Friday, January 25, 2013

Another Holiday


            This past Thursday was another Muslim religious holiday, Eid Mawlid An Nabbaou, the day celebrating the Prophet’s birthday.  As with most Muslim holidays, people celebrate by getting together with family and friends and sharing special foods, specifically (at least in my region) bgheir (a delicious light pancake, usually topped in honey and often served with olive oil and jam), hlwa (cookies), a cake that amounts to a super delicious bunt cake, and, of course, tea.  As usual a split my time between the various families that invited me to participate—meaning I ate sugar for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as everyone saved the special, traditional treats for when they’d invited the American over.  My day started with breakfast at my mudir’s.  I had carefully selected an outfit meant to respect the holiday (translation: I wore a green shirt (the color of the prophet) under my traditional Moroccan wear).  His teenage son didn’t want to get up and join breakfast, complaining it was before eleven on a holiday.  Afterwards I went to my host family’s house where, upon seeing my new asanar (traditional Tamazight cloak) my host uncle decided he needed a new one too, and decided he would change from the white ones he’s always had to a black one like mine.  He also wants a new, black djellaba.  In other words, I’ve inspired my host uncle to dress like a Sith Lord.  Success?

            After leaving their place I ran into a group of local boys with whom I often have far ranging (though by no means deep) conversations.  One of them is fascinated by Marx and other 19th century thinkers and asked my opinion of him, but before we could develop that topic another asked what I think about Beethoven—I guess it was a Germanic kind of day—and before we got too deep into him we were on to opera and Verdi.  The Marxist prefers French opera, where I’m out of my depth, knowing nothing about it.  From there we made the logical jump to beat boxing, hip-hop, and break dancing.  One kid claimed to be a master break dancer, though he wasn’t enough of one to actually show us his skills.  Another kid did do what sounded to me like a pretty good cover of a French rap, and the Marxist tried to freestyle in English.  There wasn’t really sense to it, and the pronunciation was a little scary, but the rhythm rocked.  All the while they would whistle and point whenever a pretty girl walked by, but after I tried a couple of times to explain why they shouldn’t do that they stopped pestering the girls and instead just asked me what I thought of each one.  I guess, or at least hope, it was less annoying for the girls at least!

            Later, after the young girls forgot to show up to the Frisbee session they’d scheduled earlier in the week (or perhaps I forgot we weren’t doing it on the holiday), I ran into a couple of the same boys and one of them asked me for the low down on Satanism and why they use the same five pointed star symbol as is on the Moroccan flag.  Not too long after that though we were on to local history, he asked if I’d ever seen Zouia (the ruins from a few posts ago), and went on to explain how at one time this region was all small, warring kingdoms until the first Alowie (the current king’s family) subdued them, though for a brief time before then the Saadian Sultan in Marrakech had subjugated them, and during other periods rulers from Fes had great influence here.  He’s actually a medieval history student at the university in Meknes now, so he and I often talk about history, especially local, Spanish, and Crusading, since that’s where we share most knowledge.  I’m sure we’d have launched on another tangent soon enough, but I glanced at my watch and realized I was late for meeting a student for another holiday celebration.

            At that student’s house I tried my hand at reading an Arabic wall decoration, a Quranic quote, which soon led to us discussing the Quran.  One thing we discussed which I don’t think of talked about on this blog before is the widespread belief that the Quran says many things poetically that science later confirmed.  The example my student used was how a baby grows in the womb, which I guess works, though unless my English translation says something very different from the Arabic you have to give the poetry a whole lot license for it to be exact science.  Since I’ve been reading more about Islamic philosophy, theology, and mysticism recently this became a jumping off point to a discussion of literalism and symbolic reading of the Quran, specifically the interpretations of Ibn Sina, called Avicenna in the West.  Ibn Sina fascinates me because he read and modified the ideas of the same philosophers, specifically the Neo-Platonist Plotinus, as many of the early Christian philosophers and theologians, including Augustine, and came to a shockingly similar conception of God (immaterial, out of the bounds of the physical universe, similar to a Platonic Ideal (the Ideal of Ideals), most understandable (though still ineffable) through contemplation and study), though obviously without the complications of Christology (though he actually did have an intermediary ideal taking the place of Christ as a stepping stone between man’s intellect and God’s).  My student of course knew all about Ibn Sina, and also knew that some other thinkers castigated him for importing foreign ideas into Islam, but had never heard about Neo-Platonism, or, in fact, of Plato.  This is the second time I’ve met a highly educated Moroccan who has never heard of Plato, which makes me wonder what they’re teaching them in these schools.  It must be a strange education, to know that Ibn Sina and Ibn Rashd (Averroes), two of the most highly respected Muslim philosophers—knowing about them here is kind of like knowing about Descartes or Voltaire in the West, impossible not to even if you haven’t necessarily read them—wrote things which other thinkers thought were foreign imports that nevertheless made a deep impression on Islam but not to know which things were foreign imports and who had originally thought them. 

