Early morning jam: “Wishful Thinking” by Wilco
It’s been another week full of shenanigans. Like you would not even BELIEVE. I am TELLING YOU.
Meetings in Rabat for FUCKING SPRING CAMP (sorry for the profanity and yelling, but this is how I refer to spring camp now because it is such a bitch to coordinate/convince your counterpart not to cancel it. FML.) then a weekend trip to visit some friends south of me. This trip resulted in at least one verrrrry drunk night for me. Interpretative dances interpreting Queen, never-before-seen intimidation rituals during a game of beer pong (to hide the fact that I am so awful at beer pong and hate playing), stuffing more carbs in my face than I’d really like to admit, the works.
Monday it was back to reality, except not really because my girl Mari is staying with me this week. She’s been really fun, coming to work with me, making men verbally harass her instead of me because she’s the new-ER American, and listening to me complain about how maskin (poor, ghetto) my camp is becoming.
But most importantly…
There is a puppy in my house. Her name is Timmy and Mari and I found her yesterday. After feeding, bathing and de-tic-ing her we didn’t really know what else to do except keep her around. The tic removal process was just such a bonding experience: forty-five minutes of chimp-like grooming, screaming when I actually found a tic, deciding who was going to take it out over rock, paper, scissors games, then removing the tic and setting it on fire. All the while Timmy sat still like a champ.
Update: Timmy is still doing fabulously and camp is almost here! Despite all the odds (and there are many) we are getting everything together pretty well I think. I am, once again, forever indebted to the amazing people that live in my town. Someone on Peace Corps staff told me once that if you have the support of your community and they trust you, it's nearly impossible for a project to fail. More on camp later, if you’re lucky I might post a blog right afterward, full of poorly-thought-out thoughts caused by a week of not sleeping and dealing with 49 teenagers who think I have the answer to every question they could possibly ask.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Chess tournaments- as boring as they sound.
Brought to you by Incubus (I know, I think it’s weird, too. Just go with it.)
So, I’ve had a shitty week. I hesitate to go into detail because most people close to me know what went down (and if you’re a pal-o-mine that is unaware, email/skype me and I’d be happy to ramble to you about my problems) but I’ll leave it at this: I was looking for an excuse to get outta town for a couple days.
That’s when Michael, my recently-named inner voice said to me, “Hey, I’m just spit-ballin’ here, but why don’t you go to a chess tournament in Rabat and take eight kids with you without getting any written consent from their parents?”
I like the way Michael thinks. Here follows an account of the past 36 hours.
First of all, it turns out my kids aren’t that awesome at chess. This isn’t really that surprising because they’ve only been playing about 4 months (they started playing around the time I got to site. These two events are NOT correlated. I suck at chess.) They definitely hung in there, and more importantly learned a lot, but for the most part they lost matches early in the rounds and were left with lots of downtime to:
A. freak out at the concession stand (our little town doesn’t have these), and
B. make me take 50 asgajdglshillion photos of them.
After an exhausting photo sesh, I needed a change of pace. Thankfully, at that exact moment a crazy approached me. She started speaking in English and making shifty eyes, then she asked me if I wanted to hear the rap lyrics she wrote in English. I thought she’d never ask! I didn’t have my pen on me and my memory sucks, otherwise I’d share a sample with you now. I have to admit, she wasn’t bad. This anecdote is starting to remind me of how Tenacious D wrote the Greatest Song in the World but couldn’t remember it, so I’ll move on.
Ah yes, dinner time. I guess I shouldn’t have expected much when the club president (who, by the way, looked and acted exactly like John Hammond’s uppity nephew that takes over the company and fucks everything up in Jurassic Park II: The Lost World) told me free food would be provided, but I did hope to eat more than a baguette with a few slices of Spam-esque “meat,” a Coke and an orange. I guess I could have misunderstood him… he speaks to me in a mix of broken English with a heavy accent, French, and Fusa (classical Arabic). I can figure out the English and French okay, but to me, Fusa sounds like the language of Mordor but sped up. It is a tongue I will not utter here.
What was I talking about?
