A CBT that Hammams together, stays together

Labas readers!! So good to talk to you again. The last blog took a while to upload because of the lack of speedy internet here in my lovely CBT site, so just as a point of information I am writing this blog on Sunday the 23^rd… Inshallah it will be post within a day or two.

So since Ive last talked to you I have gotten married. The marriage was obviously really interesting and beautiful to be a part of. You may ask yourself how I got to be a bride in Morocco, to which I will answer that there are a lot of associations in my CBT site that work with the Dar Chebab, therefore know about the Americans that are here. Once of my fellow CBT mates actually has a host brother who is highly involved with an association that is doing “culture days” –I guess you could call it—with us to show us about morocco. So we went to his grandmother’s house to have this party. She lives a little outside of town so there were cows and sheep in the meadow surrounding the house. I gave my camera to Aya so warning a 9 year old took the vast majority of these pics:

^CBT Group!!

If you are wondering where these outfits came from, it just so happens that I have a CBT mate whose mom is a wedding planner… go figure! Ive never felt so much like a celebrity in my life. People were following me with cameras and professional video cameras and I got lifted up on one of those like plank things and was walked around the room. The actually ceremony of the wedding was: I had to feed Andrew (Amine) a fig and milk and then he did the same to me. There was a lot of dancing and they had a traditional Berber band play for us. It was amazing. I also got henna for it, which is tradition. People kept grabbing my hands and saying “bsshha” or “to your health” which is traditional to say to someone with henna or someone who has just received a hammam or plenty of other situations.

Speaking of hammam… So we have a veteran Peace Corps volunteer that is helping my CBT group right now. Her name is Siarah and she is just completely bad ass and amazing. This is her third year in country and she is helping us organize spring camp at the dar chebab this upcoming week. She wanted to have a girls night at the hammam. Myself, Siarah, the current PCV of this town, and a fellow CBTer (Tania) made our way to a super zween (nice) hammam with my sister and Tania’s. I have to say, this experience was so much different than my first hammam…. I actually really really enjoyed it. Maybe because I knew what to expect more this time around, but getting yourself clean after 8 days without a shower is an extremely good feeling. Okay okay I am sure you all stopped at that 8 days without a shower fact; so my family, as many other Moroccan families, have these different ideas about what makes you sick… one of them being bucket showers, aka I am not encouraged, in fact highly discouraged, to take them. So yeah, it was surprisingly not awkward at all to shower with all of these girls that I know. Id give it a ten out of ten, would try again.

So Christen, how’s the language coming along? Reader, you always seem to ask just the right questions. The language really skyrocketed for me in the past week. I am writing in script now (which my mom, bless her, is extremely proud of because she herself is illiterate). We had a homework assignment to write out an average daily schedule in script and my family read it and thought it was my personal diary so now are telling everyone I am writing my diary in Arabic script. They are so sweet.

I also had my site placement interview this past week… funny story without getting into too much of what I discussed: so I have been worried about my skin in Morocco because there is shms bzzef (tons of sun) here. I have been trying to get away from a sahara placement just so that I don’t have literally one of the sunniest places on earth. My interview happened to be outside, in the sun, and about 15 minutes long. During that time I got sunburnt. I saw my interviewer write “NO SOUTH” all caps and double underlined. Success!! Possibly one of the most important sunburns of my life.

So someone in my site recently posted a status that said that this CBT experience is a “Series of Uncomfortable Events” I would like to change this slightly to “unexpected” rather than uncomfortable and then it is dead on. Virtually everyday there is something that happens completely out of the blue. Today, for example, my sister told me to invite Tania over for lunch. I called her and she said she just wanted to chill but she could come over tomorrow, my host sister didn’t like this response at all so called her host sister who also said Tania couldn’t come until tomorrow. Rabab literally would not take no for an answer so she put on her clothes and literally walked over to their house and forced Tania to come over. Hospitality by force. Some of the funniest things have come from other people’s stories. Someone else in my CBT, for example, celebrated his brother’s birthday by getting dressed up super nicely with the rest of the family, putting on club music in the house, and dancing with just the immediate family  for a few hours. There are a lot more, some of which I am hesitant to put on the blog just to defend the family’s right to privacy. However, there is one thing I would like to share that I was not going to share originally. Since day one in my house I have witnessed that my family does hit their kids.  This past week I, by some darija miracle, was able to have a discussion with my family about this. When the two youngest children do something bad around me, I am encouraged to hit them (which I obviously never do). So the other day my little sister had some bruises on her hands and I asked what they were from and she responded that her teacher actually did it. She told me that her teacher will often pull her hair, hit her with a stick on the hands, or smash her head onto a board. My mom was sitting next to me and asked me if I had been hit by my teacher in American and I said “no” and she asked me if I had been hit would I have called the police and I told her yes. The whole family laughed at this. My mom then asked me if my (real) mom had hit me as a child and I told her never and everyone laughed again. She told me that you have to hit kids to teach them a lesson, to this Rabab confirmed proudly that her mom had hit her (which I later asked my language/cultural facilitator about and she said that there is the idea that exists with a lot of families that a child cannot turn out good unless he/she is hit). I may or may not take down that portion of the blog at some point but because I had that open conversation with them about how they think it is beneficial, I do not think it is in breech of their privacy to share this.