Moving on from Plato, but staying in the realm of Quranic interpretation, my student talked about how most Muslims (like most Christians) are not well informed about Quranic interpretations, and the true meaning of many passages is obscure.  People also often mix folk traditions in with Islamic traditions, but call them both Islamic, so it’s hard to know what in the countryside is Islam and what isn’t.  Of course, since this holiday celebrating the prophet’s birth wasn’t retrofitted to happen on the same day as an old Roman party it seemed to me like these weren’t overwhelming modifications to incorporate local beliefs.

A long and fascinating day, as I’m sure you can tell.  While I ended it by reading more Islamic philosophy before bedtime I’ll let you guys end it with some of Joha’s wisdom:

Joha and his son were going to the market one day.  The boy was riding on the donkey and Joha was walking beside them.  A man passed by and said, “Look at that!  Young people today have no respect for their elders.  That strong, young boy is riding and the older man is walking.”
So Joha told his son, “You’d better let me ride,” so they changed places.
Soon another man came by and said, “Look at that, that poor little boy has to walk in the hot sun while his lazy father rides.”
So Joha told his son, “I guess we should both walk.”
Then two more men came by and saw they both walking.  One turned to the other and said, “Look at those two fools.  They have a fine donkey and neither of them is riding it on this hot day.”
Joha turned to his son and said, “You see, it does no good to listen to what others say.”

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Expansions and Contractions


            If there are two things you have to get good at as a Peace Corps Volunteer they are rolling with the punches and being ready to respond to the unexpected.  The last week or so highlights both how I’ve gotten better at these two things and at how I still need to work at them.  This last week has been an exciting time where my work has really expanded, but also a frustrating time where a lot of the problems I’ve thus far been able to skirt around came to the fore.  There are some funny stories, some depressing ones, and one or two heartening ones, so get ready to roll along with me for a bit.

            The first story I’ll tell is about my S.I.D.A. (A.I.D.S. by its French acronym) event last Saturday.  Although I was the primary organizer, this event was, theoretically, an ideal Peace Corps event, the idea to have it was my mudir’s, the woman actually doing the presentation is a local woman who works with a national organization for the prevention of S.I.D.A., all I had to do was act as the middle man bringing these groups together, the American facilitating a Moroccan event.  I should hope it’s needless to say but it didn’t work out that smoothly.

            After connecting the organization (O.P.A.L.S., a French acronym for the Organization for the Prevention of the Spread of A.I.D.S.) with my Dar Chabab and running between them a couple of times all I had to do was have a projector ready for the event and pre- and post- tests printed so we could see if the students actually learned anything.  Although my Dar Chabab doesn’t have a projector I found an organization in town which would lend us one the day of the event (they needed it earlier that day), and although I was a bit nervous that my normal copy shop was closed for a local holiday the day before the event I got copies printed at another shop the day of.  Everything looked fine until I went to the association to get the projector, about a half hour before the event.  My contact wasn’t there.  I called her, no response.  Uh oh.  With the room set up and the woman from the association on her way it was a little worrying.  My contact called me just ten minutes before the event and apologized, but she hadn’t been around since she was looking for her boss, the only one with a key to the room with the projector.  She’d found out where he was (at some café) and had sent a student to bring the keys.

            Back at the Dar Chabab with projector in hand we started to set up the computer (my mudir’s laptop) and projector together.  We plugged them in, only to discover the projector didn’t work.  I returned it as my mudir, the woman from the association, and a couple other local volunteers set up the computer so that hopefully most people could see (with 50 students it was wishful thinking).  My contact said that it was strange it wasn’t working now; it had earlier.  She grabbed another power chord and it started to run, so I brought it back.  In the meantime things were ready at the Dar Chabab so while everyone else got the projector running I put in the USB with our presentation.  Now, one thing I didn’t check, but should of, was if my mudir had power point on his computer.  I had assumed he would have an old version, and saved an older format accordingly, but it turned out he didn’t have any version.  I ran home and resaved the file as a PDF, came back and opened it in a PDF reader.  Then we plugged the projector into the computer, which was when we discovered my mudir’s visual jack was broken.  My computer wouldn’t work (Macs need an adaptor), but a student offered to run home and bring his laptop.  He brought it and plugged in the projector, it worked and I tried the USB.  He didn’t have power point, no problem I had the PDF format.  It turned out he didn’t have a PDF reader either.  I didn’t know it was possible to get a computer that isn’t bundled with a PDF reader.

