Al-Eid Mubarak!

For those who don’t follow the Muslim calendar of festivals, Eid al-Kabir (the big celebration) was on Monday November 7; but just like for Christmas, there was much to do before the big day.  The goal of this blog entry is to how much effort goes into this annual sacrifice that only lasts a few minutes, but takes days to prepare.  So without further adieu, here is the countdown to Eid Al-Kabir.

4 Days utill Eid (Thursday Nov. 3): Mama Nezha went out to a souk on the outskirts of Rabat and bought our sheep along with a sheep for her daughter Omnia’s family and for her sister Merriam’s family.  When I got home that night after teaching English, Amine, my host brother, took down into the basement of the apartment building to show me our sheep.  I think we were the first in the apartment building to have gotten our sheep, because that night there were only 3 sheep in the medium-sized storage closet, but on Eid at least 5 or 6 sheep came out of that room, one at a time to be sacrificed.

No, this isn't a sign of the Apocalypse; it's just
a few young Moroccans burning off the hair
of sheep heads in the middle of the street the day after Eid.

3 Days utill Eid (Friday Nov. 4): I drove up to Tangier with my program for the weekend to see the northern part of Morocco, which was under the Spanish protectorate, not the French.  The Eid preparations weren’t very visible in the modern part of the city, which the Europeans had built while the city still had its international status before Morocco gained independence in 1956, largely because it was raining.  As a side note on Tangier, my first impression of the city was underwhelming – it felt like the city was inhabited by “foreigners” (i.e. Moroccans) trying to find a new identity after the “native” builders of the city (i.e. Europeans) fled once Morocco gained control of the city.

2 Days utill Eid (Saturday Nov. 5): Once I actually walked around in the Medina (the old Moroccan part of the city) I finally saw all the sheep and hay bales I was expecting to find.  You could feel the excitement in the air as everyone was busy buying their sheep, sharpening their knifes, and acquiring their charcoal for the big feast.  The most memorable example was watching a group of young Moroccan kids going crazy over a sheep someone had just bought – some were helping to push it (since sheep can be very obstinate when they’re 1) by themselves and 2) about to be killed) while others were busy pointing out to us the sheep that was obviously there.  But the Eid madness didn’t end there.  Later that day we set off for Chefchaouen, a town tucked away in the Rif Mountains southeast of Tangier, and sat in a virtual parking lot for 2 hours in Tetouan because of the huge sheep market that was being held.  So as we sat in our bus inching forward, both on and sometimes off the road, a steady stream of people with newly purchased goats and sheep trickled past us; a few of the sheep willingly went along, but most of them had to be pushed, pulled, yanked, or even carried.  Finally, after a 6 hour bus ride that should only have taken 4 we made it to Chefchaouen, which means “Look! Two horns” for the horn-shaped mountain range the town’s built around.   

Eid dinner: sheep stomach tajine with several side salads, olives,
and of course, bread

1 Day until Eid (Sunday Nov. 6): Unsurprisingly, Eid preparations were also occurring in Chefchaouen – there; there were so many sheep and so much hay all over the medina that one couldn’t go five steps witout running into some reminder of the approaching Eid.  The strangest reminder of Eid in Chefchaouen was listening to an imam preach the story of Eid al-Kabir (in English) on the steps of a nearby mosque while I and afew friends ate lunch.  His enthusiasm of trying to include foreigners in the Eid without hesitation was a theme that was also present in my host family when I got home that night after another 6 hour bus ride delayed by village sheep markets.  The moment my host mom opened the door to our apartment that night, the excitement of the approaching Eid washed over me.  It was the same feeling of the night before Thanksgiving and Christmas of anxious anticipation for the holiday to start, and the feeling was so familiar that for a few hours I almost felt like I was back home celebrating Christmas with my family in Minnesota – the oven was busy baking bread, the stove was sizzling with beghrir (Moroccan pancakes) for breakfast the next day, and the kids (Hussam [6] and Yassine [1.5]) were running around telling me how we were going to kill the sheep tomorrow morning.  Then at around 11pm everyone went to bed so we could get up early to get a head start on the Eid festivities.

