One Day in the Life

Up until this point, I realized I have yet to describe a moderately typical day at work here in Rabat, so I figured I'd describe one of the most "Moroccan" (read: leisurely) days I've had here yet.

Yesterday (28 July), I got up at the crack of 8:45. After rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and sleepwalking into the bathroom to brush my teeth, I put on my clothes and Twins baseball cap and headed out to the local cafe with some of my fellow Americans. I got the "usual," a pain au chocolat and a cafe au lait with one lump. After relaxing at the cafe for a good 45 minutes, talking with Elizabeth, we took a petit taxi out to Akkari for work (with work winding down, we've stopped taking the bus, since it only saves you about 4 dirhams each way...). I got into the office around 10-ish, checked my email on the Association's computers, and did the morning greetings, catching up with some of the people that were hanging out there. At 10:30, I taught an ESL class for my intermediate students, we worked on business introductions and follow-up questions, then reviewed some grammar and had a discussion on American media in Morocco.

After that, we met up with one of our students, Hind, who took us back to her place in Akkari for an amazing lunch. We ate this delicious chicken dish served with a bread-like pasta, drank plenty of Mint Tea, and ate lots of fresh fruit for dessert, which included figs, grapes with seeds, and these curious fruits called "hindos" (?? on sp). I got to chat with Hind's dad, an old guy at 71, who had been in the Gaullist Army in the 1950s, stationed in Germany and Morocco. He brought out his old identity cards and service records, and being a total history buff, I loved looking through all of it.

Getting back about 2 1/2 hours later, I showed up just in time for class, only to be invited by the few students who were there yesterday to go hang out with them. Since class was kind of a bust, thanks to the combination of vacationing students and the lure of the nearby Akkari beach, I ended up hanging out with Youssef and Youssef, my Moroccan brothers here. Since one of the Youssefs is reputably the greatest soccer player to come out of Rabat (he's now 33), I went with the two down to the beach, tracing a slow and steady path to the soccer field the next quartier over. On the way, we stopped at an animal hospital, looked at some dogs, cats, horses, and donkeys.

Finally arriving at the Reseau Maillage field, I stuck around to watch a game of fast-paced and well-played soccer by kids around the age of 12. Youssef's team took on the challengers on a small, 40m long concrete field, staffed on either end by goalies guarding small goals. After hanging out there for a while, watching the kids literally head the ball around the field for 40 min, I took a petit taxi to head back to the apartment for the aforementioned Dutch Party...

"This is too Much Party!"

Ok, first off, imagine the title of this post being exclamed in a heavy (and annoyed/frustrated) German accent, repeated several times, followed by "we have a concert tuesday, party wednesday, Dutch party thursday, and bye-bye party friday! This is too much party!" If you've never met an upset German speaking English, this might not have the same resonance, but for the members of the Real World: Rabat, it's become golden.

This aforementioned statement, made by a rather perturbed German, who doesn't like this degree of craziness and lack of order, was in response to this week's busy social calendar. Several things, such as the Rabat Music Festival, and the fact that many of us are heading out within a week and half has created no dearth of social engagements.

Last night, for example, was the Dutch party, resplendent with Dutch and French flags (if the Dutch can't tell the difference when they buy them, how am I supposed to?) and a nice heavy dish of carrots, meat, potatoes, and milk, all mashed together. Served for twenty people, the whole meal went over well, and paved the way for a Dutch dessert, aka tea, chocolate, and small tea biscuits.

The highlight of the night came with the serving of the tea. For those of you that don't know, Moroccans love sweet beverages, from their hot milk with a drop of coffee and 3 sugar cubes, to their ridiculously sweet Mint Tea, they know how to up the sugar quotient. Imagine their surprise at being served weak Dutch black tea with no sugar. After a few nasty faces made by the Moroccans, I sat down next to them, watching them gingerly sip the tea with faces askew, or nibble gingerly at the biscuits, turning them over in their hands as they did so. One or two were enterprising enough to actually dip the biscuits in the weak tea.

Realizing this was an exploitable situation, I sat down next to a few of my Moroccan buddies and informed them that this was actually "Dutch Chocolate Tea," and that you had to add some of the provided little dutch chocolates to the liquid. After doing it myself, most of the others warily did the same, pausing for a few seconds with the chocolate bar dangling over the tea, much to the confusion of the Dutch girls, who had just returned from the kitchen. After adding in the Dutch chocolate, a few of them cautiously sipped the surprisingly decent tea. Proclaiming it not quite ready for consumption, they brought out the sugar jar, with each person adding spoonfulls of granulated sugar to their respective small mugs. At this point, Ryan, Gabe, and I were laughing so hard that the jig was clearly up, but we ended up getting a few thank-you's from the attending Moroccans, who now happily sipped their noticeably sweeter Dutch Chocolate Tea.


