The Hammam

Ok, sorry in advance if this is gross/creepy/too much information in any way, but the hammam has made a big impression on me, so I need to post about it. The hammam is the public Moroccan bathhouse where most Moroccan women go about once a week, and I went two weeks ago for the first time.

So, we got there, paid 10 dirhams (about $1.50), and then were ushered upstairs which was basically like a super steamy sauna, and we stripped down to just our underwear. It was super awkward seeing my friends topless for the first minute, but then we all got over it and then it was normal. So we took our hammam buckets and all our bath stuff into the actual bath room, which is just a big steamy tile room with a bunch of hot and cold faucets and drains on the floor. People sit anywhere they want around the room on mats or stools, and about half of the Moroccan women are completely naked and half are just in underwear. We copped out and wore the underwear.

My host sister had given me her hammam stuff, which consisted of a big bucket to fill up with water, a stool, a smaller little bucket to use to pour water on yourself, a scrubby cloth thing that felt like a cross between a washcloth and sandpaper, and a slightly less sandpapery washcloth. My friends had been to the hammam before with their host families so they knew the whole process. We bought some henna on the way there, which you’re supposed to use to make your skin soft.

So, confronted with a lot of nudity, we filled up our buckets and found some room in a corner. First you’re supposed to mix the henna with water and this type of mud stuff to make a big gooey mix. Then you completely cover yourself in the henna/mud and leave it for a couple minutes, then wash yourself off with the bucket combo. After that, there’s a good half hour of scrubbing your entire body with the sandpapery wash cloth, which you’re supposed to do until you see layers of your skin coming off. It’s semi painful but also really gratifying and kind of horrifying to see all that skin coming off. It kind of pills off in little grey clumps.. you have no idea how many layers of skin you have until you try to scrub it all off. So anyways, after that you just generally do your whole shower routine, and you’re there for about an hour and a half total.

And afterwards you feel SUPER clean.. probably because you just lost a couple layers of skin. It was really cool though, and I went by myself a couple weeks later. When I went by myself I got a lot of stares at first, probably because all the women were wondering who I was and why I was there at their hammam, but then they got over it and didn’t pay any attention to me.

It’s also interesting that in a culture where women cover up so much on the street they have the hammam where you can be completely naked. I’ve noticed that there is no issue at all about women seeing each other naked – the only problem is when men are around, and then you’re not supposed to show too much leg or shoulders/chest area. And definitely no midriff. Unless you’re a belly dancer – then you get a free pass to wear the belly dancing costume, which is basically just a bra and underwear with some sort of meshy/see through skirt/scarf, and then it’s all about showing off the stomach and how you move your hips. Attitudes about nudity are all really interesting and more complex than I originally thought when I came here. It seems like what’s ok to wear all really depends on what role you’re playing, where you are, and who your audience is. No one cares at all and it’s completely respectable and normal to see belly dancing on TV, but then if you walk around your house or on the street in shorts showing too much leg, it’s considered shameful. There’s a huge disconnect between belly dancing/the hammam and regular everyday life. I don’t know what to make of all this. Maybe more on it later. 

Thanksgiving and Aunt Diane's visit

This past weekend my Aunt Diane came to visit me. She did a tour around Morocco and went to all the famous cities like Marrakesh, Fes, and she visited the High Atlas Mountains before ending her trip in Rabat with me. This past Thursday was also Thanksgiving, which turned out really good despite our worries that we wouldn’t get a real Thanksgiving dinner.

My friends and I ended up going to the American Embassy in Rabat for Thanksgiving dinner, which turned out to be wonderful and delicious. Everything was imported from the United States, so it turned out really authentic and American and perfect. Down to the pecan and pumpkin pie. So that was amazing, and it made us all a little homesick sharing Thanksgiving stories.

The next day my Aunt Diane got to Rabat, so some of my friends and I went and found her at her hotel and took her out to a café. During the weekend we ended up doing a lot – we saw the mausoleum, some Roman ruins in Rabat, went to my favorite Syrian food restaurant, ate with my host family, saw the beach, went to some cafés, and just generally did a lot of walking around and catching up. It was so good seeing her and hearing about everyone at home. She was also the first person of any of my family or friends from home that I’ve seen the whole time I’ve been here. The combination of Thanksgiving, her visit, and us having only one month left here made me super homesick. But, nevertheless, it was awesome getting to be kind of a guide and getting to show her around Rabat.

So anyways, shoutout to Diane. It was so good to see you, and I’m glad you enjoyed your trip! Also, thank you SO MUCH for the peanut butter. I was eating it straight out of the jar this morning and nothing has ever tasted better.