Al-Eid Mubarak! (Monday Nov. 7): The big day started bright and early at 7am with breakfast and my family’s morning prayers.  Breakfast was bigger than usual because family is so important in Morocco, especially during Eid, that my host sister, her husband, Yassine, and Hussam had spent the night (and would stay 3 more nights after that) even though they lived in the neighborhood next to us.  Then at about 9am the first sheep was dragged into the courtyard, its throat was cut, its skin was removed before I even realized it had started.  Thankfully for me our sheep was only the first of 8 to be sacrificed in the courtyard.  As the morning dragged on, the other families from the apartment slowly trickled out into the courtyard to kill their sheep and help out everyone else kill and clean the sheep and their innards.  The rest of the day continued at a leisurely Christmas Day pace, with liver and heart brochettes for lunch and 2 huge sheep stomach tajines for dinner at my host aunt’s house.  If you can get over the strange foods and the smell of dead sheep and blood, Eid truly is a wonderful holiday.

Slow Travel

There are two ways to travel.  The first is to try to see as much as possible in the least amount of time and the second is to see fewer things and spend more time enjoying them.  Before coming to Morocco, I tended to adopt the first approach and could hardly sit still when traveling; but I’m slowly beginning to adopt the “slow travel” approach, as I found out over Fall Break.  During the week-long break, I and 3 American friends from my program decided we’d try to tackle Jbal Toubkal, which, at just over 4100 m, is the tallest mountain in Morocco and second tallest in Africa behind Mt. Kilimanjaro.  The trip seemed very easy on paper – we were just going on a short hike that my guide book said anyone in reasonably good shape should easily be able to finish in 5 hours – but when we actually got to Imlil (a small Amazigh village tucked away 2 hours south of Marrakech in the High Atlas Mountains that’s 12 km from the base of Toubkal) and started our hike, we quickly realized how underprepared we had been.  

Taking 8 hours to do a 5 hour hike may have been a bit excessive, but if we had just rushed through the trail like everyone else, we would have missed so much that we wouldn’t have even realized we were missing.  Exhibit A is our chance encounter with a sweet Berber woman while we were taking a break under a tree, waiting for a raincloud to pass.  Had we been like the group of 4 British men that just plowed past us on the trail we would hardly have even noticed the women.  But since we were slow travelers, we ended up spending a good bit of time just talking with her in Darija and exchanging food (and by “exchanging” I really mean the Berber woman forcing apples upon us that we couldn’t refuse, so out of guilt for taking her apples, and because of the infectious mountain generosity that was permeating into us, we offered her the only food we had left: a small bag of almonds).  Then as we were leaving, she tried to invite us over for couscous at her house, but because it was getting dark and we still had a 2 hour hike in front of us to get back to Imlil, we had to decline.

Slow travel also allowed us time to reflect our experience and what we were seeing around us.  For instance, one overarching theme of this weeklong adventure was the strong Berber (or as my professors prefer to say “Amazigh”, which means “free man” in the Berber/Amazigh language) identity we encountered both in the High Atlas Mountains and the sand dunes of the Sahara Desert.  The 1^st taste of this identity appeared during our first night in Imlil when ‘Abdu, some sort of guide we think was working at the CAF Refuge we stayed at (but we’re still not positive), immediately brought us “Berber Whiskey” (i.e. mint tea) right after we had checked in.  This terminology caught me off guard because in the predominantly Arab cities the tea is sometimes called “Moroccan Whiskey,” but never “Berber Whiskey.”  Then the next night after our 8 hour trek to the base of Toubkal, which had just received about a meter of snow the night before, we talked with a few of the Moroccan guides who were leading non-impoverished college student European tourists and never once heard them refer to themselves as Moroccan; instead, they always proudly called themselves Berber but told us that their Islamic identity always came first. 

This hybrid identity was even more pronounced in the desert of eastern Morocco, where there are Arabs, Amazigh, and Bedouins (desert nomads from Arabia), all of which are still Muslims.  The best way to describe these identities in terms of the US is that the Amazigh are like the Native Americans if they had coexisted with the European colonizers (who in this example are like the Arabs) for centuries, had converted to Christianity, and had led several dynastic movements (on second thought this isn’t a great illustration, but that’s because Morocco is like no other country in the world).  So then up until the 1930’s, the Amazigh of the mountains and the desert remained largely autonomous from the central government until the French finished their campaign of “pacification.”  This history of autonomy has given the Amazigh a strong historical identity independent of their Moroccan identity but surprisingly not in conflict with it.