Okay, well if the free food was shitty, what would you expect the free lodging to look like? Hello youth hostel, it’s been awhile. The place really wasn’t that bad. It was clean, the proprietor was nice and there weren’t many other people there so it was quiet. Of course, it was the first hostel experience for a few of the girls, so they were kind of freaked out. Fears were put aside when we started a bit of a photo shoot in the girls room (yep…I had a sleepover with a bunch of tweens. Giggling, late night snacks, talking about (not) getting married….good times).
Which brings us to day two. FUCKING WALID woke me up at 7:15 because he wanted my camera. Mind you, breakfast would not be served until 9:00, and my alarm was set for 8:30, but none of that matters now, I suppose.
Anyway, Walid woke me up because it was very important that he take photos of everyone sitting in the lobby of the hostel for twenty minutes. Did I laugh heartily and in his face when Walid fell backwards out of his chair later that day? Yes. Yes I did.
Because we had so much downtime, Amin, my Counterpart on this, thought it would be cool to walk around a bit. Parliament was near where we were staying, so I was planning to take pictures of the kids there.
Unfortunately for me, the kids freaked over a group of pigeons and everyone wanted there photo taken with them. This ran my battery down and it died before we even got to the Parliament building. Their loss.
Now it’s 9:00 am. Breakfast is served, and guess what? It was shitty.
Actually breakfast was pretty good, I am just bitter because the only drink they offered was milk. I hesitated to drink mine, convinced some magical man would be coming around momentarily to pour coffee in it, but no dice. (Luckily, I was able to get coffee a bit later in the club’s “Member’s Only” café, of which I am not a member.)
Let’s see…other highlights from day two. Ah yes…
SPOTTED: Moroccan stage mom. I didn’t get a pic of her, but she was legit. Bedazzled track suit, huge sunglasses, camera in hand, constantly hovering over her son, Augustus Gloop.
Even after SPOTTING a stage mom and Roald Dahl character in the flesh, I still needed something to occupy my time. Did I mention I like to doodle?
All my complaining aside, we had a good time. Four of the kids in my group placed in the competition (take THAT, city slickers) and the rest of them were on such sugar highs I don’t think they even knew they were competing.
So, I’ve had a shitty week. I hesitate to go into detail because most people close to me know what went down (and if you’re a pal-o-mine that is unaware, email/skype me and I’d be happy to ramble to you about my problems) but I’ll leave it at this: I was looking for an excuse to get outta town for a couple days.
That’s when Michael, my recently-named inner voice said to me, “Hey, I’m just spit-ballin’ here, but why don’t you go to a chess tournament in Rabat and take eight kids with you without getting any written consent from their parents?”
I like the way Michael thinks. Here follows an account of the past 36 hours.
First of all, it turns out my kids aren’t that awesome at chess. This isn’t really that surprising because they’ve only been playing about 4 months (they started playing around the time I got to site. These two events are NOT correlated. I suck at chess.) They definitely hung in there, and more importantly learned a lot, but for the most part they lost matches early in the rounds and were left with lots of downtime to:
A. freak out at the concession stand (our little town doesn’t have these), and
B. make me take 50 asgajdglshillion photos of them.
After an exhausting photo sesh, I needed a change of pace. Thankfully, at that exact moment a crazy approached me. She started speaking in English and making shifty eyes, then she asked me if I wanted to hear the rap lyrics she wrote in English. I thought she’d never ask! I didn’t have my pen on me and my memory sucks, otherwise I’d share a sample with you now. I have to admit, she wasn’t bad. This anecdote is starting to remind me of how Tenacious D wrote the Greatest Song in the World but couldn’t remember it, so I’ll move on.
Ah yes, dinner time. I guess I shouldn’t have expected much when the club president (who, by the way, looked and acted exactly like John Hammond’s uppity nephew that takes over the company and fucks everything up in Jurassic Park II: The Lost World) told me free food would be provided, but I did hope to eat more than a baguette with a few slices of Spam-esque “meat,” a Coke and an orange. I guess I could have misunderstood him… he speaks to me in a mix of broken English with a heavy accent, French, and Fusa (classical Arabic). I can figure out the English and French okay, but to me, Fusa sounds like the language of Mordor but sped up. It is a tongue I will not utter here.