Sairah came over to  my house yesterday and had a cool discussion with my sister Aya. Aya asked Sairah (who has basically fluent darija) how long it took her to learn darija and Sairah responded saying “a long time” and Aya told her that I was gonna learn it really quick in 2 months. Im really surprised how much my family has come to mean to me. It is extremely sad for me to think that in a month I will be saying goodbye to them. Don’t get me wrong, I am really looking forward for more “me” time, but CBT is flying by so fast I just want everything to slow down. Rabab told me today that she never wants me to leave, she wants me to stay forever because she feels like I am her real sister. My CBT group is really really special to me as well, I cant imagine being 15 plus hours away from them. For a period that is referred to as the “dark days of CBT” its is something that I have really cherished thus far. My family reproached the subject of religion today (with someone translating of course) and they asked me if I was Muslim. Now this question always throws me for a loop and I always somehow avoid it when people ask me. This was a pretty unavoidable situation and a roomful of eyes were all on me. I just responded by saying that “I am in Morocco to learn about Islam” which seems to always be taken as “I am converting to islam” to which I respond, “no but I want to know more.” My mom taught me the prayer a few days ago. In no way are they trying to convert me, but they want me to know more. I cant help but think of my grandparents on my dad’s side who baptized me one time when they were babysitting me when I was young. They love me so they wanted to make sure that, from their point of view religiously speaking, I was pure or a little more holy, or in some ways saved from hell. In both senses it comes from a place of love, and to me that is extremely touching. I am sorry if I didn’t explain that very well but I hope you understand what I mean. It is really different for my Moroccan family that a girl would go away from her home and family without a husband to a different country to learn a new language, and the difficulty of the situation definitely does not escape them.

playing with flashlights at the dar

So this week I am doing spring camp in English and darija at the dar chebab! It is really exciting for me and then at the end of the week we are gonna take a “recharge” night in Mecknes in a hostel (with a hot shower woohoo!). Here’s to living life to the fullest.

On Fridays, We Eat Couscous

I lament, dear reader, that we have not viral-ly communicated in nearly 2 weeks. So much to update, so much has happened. The routine has definitely set in here in small town morocco. Ive actually been feeling overwhelmed by the schedule packed with either learning darija or meeting members of the community or teaching classes with the minimal darija we do have, and then today another thing was added to the list which is a spring camp starting next week for which we will be recruiting people and leading. There really aren't enough hours in the day.

hotel at sunset

view from the hotel at sunset..... no filter

monkey by a grand taxi

Where to even begin… Wednesday I got back from “Hub” training in Meknes. My CBT group along with probably about 7 others went a day and a half early so we could actually see the city (as we would be working during the Hub days). The first night we all hung out at the hotel. It just makes a big difference to the morale when you can go to the bathroom in a western toilet, shower with an actual shower that has hot water, and not be obligated to speak darija with your family for hours every night…. Not to say that our lives are in any way miserable, but those were a welcome couple of days. We all told stories of our experiences and some of them just had me on my knees with laughter. Some of the funniers ones were: any hammam story (for obvious reasons), someone had a couscous experience where their entire family hand fed them at the dinner table, (this is someone from my CBT) their cat was in heat so their brother took them to the local “cat whisperer” and they got a feral, male street cat to live with them for a few days…. The list really goes on and on as you may imagine. I had a chicken burger with fries as well in Meknes… Ive been eating really well in Morocco (more on the dining to come), but it is really nice to be able to choose what you eat. I ate so many vegetables in Meknes and also made a pact to myself not to eat any bread (more on this later). A big takeaway from HUB was how important and close the members of my CBT really are to me. It seemed like everyone else had something negative to say about their group or their teacher but I really feel so lucky to have the group of people I am with. Everyone is highly motivated and yet we take every opportunity to joke around and keep the atmosphere light and positive. Our group decided to go on the roof on Saturday night and split a bottle of wine and we had a toast. It was a moment I will always remember because we have already gone through so much together and will go through even more. It was nighttime so I could see every star in the sky. After our toast, the call to prayer rang throughout the city and it was another moment where I felt so greatful to be with this group of people and assigned to Morocco by the Peace Corps.