PS - I know that I've already mentioned in my "Candy Shop" entry about the lack of diversity in music, but I'd like to note that I have now heard Celina Dion's "My Heart Will Go On," followed by THREE repeats of Akon's "Mr. Lonely," thankfully sung along to by the tone-deaf Moroccan internet cafe operator. I want to put a power drill in my ears.

Dispatches from the Front

A while ago, back when I moved into the apartment here in Rabat with 8 other Americans, I jokingly named it "The Real World: Rabat." Little did I know, my prediction wouldn't be wholly accurate. Instead, we've managed to trump any season of Real World with the sheer absurdity of our goings-on.

Ever since the Americans arrived, and started their whirlwind tour through themselves and other Moroccans, things have been getting and more complicated. Adding to this has been the addition of three new trainees: Merell and Bernadette from the Netherlands, and Nathalie from Dusseldorf, Germany. Add in frequent houseguests: Khan from Mali, three ladies from the south of France, Souad from Denmark, plus the omnipresent AIESEC members, and you'll come away with some interesting stories...

Without being as annoyingly vague as I've already managed to become, this traineeship in Morocco has been a lot more than a work experience, it's been an experience in drama, coping, women, cultural sensitivy (I swear one day I'll stop making fun of Germans...), and pretty much everything in between. As time begins to wind down (I'm out of here the 13th of August), and as I wait for my mom to come in on the 4th, I'm left with some time to think about everything that's happened here, good and bad.

At the risk of being cliche, the best thing I've learned here is not to sweat the small stuff, and keep the (imagined) big stuff in perspective. I've slowed down a bit, lightened up, calmed down, and have hopefully changed for the better.

In doing all of this soul-searching, I've been helped along by the Moroccan emphasis on people and warm personal interaction. I know I've already talked about hospitality/touching and things along those lines, but I just want to reiterate how great it's been to be able to get into a petit taxi, and by the end of the ride, come out as good friends with the driver... time after time.

A Weekend in the Sahara

Since it's now early Monday afternoon, and I'm in a semi-lucid state after one of the craziest and busiest weekends of my life, I thought I'd try to reconstitute some of what happened this past weekend on our whirlwind trip to Erfoud and the Sahara Desert...

The trip started out on Friday night with a 10pm overnight CTM Bus to Errichidia. Seventeen upbeat Westerners and Moroccans (including our recently arrived, and understandably bewildered Dutch trainee, Bernadette) slogged our way through the bus lines to appropriate the back few rows of the bus. The trip started off un-eventfully - given the fact that I can't fall asleep in moving vehicles, I witnessed a lot of hair-rising and beautiful sights on our 8-hour overnight journey. The initial part of the trip took us past Meknes and Fes, before we entered the passes through the Atlas mountains. At this point, the ride became increasingly like a rollercoaster, and less and less like a jaunt through the Moroccan countryside. Adding to the ride was the beautiful Moroccan sunrise, which illuminated the mountain passes (a little bit too much for my tastes, sometimes you just shouldn't look down).

After a sleepless night, we arrived in Errichidia early in the morning and took a grand taxi (an old, 1970s-era Mercedes - used as a shared-ride taxi for 6 passengers) on an hour trip to the desert town of Erfoud. The population of 7000 was composed almost exclusively of Berbers - the "more" indigenous people of Morocco - in comparison to the Arabs. Tensions were clear, when I got out of the Taxi and was beset by two young men hawking local necklaces, I responded with a perfunctory but clear "La" - Dirija for "No." The older of the two guys looked at me blankly, and responded in English: "what is this word, 'la?' I don't understand this word." After briefly flailing to explain myself in French, he responded further: "'La' is not our language, I don't speak it."

Basically, there are 3 popular Berber dialects in Morocco, and while they're almost unheard in the coastal cities, they enjoy a strong ethnic role in Berber Morocco. The reason that this man was able to respond to me in English - which was somewhat startling - is that, as was explained by Moroccans to me, ethnic Berbers resent Arabic being imposed upon them, and also resent French. It's not uncommon to find Berbers who know their local dialect and another language such as English instead of Dirija or French.