What was I talking about?
Okay, well if the free food was shitty, what would you expect the free lodging to look like? Hello youth hostel, it’s been awhile. The place really wasn’t that bad. It was clean, the proprietor was nice and there weren’t many other people there so it was quiet. Of course, it was the first hostel experience for a few of the girls, so they were kind of freaked out. Fears were put aside when we started a bit of a photo shoot in the girls room (yep…I had a sleepover with a bunch of tweens. Giggling, late night snacks, talking about (not) getting married….good times).
Which brings us to day two. FUCKING WALID woke me up at 7:15 because he wanted my camera. Mind you, breakfast would not be served until 9:00, and my alarm was set for 8:30, but none of that matters now, I suppose.
Anyway, Walid woke me up because it was very important that he take photos of everyone sitting in the lobby of the hostel for twenty minutes. Did I laugh heartily and in his face when Walid fell backwards out of his chair later that day? Yes. Yes I did.
Because we had so much downtime, Amin, my Counterpart on this, thought it would be cool to walk around a bit. Parliament was near where we were staying, so I was planning to take pictures of the kids there.
Unfortunately for me, the kids freaked over a group of pigeons and everyone wanted there photo taken with them. This ran my battery down and it died before we even got to the Parliament building. Their loss.
Now it’s 9:00 am. Breakfast is served, and guess what? It was shitty.
Actually breakfast was pretty good, I am just bitter because the only drink they offered was milk. I hesitated to drink mine, convinced some magical man would be coming around momentarily to pour coffee in it, but no dice. (Luckily, I was able to get coffee a bit later in the club’s “Member’s Only” café, of which I am not a member.)
Let’s see…other highlights from day two. Ah yes…
SPOTTED: Moroccan stage mom. I didn’t get a pic of her, but she was legit. Bedazzled track suit, huge sunglasses, camera in hand, constantly hovering over her son, Augustus Gloop.
Even after SPOTTING a stage mom and Roald Dahl character in the flesh, I still needed something to occupy my time. Did I mention I like to doodle?
All my complaining aside, we had a good time. Four of the kids in my group placed in the competition (take THAT, city slickers) and the rest of them were on such sugar highs I don’t think they even knew they were competing.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Epiphany
blogging to "High and Dry" by Radiohead. Maybe the best song ever produced for a rainy, overcast day.
Today at lunch I had the most incredible realization. Navigating a Moroccan home and knowing when to wear shoes and when not to is like playing "The Floor is Lava." Tile is lava, carpet is cool, cushy grass. If you are caught on lava without (lavaproof?) shoes, God help you.
Of course then I started to wax nostalgic in my head about my days in college when my friends and I would get drunk and start yelling "THE FLOOR IS LAVA" and then go to extreme lengths to avoid touching the ground. As in, rolling on a wheely chair across the entire apartment to answer the door when someone knocked.
That's all for today.
Today at lunch I had the most incredible realization. Navigating a Moroccan home and knowing when to wear shoes and when not to is like playing "The Floor is Lava." Tile is lava, carpet is cool, cushy grass. If you are caught on lava without (lavaproof?) shoes, God help you.
Of course then I started to wax nostalgic in my head about my days in college when my friends and I would get drunk and start yelling "THE FLOOR IS LAVA" and then go to extreme lengths to avoid touching the ground. As in, rolling on a wheely chair across the entire apartment to answer the door when someone knocked.
That's all for today.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
In the Middle of a Venn Diagram
Listening to “Doo Wop (That Thing)” by Lauryn Hill. Remember that song? Weirdly close to my heart.
Yesterday I jumped between two very different Moroccan worlds. Spent the morning in Rabat, running around town, meeting with two men to hopefully bring kids from my Dar Chabab to a chess tournament, then leisurely sipping coffee opposite the Parliament building with my counterpart. No head scarf, sitting outside on the patio next to a man, the works. He smoked a cigarette while we waxed philosophical and had a brief conversation about wine, if you’ll believe it.
