How To Slaughter A Sheep

FYI, THIS ENTRY CONTAINS SOME GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING PICTURES. DON’T EAT BEFORE READING AND DON’T MAKE PLANS TO EAT SOON AFTER.

During Leid Kbir celebrations I got to witness the slaughtering of 3 sheep. Here is how it goes down:


My host dad and brother slicing the sheep’s throat


It laid there for a while, bleeding and…


Twitching.


It’s dead


It’s head is cut off and…


Barbequed to be eaten later.


Holes are then cut below the knee and the sheep is inflated


The sheep is hung and…


Skinned and…


Gutted.


What it looks like before it is chopped into pieces. And yes, this would be our kitchen floor. And yes, I had the same reaction you are probably having right now.

Food Smorgasbord

So some of the first questions I am asked by people (both from home and here) concern food. Here is a typical dialogue:

Person: How are you eating?
Me: I am eating very well, thank you. (Trying to use the manners my parents so hammered into me all those years)
Person: What sort of foods does your family eat (and me by extension)?
Me: Lamb, potatoes, chicken, cous cous, soup, eggs, etc.
Person: All in one day?
Me: No, All in ONE MEAL
Person: Holy shit…you must have to eat a lot
Me: Yeah, I am required to eat bzzaf amounts of food.

-Side Note: ‘bzzaf’ means ‘a lot.’ I use it frequently not only because many situations call for it but also because it is a fun word to say. Much more fun to say than 'copious'

When I eat all this food, my body engages in some internal fighting. This is how it plays out:



I wake up everyday wondering what kind of stomach day I am going to have. Not going to lie…it adds a little bit of excitement into my life. My family jokes that I use the bathroom more than Ali, the baby that lives in my house. The sad part is that it’s true. Shiwya b shiwya, I say…

Continuing with the food theme of this entry… I was reading a Conde Nast Traveler magazine that another volunteer passed on to me (lhumdullah for the literary exchange that is in full force here) and came across this line:
“Barbeque is America’s greatest gift to cuisine.” Amen, brotha, amen. What I would do for a barbeque sandwich and some Dreamland ribs right now? Oh man, you have no idea…

And just because I think this deserves to be on the internet for everyone to see…Chris, my environment sitemate, has never been to the South. Well, he ventured across the Mason-Dixon line once to visit some friends in North Carolina but I am not really counting that. Sure he may read this thing but oh well, I have been to his hometown (Seattle) before. Back to the food theme…Chris has never had the pleasure of tasting collards (I guess that is understandable) or boiled peanuts (COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE). So when I find collards at souk and can learn how to make boiled peanuts (got any recipes…send them my way), I can introduce another American to the wonders of Southern food.

A Good Metaphor

Besides being in complete denial that it is December already, I spent this past weekend integrating (a word Peace Corps interjects into sentences like Paris Hilton interjects ‘that’s hot’) in my new community and getting to know my host family. Between two long hikes in some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen, drinking a gazillion glasses of tea, and having my first hammam experience, I realized that my host nephew, Ali, provides the best metaphor for my life in Morocco.


This little boy was born just a few weeks before I arrived in Morocco. In a lot of ways, I am like him:
-We have both embarked on a journey; Ali’s is the journey of life; mine is the journey of life after school
-Right now, he is moving around to figure out where he is much like what I am doing
-In the next few months, we will both get our legs and walk freely about
-In a year, we will both be running around like we own this town

I am excited to be here in my little town and to be sharing it with everyone who reads this blog.

In Site

Well, I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. My group of 67 swore-in on Monday in a very nice ceremony in Fez. The Ambassador and his wife attended and again I was impressed. Fez is an incredible city. I would walk down the streets and feel like I was in Europe; it even has American things like a Wal-mart type store called Marjane and McDonalds (hey hey hey). On the other hand, you walk through the medina and you feel like you have been transported back to the middle ages. I didn't get much time to explore but later, inshallah.

I have now been in my site for 3 days and amazingly enough, have been busy. Not American busy but Moroccan busy. I have finally got my carte de sejour (card saying I am a resident of my town) figured out and have seen most of my artisans. Also, my amazing sitemate (the other volunteer that lives in my town) took me on a mini hike to one of the hills surrounding my town. The scenery is so beautiful. Unfornately, I forgot to take my camera. Still kicking myself on that one but I will have lots more time to make up for it.

In Florida, there is a saying that you know it is cold outside if you can see your breath. Well, here at 1800m above sea level I see my breath almost every time I breathe. Let's just say I am cold. My body will adjust soon, inshallah. And it has already snowed in the mountains surrounding my town. Pictures will be forthcoming.

December 1st is tomorrow and it is crazy to think about where I am now and where I was a year ago.

Until later...

CBT PHASE 4

I have spent the last 5 days back in CBT finishing the artisan work my group has been doing for the last 2 months. Returning to the poor little village after visiting my final site which is night-and-day different, I knew that the first few moments with my host family would be awkward. And awkward it was; very awkward. After about an hour with my host family, I was mad at myself for not being prepared. As I have had more time to reflect, I realize that there was little I could have done to prepare. In the best of situations, all I could have done was just smile and wait for the awkward moments to pass.