Aid Kabir

The Aid Kabir, which literally means “big holiday” in Arabic, celebrates the story in the Koran where Allah tells Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ishmael as a test of his faith and his devotion. Ibrahim is willing to do this, but then at the last minute before the sacrifice Allah tells Ibrahim that he had passed the test and told Ibrahim to sacrifice a ram instead. So every year every Muslim family buys a ram and sacrifices it to celebrate this.

We had a lecture about Aid Kabir, where the lecturer told us that although a lot of people these days think that it’s barbaric to do the sacrifice but that it’s also a huge part of Muslim tradition and it’s a big deal for every family to get their own ram and do their own sacrifice. He also said that the Aid was thought of as a celebration of human life because it was symbolic of Ibrahim keeping his son and sacrificing the ram to Allah instead.

I just got back from Spain the night before the sacrifice, so it was especially shocking coming back from Western culture to see all this. The night before the sacrifice we all did henna. My host Mom covered her palms and soles of her feet in henna as well as designs on the sides of hands and feet like married woman are supposed to. My sister and I got small designs on the tops of our hands as unmarried women.

The morning of the sacrifice I didn’t really know what to expect so I was sort of hanging around with a book watching all the preparations. It felt like a holiday – everyone was bustling around and excited, but it felt really wrong, because I knew they were all bustling about in preparations to kill the ram that was on our terrace. I watched TV with my host Dad all morning that showed various celebrations going on at the palace. Then they showed the king’s sacrifice, which my host Mom got excited about and told me watch, but it seemed almost too businesslike and quick the way that they did it and not much like a sacrifice at all. All that happened was that they sprinkled some water on it quickly, said a prayer, then held it down and the king ceremonially slit its throat. Pretty soon after that my host Dad got out a huge knife and started sharpening it, and then my sister told me to get my camera and I was ushered up to the terrace. There were some neighbor boys helping out along with my host Mom and Dad and sister. I stood a ways away over in the corner. It all happened very quickly, and I didn’t watch the whole thing. It was sort of surreal to see an animal that big being killed though – I think I’ve only seen fish die, not a huge animal like a ram. Anyways, they did it exactly like the king had – they held it down, slit its throat, and let it bleed out. There was an incredible amount of blood. I was proud of myself for not fainting or doing anything embarrassing like running away or getting upset. I didn’t help butcher it or anything, though, like some of my friends did with their families. I kept sort of watching through my fingers like it was a scary movie. It was really disturbing to see it trying to run away even with its throat cut, and it was really disturbing when they started chopping the head completely off when its body was still alive. I took exactly one picture of all of this because I felt like I should at least sort of document it, so this is all I got:

After that I went downstairs while they did the neighbor’s ram and while they butchered the rams and got all the meat out and everything. I decided before all this that it would be extremely hypocritical to not want to see an animal die because I eat meat, so I’ve probably eaten a ton of animals in my lifetime. It was still strange seeing a ram die and knowing that I was going to be eating it for the next couple weeks. In America we’re so separated from the idea that meat comes from an actual animal. It’s really different meeting the animal you’re going to eat and seeing it go from alive to dead to you eating it.

That afternoon we ate the liver and the stomach, or so I was told. Here's my host fam grilling:

That was pretty much it. I went out with my friend that night and the substances on the street were pretty questionable. There were a lot of blood stains and in one corner there was a huge 10x10x10 foot pile of ram innards and carcasses. I remember that I had just finished talking about how disturbing it was to see all the innards and stuff on the streets, and I was wondering where they put all the extra stuff that they didn’t save to eat, and then I turned around and saw that huge pile, which was funny and perfect timing in a really sick way. Also, my friend, who is Moroccan, kept talking about how sore his arm was from cutting off ram heads all day, which I couldn’t take seriously. (A lot of the younger Moroccan men get paid to help families sacrifice their rams.) I didn’t even know how to have sympathy for someone being sore from that.

The next morning I woke up to my house looking like a butcher shop – my host Mom and sister were cutting up all the meat on the kitchen table and putting it in bags to freeze. The next couple weeks were funny in the sense that I always had to ask what part of the ram I was eating. They really use every part of the ram. One choice moment was when we had the usual couscous on Fridays, and there was a ram skull right in the middle of the couscous. That was the only time I ever lost my appetite from all the ram meat was watching my host Mom and sister go at the head in the couscous. They literally eat everything – the face, the eyes, and they suck the marrow out of the bones. They don’t eat the brain though.

So, that’s it. After the next couple weeks of nothing but ram meat (which just tastes like lamb) I have never appreciated normal things like chicken or noodles so much in my life. However, despite all the absurdities and semi-traumatizing incidents, I’m glad I got to see the Aid Kabir because it’s such a big part of culture here.