Anyways, once we decamped in Erfoud, we quickly found refuge from the absolutely stifling dry heat in our local friend's apartment. After laying down for a few hours, we ate a lunch of couscous and drank some local "fresh" sour milk before heading off to our three waiting Land Rovers. From there, we took the land rovers (with our professional guides behind the wheel, unfortunately) on the hour trip to base camp by the Sahara. Forgoing traditional roads, we made the arid and flat land our highway, rolling along at suicidal speeds through some incredibly rough and varied terrain. As a side note, seeing a Land Rover cutting up a swath of dust in its wake as it travels over the open land with the dunes of the Sahara in the background is one of those images I'll have with me forever.

At base camp, we unpacked our things and gathered a few provisions for our night in the Desert. Taking the guides' advice, I packed lightly - two large bottles of water, sunglass clips, and this foreign-legion-style hat that I'd picked up at REI back in Minnesota. From there, it was onto the Camels for a two-hour ride straight into the Sahara.

I'd like to take a moment to express my feelings on the subject of camels. Firstly, up close and personal, Camels are really fucking ugly. Possessed with random spots of fur, and smelling of God knows what, I found my enthusiasm slightly dampened before boarding. Once up on my vantage point, I took off my poor Havainas and stashed them in the saddle's rigging, bare feet hanging down. As we began our steady ride into desert, I found out several more things about camels: They are absolutely prodigious shitters. 50% of the time, there is something coming out of a camel's ass. This fact was reinforced by the steady trail of dried camel dung along our trail, marking the way better than the windswept tracks. Another thing is that camels require what can be described as a certain amount of testicular fortitude to ride. In plain terms, they reduce your crotch to mincemeat if you don't know how to lean back correctly (and by "you," I mean me). The quilts on top of the hump did little to quell my chafing, as I found myself disembarking an hour and a half into the ride out of sheer necessity to walk barefoot through the desert for the last 40 minutes (by the way, I lost track in the dark of how many pieces of camel dung I marched over).

We rounded the last dune to sight of three small lights far off, marking our campsite - a small encampment staffed by one incredibly nice old Berber man and a veritable army of scorpion-killing cats. Situated at the base of a 200 ft sand dune, we unfurled our blankets and laid down to watch the stars. The stars materialized as we finished our food - a local Berber dish of onions and "meat." And by materialized, I mean popped out all over the sky, visible thanks to the total absence of light pollution. After doing the whole "Holy shit! We're in the Sahara!" thing for the next two or three hours, we settled down and stayed up most of the night (for those of you keeping track of my sleep tally, through the second night, I had a measly cumulative three hours) watching the amazing night sky.

The next morning, we were up at 4:30 to watch the sunrise. Scaling the 200 ft sand dune to reach our vantage point turned out to be exhausting (climbing up almost-vertical sand is worse than one might imagine for the legs), but after a fair amount of cursing, we straddled the skinny peak of the dune, with legs over each side to watch the sun enter. And what a sunrise it was, as the light raced across the sand, signaling that it was indeed time to head back to the camels before it became blisteringly hot.

We rode back through the dunes (I don't think many people realize how varied the terrain is in the desert - it's almost mountainous with all of the dunes, with no real open spaces of flat sand). From there, a mercifully cold shower at base camp, and back to the waiting Land Rovers for a rather painful ride for my rear back into Efroud. After spending a few hours at one of the local pools, all 17 of us boarded ONE (the number one rule of third-world transportation is cram, cram, cram) four-wheeled horse cart for a 5 klick dirt road voyage to a small Berber farm outside of the town, where we quickly unloaded, at some local dishes of sheep, and sprawled out under palm trees in the still-oppressive heat. From there, we took the horse cart back, then a grand taxi to Errichidea (the different types of transportation I had this past weekend was mind-boggling: buses, land rovers, camels, horse carts, grand taxis, petit taxis). After pulling some strings - "we are all Americans from the US Embassy and need to get on this bus to Rabat or we will call your supervisor" - we all managed to get back to Rabat in one piece monday morning.

Apologies for the length of the post, but the sheer amount of stuff we did this weekend hopefully necessitated it. Suffice to say, one of the craziest weekends of my life (man, I'm just chalking up crazy experiences over here), and despite functioning on a grand total of six hours of sleep for friday, saturday, and sunday nights, I wouldn't have had it any other way.