Now with the history/sociology lesson over let’s return to the desert.  The desert trip I and my friends took was the touristiest thing I’ve done in Morocco, but because I went in with this idea in mind, I was able to enjoy the 3 days I spend there.  For instance, the camel ride into the desert was essentially a glorified county fair pony ride during which I sat on a camel while our Bedouin guide, Muhammad, led the caravan of camels to our “Bedouin” campsite.  What’s more, every 5 minutes Muhammad would shout out “Africa!” and “Sahara!” even as we climbed onto the top of a huge jeep to leave on our last day.  But not even the cheesy attempts to give us the “Sahara” experience most tourists demand could ruin the beauty of the desert as we sat on the top of tallest sand dune for miles around, watching the sun set and the shadows of the dunes creep towards the edge of the Algerian border.  36 hours after that sunset my slow travel tour of Morocco came to an end as the train pulled into the Rabat Centrale Ville train station at 6:30 am and I walked home to take a nap after 12 hours of nighttime travel from the desert.

p.s. again, sorry for this back log of blog posts; my post on Eid al-Adha will be posted shortly.

Moroccan Time

 Time.  It seems pretty straight forward, but it I’ve found that it moves a little differently in Morocco.  In any cross-cultural class, one of the first things covered is the difference between m-time (monochronic) and p-time (polychronic).  America is an m-time society, where time moves linearly and punctuality is given primary importance – things are expected to start and end on time.  However, in Morocco (a p-time society) time moves more to the rhythm of the community and people one is with than to the mechanical ticking of a clock.  

For instance, a few weekends ago one of the Arabic professors at Amideast organized a trip for the people in my program to his “farm” about 45 minutes outside of Rabat.  I say “farm” because just like my aunt has a “cabin” that’s really a lake side home with 3 bathrooms and 2 kitchens, this “farm” was really a miniature estate with a castle surrounded by an oasis of fruit trees and vegetable patches and at least 3 housekeepers that kept the place running.  Even though it wasn’t the traditional Moroccan farm I was expecting (or maybe because it wasn’t) it was still a badly-needed rejuvenating experience that was completely immersed in Moroccan time.  At first Moroccan time can be a bit frustrating, especially when trying to catch a bus or a tram that have no set schedule and can be stopped at any time by the driver to have a 10 minute conversation with one of his friends he sees walking by.  But after making an effort to fully embrace Moroccan time, it feels like I’ve been liberated, at least partially, from the shackles of my type-A personality.  For an explanation, let’s return back to the farm.

After arriving at the farm, the 16 of us on the outing were ushered into the professor’s castle and just relaxed inside his home while showering him and his wife with appreciation for their hospitality.  Then, when the time was right and everyone had toured the house to his satisfaction, we migrated to the patio to find a table sagging with brimming bowls of dates, figs, and nuts and platters of the most decadent Moroccan helwat (cookies).  Having consumed more delectable sweets than we should have, the professor led us on an impromptu tour of his fruit trees, handing us guavas, oranges, apples, and grapefruit straight from the tree faster than we could eat them. 

The next stop was to a big hole in the ground, where we commenced to plant a fruit tree we had bought at the souk (the weekly country market) earlier that day.  While planting the tree, the professor kept telling us to get our hands in the rich soil and feel the energy of the sun in the earth rising up through our feet.  Every word about the beauty and vitality of the earth he uttered (in a mix of French and English) weaved the enchantment of this verdant Eden ever stronger.  After spending just enough time in the garden, we moved back into the house to find 2 luxurious platters of couscous, which could have fed twice our number.

According to the schedule, we were supposed to leave after couscous, but because we hadn’t finished all the farm activities, stayed longer – 2 hours longer – until we did everything our professor had wanted us to do – bake bread, make lemon-orange juice, and walk to a neighboring dairy farm to milk a cow.  The activities themselves were nothing extraordinary, but because of the people we were with and where we were, we could have been watching paint dry and we still would have had one of the best and most satisfying experiences of our time in Morocco to date.  If there is one lesson I hope to bring back with me from Morocco, it is to value people and experiences more than what I do and when I do it.  Time ticks away no matter how much one worries about it, so why stress out about what time it is, when the same energy could be used to strengthen relationships and truly experience life.

p.s. Sorry for the delay.  This was written a week ago, but I haven’t had internet access for the last week, so I’m posting it now.

The Rihla of an American College Student

Today in Contemporary Moroccan History, we talked about a genre of Moroccan travel literature called rihla, which was first used developed by Moroccans to try to write about and share the knowledge they gained while on the Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, and later used by Moroccan diplomatic envoys to Europe to describe their experiences in the foreign Christian world.  I won’t bore everyone with the details the rihla writers, but I bring it up because I realized in class that I am experiencing what the Moroccan envoys to Europe experienced 300 years ago – going to a foreign land, with a foreign language and foreign customs and trying to share the experience so that others may share in the knowledge gained from it.  But instead of writing as a Moroccan official concerned with using diplomacy to preserve Morocco’s sovereignty, I’m writing as a poor (although relatively rich by Moroccan standards) college student focused on broadening my understanding of humanity to make my corner of the world a more interesting place.  One of the characteristics of almost all travel literature is comparing where one came from with where one is, so I’ll give it a shot too.   