            About this time (around 40 minutes after our start time, the students were done with their pretest and fidgeting) my mudir disappeared.  Looking around I said “alright, I guess we’d better start,” when he came running back in caring an ancient CPU from God knows where (it later turned out to be his home computer).  Projector worked, power point worked, we were ready to go.  He came back with a monitor and keyboard, shocked that I already had the program running but alright, let’s get started.  Then the power went out on the half of the room with the computer and the projector.  But not the other half.  That was strange.  Someone had flipped the lights so the projection would be brighter, but it turned out that on that half of the room the outlet was connected to the same switch as the lights.  After restarting everything we finally started, about an hour late.  It was the Platonic Ideal of the start of an event in Morocco.

            Once it finally got going the event was really good.  The woman is a fantastic presenter and the kids were, for the most part, very engaged.  A few near the back did the very rude (though culturally normal) continual walk in and out of the activity, but as a native it didn’t phase her the way it used to phase me.  I noticed part way through that the students were taking notes on the back of their pretests and made the decision that we just wouldn’t collect data then since it’s more important that they have the information than I know exactly how effective the event was.  After the event was over there was the obligatory “let’s give our opinion” session that follows any Moroccan event, where a few interesting things came up.

            The first boy to speak blamed the government for the spread of S.I.D.A.  Specifically, since the government fails to help provide good jobs for rural women some of them feel compelled to enter a life of prostitution just to make ends meet.  Then a group of boys started to call S.I.D.A. a shameful disease, but a local teacher made the counterargument that shameful or no S.I.D.A. is here and you have to know about it.  Then another local weighed in, saying that anyone with S.I.D.A. must have engaged in un-Islamic activities.  This got me (and quite a few other people) bristling, even while some of the audience nodded in agreement.  There are, of course, hundreds of arguments against this, I even had three ready to go immediately if no one offered one (the case of a woman, faithful to her husband, whose husband is less faithful, contracts the disease, and then passes it to her; a man who goes to a hospital for a transfusion who is accidently given tainted blood; a baby born to an infected mother), but thankfully the presenter stepped in and, somewhat more diplomatically, explained that Islam is one thing, medicine another, and you need to know how to defend yourself regardless.  Then my mudir and I stepped in to end the activity since it was time to go and we wanted that to be the last word.

            Moving on from A.I.D.S. to a more fun topic, I’ve recently made a bunch of young Moroccan girls (8-12) obsessed with Frisbee.  It started the other day when about ten girls showed up an hour early to class.  I usually hang around the Dar Chabab for that hour before class and entertain any early birds with card games or chess, but ten was too many to do that with so I ran home, grabbed my Frisbee, and took the girls outside.  I had been a little worried that the older generation might not like that too much, girls in rural Morocco almost never play sports outside, it’s culturally very abnormal, but the adults who weren’t indifferent had big smiles watching the girls have so much fun.  Only the young boys (same ages) didn’t like it since the girls won’t play if boys—other than me, who these younger girls have now started calling their big brother—are playing and I wouldn’t let them ruin the girls’ fun.  Over the next few days I played several times with both the girls and the boys separately, but I found that with the girls I had to spend most of my time chasing away boys, some of whom get very violent and start throwing things like sticks, boxes of dates, and even soccer balls at the girls.  One boy said I was a “shameful” person for giving the girls an event before the boys!  I discovered that carrying a big stick keeps them further at bay, since some of them have never stayed long enough to realize I won’t follow through and actually hit them.  To be honest I shudder to think of how bad behavior will get with them once they realize this.  The boys who threw things I wouldn’t let play with the other boys the next day, and after an obnoxiously long argument they did leave the better-behaved kids alone.

            With all but the best behaved boys I had to spend Frisbee time fetching the Frisbee from various roofs since the boys won’t pass to each other and just try to throw as hard as they can.  After awhile I started to not allow boys who didn’t try to pass to each other to play, but instead of learning from their bad behavior like they had when I wouldn’t let them play the first time they reverted so that they were even worse than before, one day even going so far as to steal the Frisbee and not returning it to me or the better behaved boys until I knocked it out of the air.  Since I’ve had so many problems with this group both in and out of class I immediately banned them from all further classes and activities—a ban I hope to rescind someday if they show improvement.  To be honest, I don’t have high hopes.  After this I realized that I was left with about six boys under 14 still allowed into my activities, and I was worried that my service would be marked by me letting the boys of town down.  However in all my younger classes the rest of the week a bunch of boys who I’ve never worked with but seen around started coming.  It turns out they hadn’t wanted to come to class because all the misbehaving boys (called dsar in Arabic, which loosely translates to brat/bully) were there!  My new policy is to not let the dsarin (plural of dsar) in and otherwise operate on a strict one-strike you’re out policy per class with the others, and we’ve shot through new material since then with only one boy removed one time and he much better since then.

