to sunset prayer (lmaghreb) I don’t eat and don’t drink anything, including water.  The first two days I was getting over a cold, so I had to cheat and take a few sips, but once I started to feel better on the third day I’ve gone without.  Each evening I break the fast with a different family at lftor (breakfast).  Lftor consists of harira (Moroccan spiced tomato soup, often with chickpeas and rice noodles), xubz shama (literally “fat bread,” bread stuffed with onions, animal fat, and tomato sauce inside), shpeckia (a honey pastry), tamarind (dates), milk, juice, tea, water, and assorted pastry.  It is pretty amazing.  I had expected that people would wait for the call to prayer to end before starting lftor, but in most houses people are eating by the end of the first Allah akbr.  Before dawn people eat sohr, a meal and water substantial enough to hold them through the day.

The first couple of days were hard, even though I was cheating with the water.  Since then it has gotten easier.  My only problem with Ramadan is that it is utterly unproductive.  Students don’t want to have class (I can’t blame them), so I’m left with almost no work.  Despite that, I’m extremely lethargic from lack of food (notice how long it took me to write this post, even though I’m not doing anything).  I’ve been reading a lot, studying some, and hope to start writing syllabi, but it’s hard to get passionate.  I can only do anything that involves using my mind in the morning; by the afternoon I’m too spent to be useful.  Luckily the heat has gone down and I’m able to go outside and walk a little, or sit in the shade and talk with people, or watch the soccer game.  Yeah, soccer game.  A group of middle-aged adults play soccer every afternoon on a parking lot, after having not eaten or drank anything all day.  Moroccans are nuts for soccer.  Although I’m studying and practicing a lot my Darija is a little worse than usual, as is my friends’ English, even after lftor.  We do get noticeably better at speaking the other’s language again after food, but it’s definitely not up to our usual caliber.  After lftor in the evenings people hang out in the public garden, just like usual.  I’ve been bringing my guitar out, to the great amusement of the local children.  I made the mistake of learning a Brazilian song they all like, and now they request it all the time.  Along with Enrique Iglesias, which I refuse to learn.  Sometimes their music tastes don’t make sense.  Of course, mine don’t often either.

Alright, finally all updated.  I apologize for all the grammatical and structural mistakes I’m sure I missed editing, but I blame Ramadan for those.  While my Darija is suffering more my English also is taking a beating from the lack of food and water.

P.S. Another funny language story.  The other day I met a guy in town back from his studies at university in the States!  He studies business in Newark.  As is usual when I first meet a new English speaker I spoke Darija while he spoke English.  He complimented me on how well I was learning the language after just a few months.  I thanked him and explained that when a language surrounds you all the time it’s easy to learn quickly.  Except I didn’t say quickly.  The word “quickly,” zrb, is quite close to the word “blue,” zrq, when you’re in a Ramadan induced language haze, and you forget your basics, like which is quickly and which is blue.  So yes, when a language surrounds you all the time it is quite easy to learn in a blue manner.  Sometimes I wonder why I’m fasting, and the humor of moments like this more than justifies the starvation.