Espana

This is my first entry in about a month, apologies for that. After we got back from our trip around Morocco, life in Rabat was relatively uneventful. We got back into the swing of schoolwork and spending time with host families. We also spent a lot of time at the beach when we probably should have been studying – a group of us in the program are taking surf lessons, and we live right next to the beach, so it’s entirely too easy to skip studying to go swim. We’ve also made friends with all of our surf instructors and so we’ve been hanging out and going out with some of them. It’s been fun hanging out with native Moroccans because they know all the best places to go and it’s funny talking to them about Moroccan things that we don’t understand.

This past week was our semester break, so a group of six of us went up to Spain for eight days. We visited Seville, Cordoba, and Madrid. It was wonderful to get out of Morocco for a little while and get a taste of Western culture again. I can’t even express how happy I was to wear a dress above my knees and show my arms without getting strange looks from people on the street. It was fun blending in too – in Morocco I get a lot of stares and comments because I stand out as obviously European or American, but in Spain I could pass as Spanish as long as I didn’t talk. One morning I went for a walk by myself and it felt so nice to just walk without conspicuously standing out.

Unfortunately I don’t speak any Spanish, so on that front the trip was a little tough. It felt sort of disrespectful to them to not speak their language at all. Sometimes some Moroccan Arabic slipped out when I was saying basic things like hello and thank you, so that definitely got me some weird looks. A couple people in our group spoke some Spanish, so they could pretty much communicate anything we needed to figure out. I was surprised at how little English or French most Spaniards spoke. I guess I expected most Europeans to know a lot of languages because they’re so close to so many countries, but that wasn’t really the case.

Our trip started in Seville, which is a beautiful little city in southern Spain. It had such a quaint and fun atmosphere with lots of beautiful architecture and tons of tiny tapas bars and restaurants. It’s a big tourist destination, so we heard a ton of different languages on the streets. We stayed in hostels in all three cities, so we met some interesting people in each city. In Seville there were a lot of Americans, British, and French people staying there, so it was fun hearing everyone’s story. That particular hostel in Seville has a program where you can stay for free and work as part of the staff for a month. I talked to some of the Americans doing that and it seems like an awesome option for anyone looking to travel for prolonged periods of time cheaply. We spent Halloween there and the hostel hosted a little party for all the visitors in the hostel. Most Spaniards don’t dress up, but everyone at the hostel got really into it, so we had a lot of fun. (I dressed up as Courtney Love and my friend dressed up as Kurt Cobain.. it was the best we could do working from random things from our suitcases. I basically just teased my hair and put on sloppy lipstick and my friend wore a lot of flannel. Most people didn’t get it, but at least we tried.) We did a ton of walking around the city.. we saw the Cathedral and the Plaza de Espana, which were both beautiful. Our favorite things, however, were inexpensive grocery stores where we could trust the food to not give us food poisoning, and coffee to go in big American sized cups! (Coffee to go does not exist in Morocco – they will give you funny looks if you try to explain this concept to them. They also drink it in tiny glasses exclusively.) You don’t know how beautiful normal coffee is until you don’t have it for months.

Our second city was Cordoba, which was a little quieter than Seville and wasn’t as much of a tourist destination. It had really cute tiny streets with tons of shops and tapas restaurants. We did a lot of walking and exploring around the city, which has really interesting architecture. We saw a medieval castle that was built by one the Spanish kings to house other visiting kings. We saw a Catholic church that looked very Arabic, where the doors and art looked a lot like most mosques, but with a Greek style courtyard. There were also a lot of renaissance looking sculptures all over the old part of the city. The city was founded in the 7^th century, so was cool to see all the hundreds of years of different influences in one city sort of layered on each other.