            The same day the dsarin took the Frisbee was also one of the few days I’ve had a really major behavioral problem with older boys.  It’s exam time in Moroccan high schools and a bunch of boys who’ve never come before came in the hopes that one review session would help them pass their exams.  The idea was even stranger since they seemed to think that they’d be able to review while also making strange noises in the back of class and failing to impress the girls who come regularly by shouting out incorrect English.  I told them they’d have to leave if they continued this and they complained that they had an exam and had to review!  The behavior continued so I told the worst offender he’d have to leave.  He refused, something that’s never happened before.  My mudir wasn’t around, so I couldn’t fall back on his authority and this kid continued to bellow (and at one point yodel) and stop the class from proceeding, so I went over, stepped right up to him (thankfully he’s one of only a handful of students bigger than me, so it didn’t look like bullying), and backed him out the door, though again thankfully I didn’t have to touch him at all until we were at the door and he tried to push his way back in.  He couldn’t push past me and so gave up, but unfortunately this did nothing to force the rest into line and my regular students walked out about the time one of the dsar pulled out a bottle of bubbles and started blowing them at the girls!  When my regular students left so did I, because there was no point working with these older dsarin.

            Now, that was a huge bummer obviously and I was feeling pretty down but over the next few days some good things happened to pick me back up.  Firstly, the boy who I had to walk out came up to me the next day and gave me an obviously heartfelt apology for his behavior the day before.  Secondly, my younger students, freed of their own dsar issue, started to make huge strides forward.  They also simply continue to be adorable.  Thirdly, my most advanced students (a couple of college drop-outs and a French teacher) had a great lesson reading and interpreting the Declaration of Independence.  Lastly, the young women I teach at the artisana had a major break through all around the same time and can now speak reasonably well (for beginners) in four tenses: present simple, past simple, present continuous, and past continuous.  This last development really reinforced for me one of the reasons I like teaching (even while I still don’t particularly like teaching ESL).  There is sometimes a moment in class when your realize, wow, that student just got it, right then, they didn’t understand something and now they understand it.  It’s a great feeling to know you helped them comprehend something new.

            I’ll leave you with a Joha story:

            A man brought a letter to Joha to read but the handwriting was very poor.  Joha looked at it, but said, “I can’t read that; it’s illegible.”
            The man got very angry.  “What kind of wise man are you?” he said.  You wear a turban and you can’t even read a simple letter.”
            Joha immediately too the turban off his head and put it on the man’s head.  “Now that you’re wearing the turban, you read it,” Joha said.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Where the Caravan Camels Roam


            I brought in the New Year by emerging from the desert on camelback.  Needless to say I missed family and friends back home this holiday season, but if I have to miss you all I’m glad I did it in the most awesome way possible.  The way involving a camel.  Actually, they’re massively uncomfortable, but we’ll get to that later.

            The Christmas season started a day or two after my last post when the first of my friends arrived at my site to help decorate and carry the massive amount of veggies we’d be eating for the next week from souk.  Not too much to talk about there, other than a few culinary successes (I had run out of curry powder, but managed to make a pretty passable blend using spices in my kitchen, the ingredients list on an empty jar, and my nose as guides (I’m sure some of my Indian friends are scoffing that I ever use premixed powder)).  Before the other guests arrived we took a hike up a nearby mountain, stopping off at a local friend’s family farm, since Moroccan hikes often involve a tea break.  Up on the mountain we found evidence of wild boar.  For one terrifying moment we were convinced we were done for when we confused the sound of flushed quails for a boar snarl.  If you’ve never heard it before they’re quite loud and terrifying en masse for such small birds.  Once all my guests had arrived we made a valiant attempt at Christmas decorations, complete with a singing Alvin and the Chipmunks tree left by a previous volunteer, blue tinsel, a blow up Santa we’d disconcertingly found in Khenifra, and even some jerry-rigged mistletoe.  It led to a weird juxtaposition between indoors and out.  Inside my house ‘twas the season to by jolly, outside it was just any old day in Morocco.