That first night, though, was not the best of situations. The moment I got into the house I knew I was in for a long night. My host sisters followed me into my room and as I put down my stuff, they started going through it and asking me how much everything costs. For obvious reasons, this made me very uncomfortable. Overall, Moroccans are usually indirect but when it comes to how much something costs, they have no problems asking us. I have done pretty well dodging these questions and have become accustomed to expecting them. But coming from my host family who I have grown fond of and who I have respect very much, I was put off and became visibly upset. They could see this and did not see to care. I have been living with this family for the better part of the last 2 months and this is the first time anything like this has happened. It was almost like they forgot I was a real person instead of an American toy. The rest of the days were better but still uncomfortable. They continued to ask me questions about money but they weren’t too bad and I was able to dodge them. What they were trying to prove, I have no idea.

It is amazing how much happened in the two weeks I was away from CBT. My host sister, Merriam, announced to me that she was getting married. This is really bad of me, but it is hard to be happy for her. I know marriage is different here than in the States but I can’t help that my “Americaness” comes out when I think about Merriam getting married. For me, it is not so much that she will only be 18 when she gets married, it is that the only thing she knows about her fiancé is that he lives in Paris. That is all; she doesn’t even know his name. Merriam doesn’t speak French or even Arabic and thinks it will be easy to go to Paris. I just want to sit her down and explain to her what her marriage and living in France means. If it were not completely inappropriate, I would do it minus the whole language barrier thing. I also know that Mina, my youngest host sister, is going to have to quit school soon. Without Merriam at the house, Mina’s hands are needed around the house. But I also know that Merriam getting out of Morocco will significantly help her family. They already rely on money sent from Paris by a relative living and working there and need any extra bit they can get. Another bright side, Merriam will get a chance to see a side of the world that few in this country get a chance to experience.

Reflecting on my CBT experience, I am really glad that my training has taken place in a poor, little village because I am even more appreciative of my final site. If my training had been a little more posh, I would have taken a lot of things for granted. My little CBT village has taught me a lot but I was ready to leave it. I am ready to end training and motivated to start working in my final site. I am ready to move on because I have had a glimpse of what the future looks like and it excites me.

Update

Since I last posted, I have found out my final site, spent a week visiting it, and am now back in Ouarzazate preparing to complete training.

The place that I will be calling home for the next 2 years is in the northern part of the country near Fez and Azrou. It is absolutely beautiful and most important, it is green. Green is rare in Morocco and I have it, yay! The scenery is very different from Ouarzazate and my CBT village. In the southern part of Morocco, everything is brown right down to the mud huts. When I stepped off the bus, I felt like I was in a whole other universe.

I am replacing a current volunteer which I didn’t expect to be doing so I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I went to visit. Well, what I found were 10 incredibly motivated women weavers who belong to a newly established cooperative. The starting of the cooperative was facilitated by Katie, the PCV I am replacing. This was just one of the things she did in her 2 years in Morocco. I am definitely a little intimated to be following in her footsteps but am really excited about the challenge. There are lots of potential work projects I could be doing like helping the women find a permanent building, an accounting/financial system, a sustainable market for their products, and various business training workshops! It is all very exciting and I can’t wait to start working.

Tomorrow, I will return to my CBT village to complete my training project. I am eager to finish training. It will be a little sad to be leaving my CBT host family but glad to be moving on to my final site.

Pictures for your viewing pleasure:


A bird’s view of my little town


We have trees with changing leaves!!!


A view of the countryside outside my house


Little Ali, the 3 month old baby that is part of my host family

West Wing Comparisons

To anyone who has spent a lot of time with me knows that one of my favorite TV shows ever is The West Wing. I am pretty lucky that a lot of the trainees feel the same way. My Ouarzazate roommates and I watch a different West Wing and/or Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (Aaron Sorkin is a god) episode the nights we are in the hotel.

Anyway, in the 2nd to last episode of the series, Allison Janney’s character, CJ Craig, mentions that 9 out of 10 African aid projects fail because of poor road infrastructure. I have no way of knowing if this is actually a true statistic but based on the 2 months I have spent in my CBT village, I have no trouble imagining that this could true. Here is why:

My little village received about an inch of rain in steady drizzle that last 12 hours. Well, who would have thought that this would have turned life upside down. Certainly not the Americans. The roads here are all dirt so everything turned into mud. The river, which supports the village’s agriculture and livelihood, rose a few inches thanks an early snow melt in the High Atlas mountains. Well the river is what separates my village from the bigger town that has the supermarche and most important (to me) the internet. The only way to cross the river is by walking across (let’s face it, it is more a creek):



Or by using the bridge which is basically a pile of rocks built up so that vans with 4-wheel drive can across. Well, when the river rose, it looked like this:



And made it impossible to forge. Well, we were scheduled to ‘go into town’ to buy food and use the internet and damn it, we were Americans; a little rain was not big deal us and food and internet are the two things we can’t live without. Still not completely understanding the situation, we made the decision to just walk over the ‘bridge’ and grab a taxi to town. Our LCF (teacher and for the moment, boss) told us this wasn’t possible so naturally, we considered mutiny.

Well, to shorten the story, the river receded a little and we begged in our best Tamazight the van transport driver to take us to town and he consented. It was during the bridge crossing that the severity of situation hit us. The water was moving very swiftly and if it had rained just a few more inches, the villagers would have been trapped in their homes for days, possibly weeks. Contemplating this, the words of The West Wing popped into my head and I thought “wow, that statistic could actually be true”.