The next day we went to roman ruins with a grand taxi….. now you may ask yourself “Christen, what is a grand taxi?” well let me tell you. If one wants to travel from city to city in Morocco, one can take a grand taxi, as opposed to a petite taxi that one can take within a city. From my town to Meknes it is 22 DH which is less than 3 US dollars. We went to the ruins for 10 DH which is 1 dollar and some change. Good deal? Yeah. Oh but did I mention that 7 people are in the car and no seat belts are used? Oh and did I mention that you often ride with complete strangers? So there’s that. But it really was beautiful. My town really is a small city and once you get out to the country it is just next worldly beautiful. The ruins would not have even been that noteworthy had it not been for their surrounding:

In terms of my family life, I really don’t think that I could have been placed with a family that cares about me more. The two younger ones seem to be acting out a bit, which I can only assume has a lot to do with me and my sister’s new fiancé suddenly moving in. Ive been trying to give them a lot of attention to make up for that. The 3 year old Mohammed and I play around at night and it seems to be a family activity to watch us play. Mohammed can probably say my name better than anyone else and takes it upon himself to correct people. (Aside: many people have been trying to give me my Moroccan name. Someone named me Neda which means the moon. Someone else named me Mona which also means the moon. A fellow CBT mate named me Ashra which literally means the number 10 because 10 is in the name Christen… I thought that one was really good but other Moroccans disagreed and started calling me Aicha instead. Today I came home and my mom told me my new Moroccan name is Nisrin… Baba does not like this at all, he decided it should be Nora which means light…. So I pretty much go by anything now adays). Aya gets literally no help with her homework, let alone support with it, and since her older sister dropped out a young age Ive sort of taken it upon myself to help her or at least show interest. Math is the subject I can help in the most direct way. Ive noticed if I tell her good job then her mom does as well so that’s been neat. Rabab (the older sister) and mama function in similar roles in my life. They pretty much take care of me in all senses of the word. I got robbed one day on the way to the dar chebab and they took it extremely personally. Ive been walked pretty much everywhere ever since. We had a day where my teacher translated things that our family wanted to say to us and vise versa, my mom and sister wanted me to know that they don’t want anything bad to happen and they think of me as a sister and a daughter respectively. It was extremely touching. They really do teach me almost everything about Moroccan life. Very strong women. My Baba is someone who I had trouble figuring out at first; partly because he sleeps most of the day, partly because he has a speech impediment so it is literally hard for me to understand what he is saying in a completely new language, and partly because he is the only man of the house so I think gender roles played a part in our early relationship. Now we get along fantastically. Baba cares so much about me, but he is also curious about me and trying to figure out my world in his own way. The other day when I was going to the taxi with my fellow pc volunteers he was nervous because I had a backpack on and needed to walk down the street by myself. This man never leaves the couch and yet he walked me all the way to the dar chebab so that he would know I was safe. One of my favorite interactions with baba was one day after eating I had some hand sanitizer. He didn’t know what it was and asked me if it was a small bottle of water. I replied no, that it is soap that you use without water…. As a curious man, baba asked me if he could have some so I obliged. It is actually Christmas-scented hand sanitizer so this is a scent he is not used to. I had to show baba how to rub it in his hands and it was just like teaching a child (which I realized I must seem like every second of the day to them). Baba couldn’t stop smelling his hands for about 5 minutes and he kept saying “nice, nice, nice.” I could not have been more amused. Another interesting thing happened in the family. Rabab got engaged after me being here for 4 days to a man named Kamel. She did not know him until he showed up at the door and asked to marry her (this actually happened while I was in the Hammam if you can believe it). Kamel left today to go back to the Sahara where he is from. I have no clue when or if he will be back, but that was an experience.

