Moroccan Time

One of the most difficult things to get used to, culturally, has been Moroccan time - more appropriately described as an oxymoron. Imagine a world where time is only a guideline at best, and 4pm actually means around 5 or 6pm. maybe. We spent 45 minutes in a sidewalk cafe today waiting for some people from reseau maillage to show up. Right before that, we waited 30 minutes at a bus stop for my friend Moonya, who told us she'd be at the station in five minutes. In addition, the standard workday in Morocco is 9am - 12, and 2:30pm-6. This gives them over two hours to eat lunch, even the kids come home.
Part of this comes from a much more relaxed attitude about time in general, Moroccans seem to rely often on fate, and remark "God willing," when referring to time. Concerns such as family matters and friends are more important than being on time, and if a Moroccan runs into someone on the street, they might very well end up being twenty minutes late to lunch... or an hour or two.
This has some benefits. For once in my life, I'm not wearing a watch constantly, and... I've just relaxed in general. Men seem to spend an inordinate amount of time at cafes, sipping the a la menthe or coffee, reading their papers and conversiing with friends. It's really not a bad life. However, it's still incredibly difficult to adjust to. I've started getting up earlier, going out to get bread in the morning, take a break, then spend the afternoon ambling around the medina, and there's definitely an appeal to the lifestyle.
The problem is, and this has been echoed most recently by the Moroccan's western-educated king, is that not a lot, at least on the surface, seems to get done. Most buildings are constantly "under renovation," sometimes with people working, sometimes not. There are many half-finished construction projects by the beach, and on the surface, you really don't see the same sort of goal-oriented hustle and bustle that you see in America, everything is much more casual. It's kind of a double-edged sword for me, because I love the opportunity to just act more casually, I mean, it is summer after all. However, I also get the nagging feeling that... more can be happening. Part of it is this American culture ingrained in me that's so highly competitive and time-oriented, and I can't quite seem to escape it. Not to sound overly paternal, but I wonder if a little more... acceptance of concrete time would help Morocco.

La Plage

Today we took a bus way out of Rabat to one of the many public beaches dotting the moroccan atlantic coastline. It was pretty funny, because the bus we had to catch was kind of across town, ie: we had to walk through a fair amount of rabat in beach gear, we all looked pretty ridiculous, towels around us, i had my nose white with all the sunscreen lathered on, etc. By the time we made it all the way across the medina, we must've had a considerable crowd of onlookers (by the way, i've had to get used to being stared at. by EVERYBODY. all the time). I kind of made light of the situation by acting like a stupid american, going "ou est la piscine?" ( where is the swimming pool).
The actual beach was pretty damn nice, minus the sands of hellfire that have charred my feet brownish-black. There were mostly men down by the water, but several women too, although many of them stayed behind in the umbrellas. The exception were these little tarts (who couldn't have been legal) who wore bikinis and seemed enamored with our pale american bodies? Of course, a moroccan location could not be complete without the vendors. A few guys walked around with plates piled high with american doughnuts, selling them for a measly dirham - or around 11 cents. Other men sold random *frozen* goods, which had been turned to mush by the cardboard boxes they carried them in.
Afterwards, i went over to my new office/community center area and met with the people I'd be working with on monday. They're all incredibly passionate and really care about these kids, and their passion definitely makes the extremely committing work worthwhile. I'm going to be involved in a range of stuff, from fundraising, to teaching intermediate english, to doing large and small-scale projects, ranging from painting the walls of the community center, to organizing soccer tournaments and computer info sessions. Suffice to say, it's going to be busy.

MacGyver

We've christened the man who runs a small store across the street as "MacGyver." this guy's shop includes everything from charcoals for shisha and tobacco, to shampoo, to candy bars, to cameras (!). Given the space, it's pretty damn amazing, he even sold us a garbage can and some toilet paper recently. Nick's watch managed to break last week, so we went over to MacGyver to see if he could point us in the direction of a watch repair shop. Instead, he took the watch, opened it up, fixed it, put in a new battery, and charged us like 12 dirhams ($1.35 or so) for the whole thing. All this guy has to do now is construct us some sort of cd player (which we are in dire need of) out of toothpicks, a pen, and a stick of bubblegum, and he'll surpass the legend of the TV one.