The afternoon was quite different. I got back to site and fell right back into the more traditional female role. I went straight home and ate lunch inside my house, not answering the door when some pesky kids came knocking on their way back to school. In the afternoon I actually did go outside—in order to visit family. I spent the whole evening under blankets watching soap operas and cooking shows with my host aunt (and drinking tea, of course) before we went to a neighbor’s house to pay our respects. An old woman who lived there died recently. The ladies in the house were busy baking sweet things and after making a joke about how I don’t know how to cook but I know how to eat, then awkwardly declining an invitation to stay the night, it was straight back to my house. Eyes downward, keys in hand, hurried steps until I was safe again on the other side of my big metal front door.
The funny thing is I honestly couldn’t tell you which half of the day I preferred. Sure, I’d rather live in a place where I’m free to walk around outside after dark without fear of being propositioned or harassed (or attacked by rabid dogs), but I have to say that hanging out with all the women in my neighborhood was pretty fun, and I feel safer with them than I do in most other situations. At one point a lady I didn’t know asked who I was and before I could answer her my host aunt shouted “she’s our daughter! She’s American and she speaks Arabic!” Felt kinda nice.
So basically I don’t know exactly where I stand here, and probably will never have a solid position anywhere. I think that’s something I can use to my advantage, though, yek?
Side note, totally unrelated, no one in Morocco can shuffle a deck of cards and follow it with a bridge. My ability to make me do this has elevated me to rock star status in the Dar Chabab.
Yesterday I jumped between two very different Moroccan worlds. Spent the morning in Rabat, running around town, meeting with two men to hopefully bring kids from my Dar Chabab to a chess tournament, then leisurely sipping coffee opposite the Parliament building with my counterpart. No head scarf, sitting outside on the patio next to a man, the works. He smoked a cigarette while we waxed philosophical and had a brief conversation about wine, if you’ll believe it.
The afternoon was quite different. I got back to site and fell right back into the more traditional female role. I went straight home and ate lunch inside my house, not answering the door when some pesky kids came knocking on their way back to school. In the afternoon I actually did go outside—in order to visit family. I spent the whole evening under blankets watching soap operas and cooking shows with my host aunt (and drinking tea, of course) before we went to a neighbor’s house to pay our respects. An old woman who lived there died recently. The ladies in the house were busy baking sweet things and after making a joke about how I don’t know how to cook but I know how to eat, then awkwardly declining an invitation to stay the night, it was straight back to my house. Eyes downward, keys in hand, hurried steps until I was safe again on the other side of my big metal front door.
The funny thing is I honestly couldn’t tell you which half of the day I preferred. Sure, I’d rather live in a place where I’m free to walk around outside after dark without fear of being propositioned or harassed (or attacked by rabid dogs), but I have to say that hanging out with all the women in my neighborhood was pretty fun, and I feel safer with them than I do in most other situations. At one point a lady I didn’t know asked who I was and before I could answer her my host aunt shouted “she’s our daughter! She’s American and she speaks Arabic!” Felt kinda nice.
So basically I don’t know exactly where I stand here, and probably will never have a solid position anywhere. I think that’s something I can use to my advantage, though, yek?
Side note, totally unrelated, no one in Morocco can shuffle a deck of cards and follow it with a bridge. My ability to make me do this has elevated me to rock star status in the Dar Chabab.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
"Oh God, you are so American."
Comin to you from a cyber cafe
Moroccans are typically indirect whereas Americans tend to be more direct. Blah blah blah, cultural diversity. But what are you supposed to do when you try both tactics and neither work very well for you?
Par example. One of the downsides of being young and unmarried (and better-than-fine with that) in a conservative Moroccan town is that people tend to try to court you. Due to the culture, this can't be done outright and thus woo-ing attempts tend to be on the creepy side.
I currently have two problematic, unwanted suitors. When the first invited me to have lunch with his mother, warning bells started ringing in my ears and I reacted immediately by saying "No thanks, I'm not comfortable with that." Maybe a little too direct (when telling a friend about it later, he looked a litte shocked and uttered the quote serving as the title for this post) but hey, it was the truth.
As you may have guessed, unfortunately this approach didn't work very well and the guy is still hanging around Dar Chabab.