Finally was Madrid! It was pretty cold and rainy there, which reminded me so much of fall in Boston and it made me a little homesick. The actual city itself reminded me a lot of New York, with crowded sidewalks and that sort of city feel. It felt so strange being back in a city after life in Morocco. Everyone looked really well dressed and stressed out basically. We all got back into the swing of city life very easily though – I didn’t know how much I missed walking on city streets until we were actually there. It was so fun getting dressed up and walking around the city with coffee (I will never take this for granted again.) While we were there we visited the gardens and the Prado, which were both wonderful. The gardens were huge and really peaceful and beautiful. We walked around there for a good amount of time. One of my friends described it as what Central Park wishes it could be. It reminded me a lot of Robert Frost poems, which is nerdy but that’s really all I could think about – it reminded me of all his descriptions of forests. The Prado was sooo cool. The art nerd in me loved that too. They have tons of Goya and a lot of other Spanish impressionists that I wasn’t that familiar with. They also have a ton of really famous Italian baroque.. I’m forgetting all the names of the artists now as I’m writing this, though. I spent three hours walking around and looking at all of it until my feet hurt and I was overwhelmed by all of it. They have so much Spanish, French, Italian, and Roman medieval, renaissance, baroque, classical, impressionist, sculptures.. they have it all. (Not a lot of anything past the mid 1800s, though, so if you’re a fan of post impressionism or any modern it’s not the best place for that.) If you love art you have to go. I left there so happy and dazed from standing and looking at art for three hours I could barely even think. I think that may have been my favorite part of Spain overall. We met some funny characters in Madrid too. We were sharing a big hostel room with a bunch of Brazilian guys and a Lithuanian, so we went out with them one of the nights. We ended up in a huge two-story club dancing until six in the morning. That was probably our most authentic eurotrash moment.. we didn’t sleep that night at all, we just went straight back to the hostel, packed up, and then had to go straight to the airport to catch our flight back to Marrakesh, and then from there the train to Rabat. We got home exhausted and dirty and happy to be home. We got back the night before Aid Kabir, a very big Muslim holiday, which I think will be a theme of a new post.

All in all it was a really awesome trip. It was really nice to have a break from Arabic and Moroccan culture, and of course Spain itself was beautiful. It was really funny and weird coming back to find that it sort of felt like coming home to be coming back to Morocco and my host family. Some things about Morocco is so quirky and weird and annoying in so many ways, but it’s so fun and welcoming at the same time that you kind of have to love it.

Group Excursion

So this past week, the program took us on a group excursion all around Morocco - we visited Marrakesh, Fes, Chefchaouen, and we camped one night in the Sahara.

We were in this tiny little "minivan" the entire time, so it was like one really cramped road trip with all 11 of us in this van. Needless to say we all got to know each other way too well.

Our first stop was Marrakesh, which is probably the most touristy city in Morocco. First, we went to the Marjorelle Gardens, which were really pretty and colorful, but it was sort of overrun with French and Spanish tourists so we didn't stay too long.

Next we visited the medina (the old part of the city) where we walked through the souk (below), and we visited the big square where we had some tea and saw the snake charmers and story tellers.

We also visited an old Koranic school, which had BEAUTIFUL architecture. It was so cool. My pictures don't do it justice at all. All the detail in the tile mosaics and the calligraphy was really impressive. All the emphasis on symmetry in art and the really ornate detail on everything was really interesting to see because it's so different from the western style.

On Monday we drove through the mountains on our way to the desert, which was absolutely beautiful, and also depressing when I realized that my camera was not adequate at all for capturing it. Picture this, but 180 degrees around you instead of just this. 

We stayed Monday night at this hotel in Zagora. We didn't get to see the city much because we got there in the evening and left the next morning, but here are some pictures of the hotel. It was surrounded my palm trees, which I was not used to seeing - I'm used to a couple palm trees planted in people's yards in California, or along roads, but I'd never seen palm trees growing naturally like this. Also, everything was so colorful, I loved it. 

 The next morning we stopped at a pottery village on our way to the desert. We took a tour of their town, which is built entirely underground so that it stays cool during the hot days and warm during the cold desert nights. They had a museum where they have handwritten copies of the Koran and various math and astronomy texts. It was pretty humbling and made me sort of ashamed of Western culture to see this random tribe in the middle of the Sahara have these thousand year old manuscripts about math and astronomy from a time when Europe was still in the dark ages. It was also interesting to see how they made this beautiful pottery with handmade tools and natural dyes. I don't have any pictures of the finished products but I bought a couple things, so maybe some of you will see those.

We stopped for lunch and had lunch and tea with the chief of a nomad tribe. He told us a little bit about their customs and about his life and his family. He said that he was famous for his tea, and whenever he had conventions with other tribes he would always be asked to serve the tea. He also said that he had met Bill Clinton, and had served tea to Bill Clinton in the '90s. He also said that his father, the previous cheif, had lived to be 113 and that he intended to do the same. Needless to say, this guy was really awesome.

Next, my favorite part, was camping in the Sahara! We stopped on the way and bought some turbans, (which turned out to be extremely useful in keeping the sand out of your hair and mouth). We went for a camel ride when we first got there to see the sunset, but unfortunately it was cloudy so there aren't any good sunset pics.

That night a group of singers/drummers came and did some traditional dances, and eventually made us all dance with them. We ended up staying up late singing and dancing and drumming with them, which was as awesome as it sounds.