A Day at the Medina

I spent a good few hours today strolling around the medina with some friends. It's pretty much the oldest part of Rabat, and definitely a central gathering point for the local population. It's lined with a ridiculous number of stalls, selling innumerable amounts of random stuff. The best part is the sheer number of knockoff goods. All the t-shirts are of 3 varieties: diesel, dolce and gabbana, or some sort of english expression you'd find on engrish.com There's also lots of knockoff Puma and Nike hats and shoes. The funniest thing i saw were these knockoff havainas sandals. They had the brazilian flag, etc on them (since they are brazilian), and on the heel they say "designed in italy."
Besides the designer knockoffs, there's misc pottery, electronics, traditional clothing, and lots of different food. The most colorful shops are the spice shops, which, for once, literally look like the pictures in the lonely planet guidebook - we're talking mountains of spices of different colors. I also found a store that sold live turtles - not as pets, mind you.
There was also a lot more begging in the medina. Literally, i would see beggars from far off, and we'd make eye contact, and then they'd close their eyes and pretend to be blind and wave their sticks at us.

Stray Cats

One thing that I've had to get used to is the unbelievable number of stray cats in Rabat. They travel in groups around the neighborhood, picking at trash and causing general mayhem - storekeepers spend some time every day shooing them down the street away from their food. The tricky part for me is, as evidenced by my profile picture, i'm a cat lover, got three of them at home (and two dogs). So, especially at first it was difficult, now i've gotten to a point where if I see them, i'll leave out a bit of food, but that's about as much as I can do for them.
Laura, our most... interesting roommate in what we now term "The Real World: Rabat," decided to bring home a stray dog to the apartment. Unfortunately, I wasn't around for it, but supposedly she showed up one day last week with a rather mangy stray dog - that she named Lola. From what I've gathered from the other aiesecers, Lola had fleas, and was rather "aggressive and barky." Lola even went so far as to gnaw on my friend Gabe's leg during one dinner, and even bit Laura rather hard... and she never bothered to check herself for rabies. Anyways, when the moroccan aiesecers discovered the dog, they managed to achieve the impossible - to get Laura to do something she didn't want to do- to get rid of the stray dog.

Thé a la menthe

Another amazing, and sweet, moroccan drink is the mint tea. When i first read guidebooks on morocco, one of the common themes was that social interactions were built around tea. If somebody visits you, or if you even do business with someone, there is normally mint tea involved... It's basically brewed green tea with a large amount of mint leaves and a generous helping of sugar, served hot. It tastes pretty damn good, and the mint leaves (which you can buy in bulk at many stores), give it a
fresh kick.
There's a quasi-ceremony that accompanies the serving of mint tea. First off, you drink the tea in small glasses, normally with moroccan designs etched on them, served from a small teapot where the tea was brewed. The technical part comes in pretty quickly: after pouring a small amount of mint tea into a glass, you put the tea back into the pot to mix up the tea and keep all the parts equal, so the sugar doesn't fall to the bottom of the pot before you even serve it. After doing that, you pour glasses of tea from ridiculously high heights. I've seen moroccan people that do it 2 feet in the air, or more - and considering that the glasses are nothing huge, it's quite the feat. Additionally, the goal is to do it without splashing any of the hot tea on the guests, so it takes a fair amount of practice.

Jus d'orange

one of the best parts about tooling around rabat is the street food, especially the fresh-squeezed OJ over by the grand-taxi stand. This vendor has huge piles of Oranges around his stand, and a juice presser and some glasses of questionable cleanliness. However, this stuff is the fruit of the gods, ridiculously fresh, and sweeter than your average tropicana carton. And for only 2 dirhams, I can get 4 glasses for a buck...
All of the produce her has been amazing, one out of 3 street stores specializes in produce, and there's everything from avocados to bananas. Keep in mind, this is coming from a guy who's not incredibly fruit/vegetable-friendly.
Another thing i tried with the produce was a drink called a "panache" at a shop that sold "chesseburgers." I was used to the french drink, which is half lemonade and half beer, and this had neither... it was basically every fruit they had in stock + some yogurt, all blended together. Also worth trying again.
One thing about moroccan food that i've had to get used to is how sweet everything is, even the ketchup that they serve w/ frites is much sweeter than any heinz ketchup. I've kind of been getting used to it, i even had nutella for breakfast with some local pain rond that all the local street sellers have.

