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!