With the other guy I decided to try a more passive-aggressive approach. In this case, I am deaing with a creep who comes to my house bearing gifts. He did it once like five minutes after I had returned home from Rabat and it was totally weird: he'd obviously been waiting by his window to see me walk up the hill and go in my house. Wanting to cease encouragement of this behavior, I decided to take action. Last night about ten minutes after getting home from work there was a knock on the door. I let it go unanswered, not even trying to pretend like I wasn't home. I left my music on, lights on, everything. The guy knocked three times. THREE. And then called my name a few times. He finally left and I thought "That'll show him."
Of course, it seems once again I'm the one that needs to be shown. Thirty minutes later he came BACK. Same story--he knocked, I went about my normal business, he continued knocking and proving that an indirect, passive-aggressive approach is apparently ALSO not the way to deal with this.
So what the hell am I supposed to do? The other thing that's annoying about this is it's not like I'm walking around in a bathing suit with an inch of make up on all day every day. Most of the time my hair is dirty, I'm wearing glasses and my clothes are on the baggy side. it was suggested I start drawing warts on my face.
Moving on... earlier in this post I used the phrase "better-than-fine" and now I have the song "Better Than Fine" by Fiona Apple stuck in my head. It's a really nice song, uncharacteristically optimistic and, another rarity, in 3/4 time. Who doesn't love a nice waltz? Here's my favorite part:
If you don't have a point to make
Don't sweat it
You make a fine one
Bein' so kind
And I sure appreciate it
Everyone else's goal's to be
Big-headed
Why should I follow that beat bein' that I'm
Better than fine
Ooowaoowaooooo
Moroccans are typically indirect whereas Americans tend to be more direct. Blah blah blah, cultural diversity. But what are you supposed to do when you try both tactics and neither work very well for you?
Par example. One of the downsides of being young and unmarried (and better-than-fine with that) in a conservative Moroccan town is that people tend to try to court you. Due to the culture, this can't be done outright and thus woo-ing attempts tend to be on the creepy side.
I currently have two problematic, unwanted suitors. When the first invited me to have lunch with his mother, warning bells started ringing in my ears and I reacted immediately by saying "No thanks, I'm not comfortable with that." Maybe a little too direct (when telling a friend about it later, he looked a litte shocked and uttered the quote serving as the title for this post) but hey, it was the truth.
As you may have guessed, unfortunately this approach didn't work very well and the guy is still hanging around Dar Chabab.
With the other guy I decided to try a more passive-aggressive approach. In this case, I am deaing with a creep who comes to my house bearing gifts. He did it once like five minutes after I had returned home from Rabat and it was totally weird: he'd obviously been waiting by his window to see me walk up the hill and go in my house. Wanting to cease encouragement of this behavior, I decided to take action. Last night about ten minutes after getting home from work there was a knock on the door. I let it go unanswered, not even trying to pretend like I wasn't home. I left my music on, lights on, everything. The guy knocked three times. THREE. And then called my name a few times. He finally left and I thought "That'll show him."
Of course, it seems once again I'm the one that needs to be shown. Thirty minutes later he came BACK. Same story--he knocked, I went about my normal business, he continued knocking and proving that an indirect, passive-aggressive approach is apparently ALSO not the way to deal with this.
So what the hell am I supposed to do? The other thing that's annoying about this is it's not like I'm walking around in a bathing suit with an inch of make up on all day every day. Most of the time my hair is dirty, I'm wearing glasses and my clothes are on the baggy side. it was suggested I start drawing warts on my face.
Moving on... earlier in this post I used the phrase "better-than-fine" and now I have the song "Better Than Fine" by Fiona Apple stuck in my head. It's a really nice song, uncharacteristically optimistic and, another rarity, in 3/4 time. Who doesn't love a nice waltz? Here's my favorite part:
If you don't have a point to make
Don't sweat it
You make a fine one
Bein' so kind
And I sure appreciate it
Everyone else's goal's to be
Big-headed
Why should I follow that beat bein' that I'm
Better than fine
Ooowaoowaooooo
Monday, March 1, 2010
Swinnnnng and a miss.
Swinnnnng and a miss.