We made friends with some of the nomad guys our age who were working at the camp, and they were impressed that we could speak a little bit of Arabic, so we talked to them in a mix of Arabic, French, and English for a while. It was sad to learn that most of them were going to school, but had to drop out and work at the camp to make money for their families. We had the probably not-so-bright idea of walking out into the Sahara away from our camp at night to see the stars because there was too much light in the camp, and our nomad friends said they could take us. So at about midnight we ended up on a dune in the middle of the desert, where we tried to keep the sand out of our mouths and where they told us some riddles in Arabic, which ended in a lot of miscommunication. It was still too cloudy to see stars, which was really sad because I had been looking forward to that a lot, but it was still absurdly awesome that we hung out with some nomad guys in the middle of the Sahara telling probably mis-translated riddles. When it was time to go, the nomad guys were joking with me that I should stay, telling me that nomad life was relaxing and fun and you got to just hang out in the desert all day and that you had no worries. This was tempting - I would love to stay a month just hanging out in the Sahara. It was definitely my favorite place I've seen so far in Morocco. We had to leave, though, to go to Fes!

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of Fes because I forgot to bring my camera on the tour of the medina. The medina of Fes was very very impressive, though. It's the biggest medina in Morocco, and the guide said there was something like 60 miles of streets in the medina alone. (Which does not allow any vehicles in, not even bicycles, so everyone is on foot, or on donkeys.) The Fes medina is unique in that they make most of the things they're selling right in their shops, so we saw metalworkers making tea pots, plates, and trays, we saw them washing and weaving silk, and we saw the tannery where they dye the leather and make belts, shoes, bags, etc. 

On Friday morning, we stopped at the Roman ruins of Volubilis. This was one of the Roman outposts in North Africa (which was then Mauritania I believe), where they grew olives and grapes for wine. They were there for 500 years, after the Phoenicians and before the Arabs. They left the city around the time of the decline of the Roman Empire and pulled back to Rome. The city was eventually destroyed by the Lisbon earthquake, and all of the marble in the city was stripped by the Arabs and brought to Fes(?) We saw some private houses, with what looked like used to be some very luxurious baths and private olive presses (which was a sign of wealth), we saw what used to be a temple of Jupiter, and an early Christian church. Our guide said the city existed at a time when Christianity was beginning to spread, and polytheism and monotheism both existed in the city at the same time. Most of the tile mosaics on the floors were still intact. This one right below is of dolphins, which symbolized good luck and fertility in Roman culture.

The baths in one of the bigger houses. The city was built on a hotspring, so they had warm running water all the time.

The ruins of the Temple of Jupiter. The stone thing in front is a sacrificial altar where they sacrificed animals to Jupiter.

Where a Christian temple used to be

This mosaic shows the twelve labors of Hercules - in each oval shows a different labor.

My camera died in the middle of the tour, so I didn't get pictures of some of the best mosaics. Some were really well preserved, though, with all the color in the tiles still intact.

On Friday, we made our way to Chefchaouen, a beautiful little town in the mountains. Most of the doors and windows, and some streets, were painted all different shades of blue, and it was really calm and quaint in relation to the big cities we had seen before like Marrakesh and Fes. We went on a short hike, and saw some goats and goat herders. We also came across a ram, who we underestimated, and who ended up chasing us away, which was actually a terrifying moment, but hilarious in hindsight.

 "Chefchaouen"

All in all, our trip was amazing and it was over way too quickly. I'm glad that it was planned out by the program, because we got to see things we probably would never have found on our own. I would love to spend more time in all of those places. I really can't rave about it enough - seeing all the different part of Morocco, from the desert to the mountains, in one week was so cool. It's almost depressing to be back in Rabat. It was interesting, though, how it felt like coming home to be back here. It just goes to show how you can get used to a place in one month without even realizing it.

Fus'ha/Darija

Warning: this post is going to be really linguistics-y so sorry in advance, it’s just something I was thinking about today.

So, background on Arabic is that there is one dialect, Modern Standard Arabic (Fus’ha), that is taught is schools and is considered the official Arabic language. No one actually speaks this language as a first language, though. They all speak their own dialects of Arabic. Darija is spoken in most of North Africa, the Egyptian dialect in Egypt, and the Levantine dialect in most of the Middle East. Everyone learns Fus’ha in school, and all formal schooling is done in Fus’ha. This creates a really big divide between the literate Moroccans, who know Fus’ha and use a lot of those words in their everyday life, and the lower class Moroccans who only speak Darija. The divide in languages only gets bigger the more schooling you have. Thus, by only teaching reading and writing in Fus’ha, you’re essentially creating a culture divide between literate people and illiterate.

