Wait, No Hummus?!

After a conversation with Andrew on AIM yesterday, I realized I should probably talk a little bit more about some misconceptions about Moroccan food. First off, I have yet to find hummus or falafel here. None. Pita bread is similarly scarce - I can purchase it in the supermarket, but I have yet to find it on the street or anything. You're much more likely to find either pain rond or baguettes. Normally, when Moroccans serve bread here in Rabat, you'll get a pain rond and some sort of tomato-based dipping sauce. Often, the bread functions as the silverware - you'll use a piece of bread like a pincer to grab food from a communal plate, such as one used for tajine or couscous.

Another thing. Couscous is really only served on fridays. Everybody loves it, etc, but it's a special dish for friday, which is a Muslim holy day (people often pray for several hours, or something along those lines). Additionally, it's normally at lunchtime, not dinner, which becomes the big meal of the day.

It's pretty common to find pizza, sandwiches, burgers, rotisserie chicken, chickpeas, tajine, and stuff along those lines in most sidewalk restaurants. The most common accessory is french fries - which I eat about twice a day... Most sandwiches come with a sack of french fries, or a street vendor will just throw them on top of the sandwich before he wraps it up. I think this is largely a remnant of french colonization, as are the ubiquitous sidewalk cafes.

I literally go to a cafe here every morning. It's not uncommon to find as many as two on one block, all with basically the same schtick: old guys outside sipping cafe noir, cafe au lait, or misc cold drinks. Inside, there's normally one or two overworked waiters, who sell various drinks and juices and normally a small selection of largely french pastries - croissants, pain au chocolat, apple tarts, and other local stuff. It's totally french, and I love it. The only annoying part for me is that it's hard to separate Morocco from France in that regard. While these cafe goings-on are uniquely Moroccan, I almost feel like I'm in some random French city.

An Afternoon with Al-Jazeera

Yesterday, we had a reporter from Al-Jazeera visit our apartment to ostensibly give a presentation on the Arab World after 9/11. After this guy opened with Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, a theory with so many holes in, it's not even worth addressing, I knew the presentation would go nowhere. Soon afterwards, I *found out* that the Jews had left their holy land a long time ago because they wanted to make money because that's all they cared about. After this comment left a third of the Moroccans in the room nodding their heads (admirably, not the AIESECers), I figured it was time to leave. Knowing that A: this guy's english was poor, and B: he wouldn't answer any of my questions directly, I decided to put on the Johnny Cash and lie down for about two hours, all the while hearing loud voices in the main room of the apartment.

After the session, I talked to the rest of the Americans, who came out rather frustrated because the directness of their questions was not reciprocated with direct and clear answers. As the rest went to lay down, I thought more about what this guy had been saying. And once again, I'm ot trying to be Tom Friedman...

The way I see it is this - there needs to be a paradigm shift in regards to how we communicate cross-culturally. One of the big limiters to this ideal state of open discourse is open minds and open education. Any Arab who comes into a conversation on the West and the East with such strongly preconceived notions (don't worry, I'm not only picking on Arabs, everybody needs to be more open) about the enemy, the opposition, or whatever one will term it will never come away with anything positive.

The problem with this prevalent victim mentality in the Middle East is that when you're a victim, you're owed redress. Everything else is tertiary until your the wrongs against you have been righted. The proliferation of this victim mentality on both sides, and the accompanying stereotypes and falsehoods about one another makes the necessary discourse literally impossible.

Possibly because I come from an academic background, where I believe strongly in information (I don't even want to tally how many books I've had to read as a history major), I hold this view. Whatever the reason, I don't really know how to effect change in this type of circumstance. All I can hope for is that people get a chance to talk with other people, no matter what preconceived notions there are (ie: I maybe should have stuck around for the discussion, despite the headache it would have caused...). I was going to end with that immortal, ahem, Rodney King quote, but instead, I'm just going to think about this more. I think misinformation is the greatest sin in this new age of information.

Pour La Sante

Although it's been temperate ever since I've been in Rabat - normally in the 80s and 90s, and sometimes even dipping to the 70s - I've been interested in why people literally don't drink water here. For example, being an American and all, with our 8 glasses a day, I'm always lugging around my oversized Nalgene bottle (with my 89.3: The Current sticker representing). When I'm at the apartment, you'll normally find me with a glass of water, or something along those lines by me (Arab Coke = less sugary + more drinkable). At meals, I can pound down four or five glasses of water (waiters hate me) on a light day. This extends to most of the other members of room, such as my fellow Nalgene-carrier, Mr. Ryan Burbach.

This has only compounded my surprise at the lack of water people drink here. Part of this was recently explained to me by some of my Moroccan friends, who I've found out, are kind of like Europeans in their weird health habits. For instance, Moroccans believe that drinking water during a meal is bad for your health. For some reason, they believe it'll expand your stomach too much and make you sick. This was backed up by the newly arrived dutch trainee, Merrell, who, gasp, agreed with them (by the way, if you're counting, that's now 11 people in one apartment). As a counter to this, I drink exorbitant amounts of water during meals to show them they're wrong, no negative effects yet, besides bloating...

These weird health principles also extend to vitamins, or vitamines en francais. Moroccans love to talk about how many vitamins things have, especially things like fish, which they extoll for their vitamins, and various fruits. However, for digestive reasons, it's a good idea here to eat fruit by itself (so the vitamins don't get diluted?), and at an isolated time during the day. My friend Ziad eats fruits every day around 5pm, so that he can fully benefit from the vitamins... I tried introducing my Centrum Chewables to some of the locals, but they hate that chalky texture (eating a Tums almost sparked a health crisis for one - lots of sputtering and gagging noises).

Doesn't Anybody Understand the Prisoner's Dilemma?!

Yesterday was quite possibly one of the most exhausting days I've had here in Morocco. Waking up at the crack of 7:45 on a sunday, I grabbed a quick shower and headed down to the far side of the Rabat Medina to board the first of two buses that would ferry us all out from Rabat to one of the poorest areas ringing the city.

Once we were there, we encountered pure chaos. AIESEC and several other organizations had banded together to create basically a large-scale free medical clinic on the site of a school. Expecting around 600 Moroccans, we were deluged with over 900. This influx of people was a recipe for chaos, as people rushed the tents to register (where I happened to be working). For the next 5 or so hours, I worked as literally desperate people (who have no other access to health care) tried to get their children and themselves to the front of every line.

The experience was made more challenging by the fact that nobody understood French - it was definitely strictly Dirija. I used what I knew - salaam aleykoom, labas, and stuff along those lines, but the best form of cultural communication was definitely being warm and having a smile on your face. I understood where they were coming from, and what this meant to them, so it definitely diluted any frustration I had - it's difficult to get angry at someone who needs something so bad.

Anyways, definitely a moving experience, felt like I was more on the Peace Corps than an AIESEC Traineeship for one day. Also put city life in perspective for me - I work in what would be described as the most "popular" of popular quarters (to use the french lingo that they use here), but it doesn't compare in poverty to the rural poor I encountered up close and personal on Sunday. Honestly, anybody who can do work like that for their career, I salute - it's some of the most draining and frustrating (but also rewarding) work one can do.