Rabat

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in Rabat, Morocco right now. Suffice to say, i've found out where i'm working, and i'm now staying in an apartment... without going into details on my interesting day on monday, involving talking to half of the municipal employees at two prefecture buildings in casa, i managed to find the director of reseau maillage in casa, who has NO idea that the salaam program is going on this year. Luckily though, he knew the people in Rabat, and i got in touch with them. The director in Casa, Mr. Ghaita, had this pseudo-security guard come with me to the train station. This guy, whose name i don't remember, came on the train with me (kind of against my wishes), where he proceeded to make me promise to call his brother, who spoke english... he rode with me to rabat. i passed the mildly awkward time by pulling out the ipod and having us share the earbuds. He liked bob dylan and the allman brothers, but had mixed opinions on broken social scene. keep in mind that this guy spoke no french at all, so all of our communication was pantomiming.
once in rabat, i met up with the moroccan aiesecers and the other 8 or so people i'll be working with here. we have this huge apartment, and but no real furniture or anything, and i didn't even bother asking about the lack of a/c. luckily, we can see the atlantic (far off) from our window and get some decent ocean breeze.
some people from one branch of reseau maillage came over last night, and we talked more about the options for helping out. reseau is a big umbrella org that deals with kids, and their education in practical matters, computers, english, etc, with the goal of changing morocco for future generations by giving these kids guidance and real work skills. education in morocco can get expensive, and without programs like reseau, there's really no way for these kids to get ahead. the other part of the work, or even the sole part for some of us, involves projects, such as raising money, or getting donations in kind. There's a lot of more straightforward ones, but some are distinctly cultural, and go beyond getting a dentist to go around and give kids checkups in the quartiers populaires. for example, in morocco, it's muslim custom to be circumcised around the age of five, but even that costs money. So, one of the past projects involved a "circumcision wagon" (so to speak), that traveled around and gave circumcisions to kids and young adults.
we also went down to one of the reseau offices qnd talked about other opportunities, such as organizing concert and sporting events... i talked to a lot of the guys who ran it (my french is getting pretty damn good at this point) and they all seemed really motivated and passionate.
cheers for now. when i get a chance, i'll talk more about rabat, and the food and cultural part, etc

now for the positive part

as a side-product of sitting where i am, i can see lots of casablanca, including the gorgeous and gigantic Hassan II mosque, the biggest behind mecca.
I've met some amazingly cool moroccan people - i talked to the moroccan young lady next to me on the flight for a good solid 3 hours, all en francais! two very helpful moroccans aided me at the airport, and even offered for me to crash at their place. the helper guys at the train station were awesome, and i BSed with them in this arabic-french mix for a good hour or so. besides the goddamn cheating cabbies, all the people have been amazingly nice, and despite the rather "negative" tone of my last post ( sorry, i REALLY needed to vent), i've been nice in return, and its really made what's happened so far bearable. i'll post a lot more observations later once i get more grounded/showered ( another perk of this ridiculously expensive hotel - hot showers!)

jesus

wanna hear a story? well i have got a fucking story (btw any sp mistakes are courtesy of french-language keyboards).

i am currently in the hyatt regency in casablanca, why, you ask, is isaac here? great question. amazing question. have now been up for a RIDICULOUSLY long period of time, and will now give all of you the "short" version.

flashback to friday the 10th of june. i board a plane for jfk airport, from there i will head to casa from nyc. in theory. unfortunately, after 5 diff excuses ivolving weather in diff locations, problems with the planes weight, and then fuel, our flight is cancelled after sitting on the runway for two and a half hours. As are many other flights due to inclement weather. so, i get shipped back to the minneapolis airport. fast forward 5 hours later, after two diff ticket counters and managing to lose my tickets (thanks again maria from delta!)I get a flight for sat the 11th, going from minneapolis to montreal, and then straight to casablanca. during this whole process, i had been emailing aiesec in morocco informing them of the changes via my sister.
ok, saturday the 11th. after taking 50 min to verify my changed tickets when I arrived, i was finally clared for a boarding pass. after deciding to change the gate to LITERALLY the opposite end of the airport last-minute, i managed to go out and pick smething up from my mom, re-enter the airport, and make it just in time for the flight. whew. At montreal, i managed to clear canadian customs without getting my cheched bags. silly me, i naively assumed they were checked to my final destination, forgetting that you must re-check. after a tense forty minutes trying to re-enter customs, i was able to get a sympathetic northwest employee to get my bags, saying; and i quote "gosh, this happens all the time here because they don't tell people you have to pick them up." after another 35 minutes spent trying to find the royal air maroc gate, thanks to some incredibly unhelpful quebecois, i got my tickets and got on the flight to casa. arriving in casa was nice at first, until i realized two things: nobody was there to pick me up for some inexplicable reason, and i had no clue where i was staying( or if i was in casa or rabat, because aiesec hates the concept of concrete information) or how to contact anyone, since i had left my folder at home after the first cancellation thingy. fast forward three hours at the casa airport, still nobody. so, i blindly make my way to the train station, and manage to then get a taxi that takes me to a cyber cafe with internet that doesn't allow for outgoing email messages?!an hour after that, i say "fuck it, where's the nicest hotel?"
this brings me to my present, still-ambiguous situation. thanks to the concierge ' and my rapidly improving french skills, i now have a number i can call tomorrow so i can be connected to this guy who works for reseau maillage ( keep in mind this is all happening ona sunday, so anything important is closed). i also have a street on which there is a reseau maillage office, just a street, not an address. which brings me back to now...