It’s also interesting to think about how this all came about. In English, our language evolved pretty much with the writing – there was no formal register of English that was a different dialect from the colloquial dialects. Some formal terms that you may not use in everyday conversation of course, but not anything that could be termed two different dialects. I think it may have something to do with Arabic schooling being so tightly tied to reading the Koran, which is written in an older form of Fus’ha. As the various dialects developed over time, but people still studied the Koran to learn to read and write, the divide between colloquial speech and formal speech got wider and wider. It’s very strange how it is today, though, where all the books and news stations are in a language that is barely mutually intelligible with what everyone in the country speaks. I asked my Arabic professor if any books are written in Darija, and she said one famous author has written some things in Darija, but it’s not popular at all yet. It seems to me like if you’re writing a book in what is essentially a second language, your creativity would be a bit stunted. I think it would be cool for the Moroccans to start producing official things in Darija so they could share more personal stories and share the culture more directly, instead of translating it into a formal register.

Another thing about the languages is that each person speaks their own mix of Fus’ha and Darija, just depending on how much schooling they have or perhaps their socioeconomic background and how much of each they’re exposed to. My Arabic teacher explained to us that some people, the most educated, speak like 70% Fus’ha and the rest Darija in every day life, while some may speak no Fus’ha at all. It’s so weird to me to think of a society sort of stratified by language. It’s sort of like a sociolinguistics thing, where the language you speak is directly linked to your schooling or your socioeconomic background.

It’s all just fascinating to me. Especially coming from America where we basically only speak English. For an entire country to speak a different language at home than the one they speak in school seems so weird.

I have to qualify that, though. The Egyptian and Levantine dialects are both mutually intelligible with Fus’ha for the most part. It’s just the Moroccan dialect that is barely mutually intelligible at all, so it basically is like a second language for them.

Women and the veil in Morocco

During our orientation, one of our instructors gave a talk about the history of the veil and the political implications that went with it, and what she had to say was actually very interesting and made me think of the veil in a new way.

She started by telling the story of her grandmother, who could count the number of times she left the house in her life on both hands, and who wore the full veil each of those times she left her house.
She was very proud of this, and said that she was proud to have a husband who was kind enough to never make her leave the house. The grandmother explained to her that from where she was from, in rural Morocco in the early 1900s, women were used sort of as pack mules, and that it was common practice for a man to go to his neighbor’s house and ask to borrow the neighbor’s wife to help carry something heavy into town. So, it was a sort of a symbol of prestige for a woman to wear the veil and to have the freedom to stay inside her house.

Much later, around the 1970s, our instructor told us that hardly any women wore veil or even a headscarf, and that at that time the literacy rate for women was very low. There was also a lot of sexism regarding religious practice, ie. women were not encouraged to go to the mosque to pray, but instead were encouraged to pray at home, and they were not encouraged to read the Koran. In the 1980s there was a feminist movement where more women were being educated, and wearing the head scarf became a women’s movement as a symbol of being able to read the Koran and interpret it for themselves without having men interpret it for them. Many women began to wear the headscarf and go to the mosque to pray as sort of a symbol of defiance against men who had told them that it was not necessary to do so before.

So, that is the history of the veil and the headscarf, and it’s a bit more complicated today. Most middle aged and older women wear the headscarf, and most younger women do not. People wear it for a wide variety of reasons, too – some for religious piety, some because they like the way it looks, some for traditional reasons, some because their families want them to, some because of just general societal pressure. Our instructor does not wear the headscarf, and she says she gets questions all the time from other women about why she doesn’t wear it. So there is definitely some community judgment against middle aged women who don’t wear it. Most younger and unmarried girls don’t wear it though, and there’s no pressure for them to.

I must say, just as a personal observation, it was very shocking to see women wearing the full veil. Very few women wear the full veil here (only showing a slit for your eyes). I did sort of a double take at one woman in head to toe black robes with black gloves. My first impression of her was that she was sort of faceless. I had an interesting conversation with one girl in my program about it – she commented that the face is such an important part of communication and expression, and that by covering up your avenues of expression, you’re covering up your humanity. It was eerie, almost, to see this woman walking around with no face. I’ve gotten more used to it, though, and it’s not as shocking anymore. One interesting thing I saw was a woman wearing the full veil with lots of eye makeup. I did not know what to make of this at all. It feels contradictory to try to cover up your whole body and face, but then wear lots of eye makeup. Maybe her family makes her wear the veil and that’s her way of feeling attractive? I don’t know. Make of that what you will.

The instructor closed the session by repeating what one woman who wore the full veil once told her. The woman said that she felt the most free she ever had when she started wearing the full veil. Now, after seeing the way Moroccan men treat women in the streets, I can actually understand this sentiment.  Moroccan men make you feel very objectified by staring at you and making comments all the time, with no shame at all, and I can understand why this woman would feel free walking in the streets not being overly scrutinized and bothered by men. It is sad, though, that some women here go to those lengths to feel comfortable and free walking around in the streets. I think that shows the problems with what is acceptable for men more than anything.

