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.
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