            Christmas itself went remarkably smoothly, though one of my local friends got to play hero when he dealt with a dangerously clogged toilet.  This Christmas plumbing miracle netted him an invite to a solidly American holiday breakfast of eggs, pancakes, and sweet potato hash browns (sweet and savory), though we had to warn him off the bacon one of my guest’s boyfriends had brought from the States.  The day after Christmas we hosted a Christmas party at the local Dar Chabab.  Precluding most of the religious elements (we just mentioned that it celebrates the birth of the Christian prophet), we explained how Christmas is an important American holiday celebrated by spending time with family, exchanging gifts, and eating special foods.  We caroled a little for the kids, explained Santa Claus and the tree (the singing tree also caroled), and served Christmas cookies (which were a hit) and apple cider (which wasn’t).  After most of the 83 younger kids filed out we sat and chatted with some of the older kids, who we taught the chorus of “Deck the Halls” and in turn heard some songs sung to celebrate the birth of the prophet Mohammed.  Other than the one girl who late in the night asked “Shnu Christmas?” (What is Christmas?), the party went well, and luckily the other students could define it for her.  For me, the happiest moment was when the director of the youth center made a speech for the younger kids about peace, goodwill, and how Americans, Moroccans, and the rest of the world aren’t really that different, proving that he at least understood the true sentiment of the holiday.

            The days between Christmas and New Year’s were long and hard and I kind of wish I’d taken the time off instead of trying to teach since I don’t think my lessons were all that good.  Despite that, the students seemed happy and kept up learning, so it could have been worse.  The day before New Year’s Eve my scattered guests returned (some had stayed and helped with classes) and we all travelled together down to Erfoud, a city at the edge of the Sahara desert.  Meeting up with a host of other volunteers we set out into the desert from the popular starting point of Merzouga. 



Now, without further ado, my impressions of riding a camel.  They’re not particularly high, as I said above camels are not a comfortable form of travel.  The first day I rode a smaller, older camel (who the Moroccans called El-Hajj) with a lot of experience, and with him the ride wasn’t too bad.  After a few minutes my body learned how to roll with his motion—it’s not too far off of the motion used to stay stable on a boat—and since he wasn’t all that fat I didn’t get the famous saddle sores people always complain about.  However, on New Year’s riding out of the desert I rode the largest camel, a young and inexperienced buck we christened Walt (Moroccan name unknown).  Walt was very fat, and I learned all about saddle sores from him.  He also had an inconsistent, rough, and pronounced rhythm, so while I’d ridden gracefully on El-Hajj, Walt made me feel like I was riding a jackhammer.  If I were ever to be in a caravan I’d want El-Hajj, though I guess if I were riding a camel into battle Walt would be the beast of choice.

Since I had my beard and my friend had his djellaba he was "Ali Baba" and I was "Ali Baba without djellaba"













The desert is too stunningly beautiful for words.  “Desolate” doesn’t begin to describe it, “breathtaking” is an understatement, and “expansive” can’t contain the wild expanse of sand.  Even the pictures won’t come close to doing it justice this time; it’s just too otherworldly.





Out at the desert camp we ate tagines, watched the sunset, listened to our guides sing and drum, sang for them in return, gazed at the stars, and traded riddles and jokes late into the night.  That was actually harder than it sounds, none of the guides spoke much English and some of them weren’t fluent in Darija either, their first language was Tamazight and one or two only knew as much Arabic as we do.  One claimed he knew less.  That being said, we still got by.  I’ll share my favorite Moroccan riddle I learned that night.  There are three sisters.  One always eats, one sleeps and will never rise again, the last will travel and never return.  Who are they?  I’ll put the answer at the end of the post.


After I returned home I jumped right back into classes, and I’m glad I did because some students mentioned an interest in organizing the old Dar Chabab library so that we can start lending out books.  After the writing club on Saturday four students and my mudir sat through a lesson of mine on library organization and we started to decide on Dewey decimal numbers for some of the nonfiction collection.  They really seemed to enjoy it and took ownership of the project really quickly, so hopefully this time the library will continue after the volunteer leaves (it has basically been an unused room since the last Youth Development Volunteer left three years ago).  As for the classes themselves this week I felt like I had some real successes.  In the writing club some students finally had the confidence to write and read some longer pieces.  In my advanced class we started to parse the Declaration of Independence.  While we had to proceed quite slowly I was impressed at how well they dealt with it, because the only “edits” I made were to correct for modern spellings.

That’s all for now, Happy New Year to everyone, and remember, if you want an exotic vacation this year I’m always willing and excited to show people around!

The answer to the riddle:

Fire always eats, kindling sleeps and never rises, and smoke travels but will never return.