Anyways, all in all I think my conceptions of the veil have definitely changed, or at least I can kind of commiserate with it a little more. It doesn’t seem quite so foreign to me anymore. I think people in the US have sort of a phobia with all things foreign, and the ideas of the veil and Islam seem very foreign to people in the US. It is important to note that, at least in Morocco, wearing the headscarf is a personal choice for women (with a little bit of societal pressure). It’s not encouraged by the government at all. 

2 and a half weeks in

It's interesting to me how now, after a couple weeks, things are already starting to become so familiar to me that I don't even notice them anymore. I don't get lost anymore in the maze of alleys leading from my house to the building where we have class. I don't really notice the questionable piles of trash in the streets. I've stopped minding the looks/greetings/comments from random men. I've gotten used to everyone being about 10-20 minutes late for everything. My first instinct is to say certain things in French or Arabic instead of in English first and then searching for a translation. Sometimes it's annoying always searching for a way to express exactly what I want to say, but it's also fun when I am able to express myself. I've found myself remembering words for things I didn't know I knew, and I'm getting really used to only using French at home (even though I should actually be practicing my Arabic also).

One thing I can't get used to, though, is the food. Moroccan food is very very VERY carb heavy. Breakfast always consists of a tea or coffee and a combination of toast, baguette, and croissants. Lunch is generally some type of stew with bread. (The traditional way to eat the stew is using bread as a spoon and picking up the food with a piece of bread. My family uses spoons, though, thank goodness. Trying to use bread as a utensil causes you to eat way too much bread.) Then we have tea at dinnertime, around 7pm, which consists of bread, baguette, croissants, tea, and coffee. Then a small dinner late at like 10 or 11pm, which varies, but is usually more carbs... something like pasta or rice. Basically my diet is entirely carbs, cooked vegetables, fat, some meat, and fruit. There is not a lot of variety in the meals, which makes me miss American food so much. I definitely took for granted the ability to find any type of food I wanted.

Everyone in my program is settling in to Moroccan life. A group of us have decided to take belly dancing classes and surf lessons, which are both absurdly cheap here by American standards. We've also been planning trips, for example, next weekend we're going to Tangiers to go to the beach and a jazz festival. The week after that is our group excursion, where we're visiting all over Morocco including several days in Marrakesh and camping in the desert in southern Morocco. For our break we've decided to go travel around southern Spain and then spend some days in Portugal.

We just got my internship placements today, and we start tomorrow. I'm working at the Association Democratique des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM), which is a nonprofit women's advocacy organization that works closely with a lot of other women's groups to push certain measures in parliament. I'm pretty sure they're mostly political advocacy group for gender equality and women's rights, but they also run some education programs. It's interesting that on their website they describe themselves as a feminist group. The word 'feminist' seems almost outdated in American culture, but I keep having to remind myself that in Morocco the concept of feminism is not outdated or superfluous in politics but rather fairly modern and necessary. I'm excited to work with those women and hopefully get a better grasp of the types of social and political gender inequalities in Morocco today.

This past weekend we took a trip to Casablanca. The highlight of the trip was probably seeing the Hassan II mosque, the third largest mosque in the world, with the tallest minaret. (The tour guide emphasized this point). It was huge and beautiful. The pictures don't do it justice at all.

The mosque is built right on the ocean, and it was beautiful to watch the sunset on the ocean with the mosque all lit up like this. King Hassan II of Morocco, who built this in the early 1990s, said he chose this spot because of  the line in the Qur'an that says "his throne was on the ocean" ('his' being Allah).

The other highlight was the Casablanca nightlife. We went to several clubs that were all VERY different, and each interesting and fun in their own ways. One, we soon found out, was a gay club. Homosexuality is very taboo in Moroccan culture, so it was interesting to find very blatant homosexuality inside the club when outside the club it would be very taboo for two men to kiss, for example. Homosexuality is actually illegal in Morocco, and you can get pretty serious jail time for being openly gay. That is to say, there are many gay men (and presumably women) in Morocco, but you have to be very secretive about it. So, it was interesting to see crossdressing and men kissing in the club when it is so taboo in general and in public. Another club we went to was very loud and crowded with a mix of traditionally dressed Moroccans and very westernly clad Moroccans. They were playing traditional music, and lots of women were belly dancing. One woman was actually wearing the traditional robe and head scarf while belly dancing. This was very strange - I continue to not understand so much about this culture. I'll write more on that later perhaps.