me playing with Mohammed

Baba, confused as to what Aya is doing

Kamel in his Real Madrid gear

Rabab and myself

Me and Aya

So everyday I wake up at around 730 to have breakfast. Breakfast here consists of bread, bread, and more bread. Sometimes we literally get 3 different types of bread to have at once. Ive never gotten fruit or jogurt or anything besides bread for breakfast. Lunch is the big meal of the day: most of the time it is a tanjine, all of the time it is served with bread. So a Moroccan meal is exactly how one might picture it. We all sit around a table and eat with our hands from the same bowl. Contrary to popular belief, you actually can use both hands to “handle” the food, but according to the quoran if you use your left hand to put the food into your mouth then you are feeding the devil. On Fridays, we eat couscous. Every Friday, pretty much every family all eats couscous. Couscous is wild to eat in my family. Mama taught me how to eat couscous with my hands, which consists of me shaking the couscous until it turns into a ball. It takes a while to get used to the eating culture because pretty much every meal mama decides I need something that’s not in my area of the tanjine so will grab a squash and squish it up for me and stir it with her hands in my couscous. Or Kamel the fiancé will break apart my meat for me and give it to me. Another thing about the eating process is that they never stop telling me to eat. I will literally have a mouth full of food and they will beg me to eat as if I am starving. I literally don’t even have room in my mouth to answer that I am eating. We often have smoothies or sodas with our meal, pretty much never water. A couple of times we have had this really really sour milk thing. I tried to ask what it was but didn’t understand the word they were saying. I then tried to ask if it was milk and they said no but it comes from a cow…. So there is that language barrier right now preventing me from understanding what I am consuming, but that is fine, it might be better that way. After class I will get home between 630 and 7 most days. Awaiting me is a snack of…. You guessed it…. Bread! Bread and something highly imbibed with caffeine. Tea or coffee usually. A lot of times I don’t have the energy or the will to stay up for dinner, which usually occurs at 930/10ish, but that is fine with me because I am rarely hungry at this point. Anyways, 2 of my meals consist entirely of bread. So when you hear Peace Corps saying that girls tend to gain weight during CBT this is why. Something funny that a fellow site-mate notices was one of the dishes that is served here semi-regularly is a sweet pasta made with peanut flour and raisins. He said it reminds him of the scene in "Elf" when buddy pours maple syrup and candy on the pasta because right before you eat it, you are supposed to dump a ton of powdered sugar on it. Hilarious. Also speaking of pasta, since my family has had to teach me how to eat pretty much everything here, we were served spaghetti one day and my mom taught me how to spin in on my fork as if it was something completely foreign to me. I went with it... its nice to get some positive reinforcement :)

^my street

In terms of my daily life most of my time is spent at the infamous dar chebab. So mostly in the morning I am learning darija. 4 hours straight of language learning. My teacher is really good about doing it in a fun and constructive way. Having never done a language immersion of this capacity before, it is so interesting how we really are picking up on the language of our families. Certain people use certain words a lot that others may not use at all. In the afternoon we have been doing a culture activity or more language or script and then we teach classes. Our first couple of classes we did dances for our classes just because that is the interest of the youth at our dar chebab (side note: youth is a very grey area because in morocco “youth” means anyone 18-30 who isn’t married, so picture that demographic for the youth I am talking about). We taught them how to salsa, played musical chairs, and even how to “wobble” (shout out Charlie Bear). Then we started to attempt more traditionally educational endeavors. Me and Tania (who is a Pisces as a side note) started working with a few young girls on public speaking and women’s empowerment. Tania has experience working with girls in Kenya on this same topic so she is someone I really enjoy learning from when she is teaching. I really think this is a project I want to work on over the course of my 2 years here. Today we got a call from the director of our dar chebab to attend a meeting about spring camp coming up. So we are in charge of organizing a week long camp for 18-30 year olds that takes place a week from Monday. We are in charge or recruiting people, coming up with a schedule for it, teaching it, etc… this on top of our already hectic schedule. It definitely feels like a lot we are juggling right now. On top of that, next week we are having interviews on where we will be placed for our final assignment. Ive decided safety and learning Arabic are my two priorities. Id prefer a smaller site, and id prefer the north, but im not as picky on those two things. I have to say Id be worried about my skin if they put me in the sahara.

snaps from class

Misc. Items:

If you tuned in for another hammam story, Im sorry to inform you that no hammams have been visited since the last post, mostly because my sister and mom both got sick from it, but also because I learned how to bucket bathe. There is no shower in my house. The hotel was really really really nice for that reason.

It is cold here all of the time. Maybe not polar vortex type of cold, but unrelenting cold. I can literally see my breath from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. Class is freezing. My house is freezing. Whatever temp it is outside it is also inside.

So I am getting fake married this weekend. My family is really excited. I tried on a couple of dresses last night and lets just say I said yes to the dress. I don’t wear makeup daily here, so they are really excited to get me done up and I am sure another hammam will be involved. Tomorrow I am getting henna. Pictures to come on that…..

Also call to prayer. I was under the impression that as soon as the call to prayer came on everyone sort of stopped where they were dead in their tracks to pray. This isnt the case. But I did take a video of the call to prayer during sunset in Mecknes

Also, today marks our 1 month in-country. Its sort of our first milestone so thats really neat. A fellow CBT member was eating breakfast today and his 6 year old host brother and told him "You speak darija the same as Spongebob Squarepants" so happy 1 month!!!! 

It has just been confirmed that I will be getting another hammam tomorrow