Hiding in my house and blasting “My United States of Whatever”
Today I tried to officially start my exercise club with some women I know in the neighborhood. Yeah, about that…
You might say that attempts to exercise in Morocco and I are star-crossed lovers. True love doomed to be destroyed by the external whims of our cultures, our neighbors, our finicky forecast.
I can’t say I didn’t see this coming. The plan was to meet my host cousins at 7:45 am and walk together to the running track at the other end of town for some run/walking. Alas, it started raining last night as I fell asleep, and I KNEW that would cause me some problems in the morning. To name a few potential problems:
1. I wouldn’t want to wake up
2. It would still be raining
3. My host cousins wouldn’t be awake
4. My host cousins would be awake, but not motivated at alllll to go running because:
5. Everything would be muddy
I was faced with most of these issues when I woke up this morning. I laid in bed until 7:30, telling myself over and over again that, even if I got to their house and they didn’t want to go anymore, I could still say that I was the one who made the effort and that I would have at least made the point that I was committed to getting the women here exercising and practicing healthier routines.
Anyway I managed to get my ass out of bed and out the door and found myself in front of my host cousins’ front door a mere five minutes later. The house, like the entire street, was eerily quiet. Not wanting to wake the WHOLE family, I decided to beep* my older host cousin instead.
Fabulous, her phone is turned off. At this point I am CERTAIN she is still asleep, and part of me thinks I should just go home and follow her example. But then the proactive, uppity, slightly OCD voice inside my head piped up and said, “No way. You two agreed on meeting at 7:45 am at her house and you are NOT backing down, Missy.” The proactive, uppity, slightly OCD voice inside my head is also a bit of a sass muffin.
Okay, so then I went into problem-solving mode. How do I get JUST Fatima-Zahra and Nouria to wake up? Bing! Idea. I stepped back onto the street to examine the layout of the house, then made a mental map of the inside of it to figure out which was their bedroom window. Then I—you guessed it—started throwing rocks at their window. I really did.
Alas, no answer. I was about to give up again when Sasspants inside my head let out an exasperated “Oh NO you di’nt.” Okay, okay. Having tried everything I could think of to discreetly wake up the girls, I finally mustered up my courage and rang the doorbell. A few minutes later my slightly grumpy host uncle came to the door, mumbled something half-heartedly in response to my profuse apologies and led me into the house.
As I suspected, Fatima-Zahra and Nouria were out cold. FZ woke up when I came in, immediately remembered our agreement and started getting dressed. Nouria never even moved the whole time I was there.
I sat on the bed while FZ got ready to go. She gathered all her clothes then quickly rolled out a carpet in order to say her morning prayers. I thought it was odd, at first, that she didn’t ask me to leave the room while she prayed, but then I remembered how many times my host father would go to pray when I lived at his house and the kids would be running all around him, playing and screaming. I think maybe prayer is both very sacred and very routine at the same time: the person praying concentrates only on the prayer and blocks out external noise, and the people contributing to external noise have seen people pray countless times (five times a day, every day, for instance) and therefore no longer find it interesting or worthy of reverance. Maybe. I really have no idea.
Anyway, once prayers were finished FZ and I were on our way. With Nouria in a coma we were one member short of what I had hoped, but no matter. Even starting with just one Moroccan woman is SOMETHING right? Right.
We got about halfway to the track when the skies opened up. Honestly, it wasn’t raining THAT hard, but enough to make the track really muddy and possibly dangerous. After about ten minutes of hanging out and chatting under an awning we decided to just call it off for the day, reasoning that we’d sort of power-walked, so we did actually exercise.
I’m not totally down-trodden. The fact that FZ popped out of bed and made good on our agreement to exercise is really encouraging. She also assured me that in a few more weeks we won’t see rain anymore. I can wait.
* Note: I don’t have a beeper. Beeping is a common practice here in Morocco where you call someone, let it ring once, and hang up. While this would be incredibly annoying and frustrating in the States, it serves two important purposes in Morocco. First, it lets the person you beep know you are thinking about them/miss them, and second, it’s a great way to get someone to call you back when you are low on credit and phone calls are like 6 dirhams a minute or something like that.