First impressions

So, first of all, I wasn't sure if I was going to start a blog or not for this trip.. I wasn't sure if any of my observations would actually be of any interest to anyone, but I decided to start one anyways mainly as a journal for myself and as a way to keep everyone updated about my travels without having to update everyone individually.

I guess I'll start by saying that I've been here for approximately a week and half but it feels so much longer than that. The trip here was very long - a flight at 7:30 am California time from Los Angeles to New York, then a flight at 7 pm New York time from New York to Paris, then a flight at noon Paris time from Paris to Rabat... all in all it was about a full 24 hours of traveling. So, once we actually got to Morocco we were just happy to be able to be done with all the flights and waiting in airports.

When we first got here, we were staying in a hotel in the modern part of the city that was built in the mid 1900s during the French colonization of this part of Morocco. (Morocco was colonized by both France and Spain around the time of WWI until the 1950s or the 1970s for some areas- Spain got the northern and southern areas, and France got the middle section). So, it was interesting to see the juxtaposition of relatively modern architecture vs. the older architecture from the people that lived here before. There are 3 different developed areas in Rabat. There is the old city built in the 12th century by the native people of Morocco, then the medina "city" built in the 17th century by moors who came down from Spain, then the modern city built by the French in the mid 1900s. We're taking classes and staying with host families in the medina (17th century city). It's basically just a big grid of alleys like a maze. (I've gotten lost so many times, but now I can basically find my way around). It's completely self sufficient, though. All the markets and homes are here for the people who live here, and most don't have to go outside to the newer part of the city for anything. Here's an example of a street:

We stayed at the hotel for the first week we were here during our orientation, which included a crash course in the Moroccan dialect of Arabic (darija) and we were given 10 dirhams each (the Moroccan currency, about 8 dirhams to a dollar) and being sent out to the markets to bargain with some Moroccan shopkeepers. This was semi successful on my part. Most people were amused and surprised at me, this very white American girl, trying to bargain with them in their language. I only know so much of the dialect, though, (basically hi, how are you, how much, etc.), so I always fell back on French. Orientation also included us being dropped off in random parts of the city and us having to ask directions from people on the street to find our way back to the medina. All of this trying to communicate in various languages (Darija, Standard Arabic, French, English) is very confusing and often ends in a lot of miscommunication and confusion. It's very rewarding, though, once you finally actually understand each other.

Another part of our orientation was a seminar on harassment from men on the street. We have experienced this a LOT firsthand. It is very culturally acceptable for Moroccan men to look women up and down, make kissing noises, whistle, and try to talk to random women on the street. So far I think the range of comments I've gotten is "hi sweetie" "hi sugar" "hello" "how are you" "hola" "bonjour" "salut" "ca va" "konichiwa" "I love you" "I want to teach you English" "American?" "Francais?" "Oh my God" "beautiful face" "bi kem" (which means "how much" in Arabic), and a lot more things in Arabic that I didn't understand. This happens ALL THE TIME too - I will get a mixture of at least 5 of these things said to me in any 10 minutes of walking on the street. This was very strange at first, especially when they walk by very close to you and say this right in your ear. I've gotten pretty used to it now, though. Most of the time I don't pay any attention to it. I've made friends with some Moroccan boys my own age who are friends with my host sister, and I've asked them about it, and they say that it's just teasing girls on the street and that it's not bad. They say it's just a compliment and that they're just them letting you know that they think you're attractive. Also, something strange to get used to is the very common pasttime of Moroccan men to sit at terraces of cafes and just watch women walking by, not even talking to each other. Apparently many Moroccan men love to just sit and people watch for hours at a time on terraces of cafes. (The Moroccan love for cafes came with the French colonization and it stuck. About one in every 5 stores on the street is a cafe.)

We moved in with our host families last week - mine is very nice and welcoming. My host mom and dad are a bit older, perhaps in their early 60s, and I have a host sister who is 27. They have a really nice, clean, apartment (which is pretty rare in the medina, because it's so old and all the buildings are so small), and they're really fun and funny (even though I can barely understand them). They also have a western toilet and shower instead of a turkish toilet and buckets for a shower! This is wonderful.. most families only have the turkish toilet and buckets. If you don't know what this is look it up on Google images. Moroccan culture is very welcoming - my fam always has guests over, and I've met a lot of the families who live around us. I've met a bunch of guys my age who are family friends, and I've gone to some cafes with them. They speak good English, so it's really nice to be able to be able to speak to them in English and not have to search for the words for things.

I have to go to class so I'll save the rest for later. Sorry this post is all over the place. There's so much to cover! I need to remind myself to talk about food/coffee/tea, the call to prayer, street cats, Moroccan beaches, dating/marriage, alcohol, holidays, and women and the veil/covering their head.