Hiding in my house and blasting “My United States of Whatever”
Today I tried to officially start my exercise club with some women I know in the neighborhood. Yeah, about that…
You might say that attempts to exercise in Morocco and I are star-crossed lovers. True love doomed to be destroyed by the external whims of our cultures, our neighbors, our finicky forecast.
I can’t say I didn’t see this coming. The plan was to meet my host cousins at 7:45 am and walk together to the running track at the other end of town for some run/walking. Alas, it started raining last night as I fell asleep, and I KNEW that would cause me some problems in the morning. To name a few potential problems:
1. I wouldn’t want to wake up
2. It would still be raining
3. My host cousins wouldn’t be awake
4. My host cousins would be awake, but not motivated at alllll to go running because:
5. Everything would be muddy
I was faced with most of these issues when I woke up this morning. I laid in bed until 7:30, telling myself over and over again that, even if I got to their house and they didn’t want to go anymore, I could still say that I was the one who made the effort and that I would have at least made the point that I was committed to getting the women here exercising and practicing healthier routines.
Anyway I managed to get my ass out of bed and out the door and found myself in front of my host cousins’ front door a mere five minutes later. The house, like the entire street, was eerily quiet. Not wanting to wake the WHOLE family, I decided to beep* my older host cousin instead.
Fabulous, her phone is turned off. At this point I am CERTAIN she is still asleep, and part of me thinks I should just go home and follow her example. But then the proactive, uppity, slightly OCD voice inside my head piped up and said, “No way. You two agreed on meeting at 7:45 am at her house and you are NOT backing down, Missy.” The proactive, uppity, slightly OCD voice inside my head is also a bit of a sass muffin.
Okay, so then I went into problem-solving mode. How do I get JUST Fatima-Zahra and Nouria to wake up? Bing! Idea. I stepped back onto the street to examine the layout of the house, then made a mental map of the inside of it to figure out which was their bedroom window. Then I—you guessed it—started throwing rocks at their window. I really did.
Alas, no answer. I was about to give up again when Sasspants inside my head let out an exasperated “Oh NO you di’nt.” Okay, okay. Having tried everything I could think of to discreetly wake up the girls, I finally mustered up my courage and rang the doorbell. A few minutes later my slightly grumpy host uncle came to the door, mumbled something half-heartedly in response to my profuse apologies and led me into the house.
As I suspected, Fatima-Zahra and Nouria were out cold. FZ woke up when I came in, immediately remembered our agreement and started getting dressed. Nouria never even moved the whole time I was there.
I sat on the bed while FZ got ready to go. She gathered all her clothes then quickly rolled out a carpet in order to say her morning prayers. I thought it was odd, at first, that she didn’t ask me to leave the room while she prayed, but then I remembered how many times my host father would go to pray when I lived at his house and the kids would be running all around him, playing and screaming. I think maybe prayer is both very sacred and very routine at the same time: the person praying concentrates only on the prayer and blocks out external noise, and the people contributing to external noise have seen people pray countless times (five times a day, every day, for instance) and therefore no longer find it interesting or worthy of reverance. Maybe. I really have no idea.
Anyway, once prayers were finished FZ and I were on our way. With Nouria in a coma we were one member short of what I had hoped, but no matter. Even starting with just one Moroccan woman is SOMETHING right? Right.
We got about halfway to the track when the skies opened up. Honestly, it wasn’t raining THAT hard, but enough to make the track really muddy and possibly dangerous. After about ten minutes of hanging out and chatting under an awning we decided to just call it off for the day, reasoning that we’d sort of power-walked, so we did actually exercise.
I’m not totally down-trodden. The fact that FZ popped out of bed and made good on our agreement to exercise is really encouraging. She also assured me that in a few more weeks we won’t see rain anymore. I can wait.
* Note: I don’t have a beeper. Beeping is a common practice here in Morocco where you call someone, let it ring once, and hang up. While this would be incredibly annoying and frustrating in the States, it serves two important purposes in Morocco. First, it lets the person you beep know you are thinking about them/miss them, and second, it’s a great way to get someone to call you back when you are low on credit and phone calls are like 6 dirhams a minute or something like that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