Over the last week I’ve noticed that the average Moroccan seems to know as much about Christianity as the average American seems to know about Islam.  For instance, one night I met with two of my Moroccan friends, Hamid and Imid, and we eventually got to the topic of alcohol.  I said that I only drink wine at church, which only elicited quizzical looks from Hamid and Imid.  I then tried to explain the concept of Communion to them, but in the end just gave up because it was clear that trying to explain the theological significance of Communion was only making them more confused.  The cross-cultural miscommunication was so bad that I think I’ve convinced two Moroccans that Christians only get together to get drunk on wine and cannibalize the body of Jesus (which is kind of embarrassing since I was the president of the Interfaith Council last year, whose sole purpose is to try to avoid this type of mishap).  However, considering that there are only 25,000 Christians out of 30 million Moroccans, and almost all of them are foreigners from outside Morocco (either from Europe or the rest of Africa), I can understand why the tenants of Christianity are not widely known throughout Morocco.

I’ve also noticed that there is a huge division between what is public and what is private in Morocco.  For instance, when my host mom, Nezha, goes out of the house, she wears a hijab, but when she’s at home among family she takes it off and relaxes inside the private space of the home.  Similarly, windows are smaller in Morocco and are often shut to try to physically separate the private realm of the household from the public realm of everyone else.  With this in mind, I know that I’ve been shoved into the mama Nezha’s family and accepted as one of her own sons because last Friday I invited one of my friends over to have couscous at our house since his host parents both work during the day and can’t prepare the traditional Friday couscous lunch.  Mama Nezha’s mom, Hajja Betu, happened to be staying with us for a few days while she waited to see a doctor, and when my friend and I walked in, she quickly covered her hair before we gathered together to eat.  Hajja Betu has never covered her hair around me (except when she was praying, of course), so this experience was a striking example of the division between public (e.g. my friend) and private (e.g. the family).

Finally, on a lighter note, Yassine, my one year old host nephew, almost knows my name, despite the fact that I dropped him the last time I saw him while bouncing him on my leg.  In many ways, I feel a lot like Yassine right now, because he is just learning to speak and tries to parrot every word that someone says, which is exactly what I do when mama Nezha tells me a new word for something in Darija.  Mama Nezha has also been telling me that it’s getting cold out, which I guess is technically correct since the mid-70’s is cooler than the mid-80’s, but it still feels like summer.  Some people would love having summer 24/7, but not me.  Right now I am craving Fall and would give anything to be transported to southeastern Minnesota to see the colors on the trees just for a few minutes.

Christian in a Muslim World

Cathédrale Saint-Pierre

I’ve often heard that Islam is not a religion, but a way of life.  I think that after only a month in Morocco, I’m beginning to understand why.  The way Moroccans greet each other, interact with each other, and say good-bye to each other is infused with and inseparable from Islam.  For instance, every time Moroccans great one another, they ask “Labas?” (How are you?), and respond with “Labas, lhmdo lilah” (Fine, thanks be to God).  When I’m with my host mom, it feels like she says “lhmdo lilah” every other sentence – when she’s done eating, drinks a glass of water, finds out someone else is doing okay, etc… 

            Society in Morocco, like all other Muslim countries, is also punctuated by the call to prayer that’s broadcast from all the mosques in the city to remind everyone of the five daily prayers that all Muslims are supposed to pray.  I thought the call to prayer would have a more commanding presence than I’ve found it to have; part of the reason may be that I don’t live or have classes close to a mosque, so I often only hear the call to prayer as a distant song.  Some nights at about 4:30am I do hear it, but it seems more like a dream than reality.  Another weakness of the call to prayer is that the mosques are often out of sync with each other, so just as one mosque finishes another will begin.  But probably the main reason is that I almost never see Moroccans responding to the call to prayer – while being reminded to pray, most Moroccans just keep on with whatever they’re doing.  There are some who make their way to the mosque to pray or get down on a rug or piece of cardboard on the sidewalk, but these people are often older men.

            The above commentary in one way is meant to suggest that Moroccans aren’t good Muslims (that’s not for me to judge) or never prayer (although I’m sure there are a substantial number of Moroccans who don’t pray, especially younger, westernized Moroccans like my host brother).  My host mom still does her daily prayers on the carpet in the fancy sitting room, but she does them at her own time.  This seems to be a general, almost paradoxical theme in Morocco – Islam is everywhere and absolute, but it is not rigid (although that could change if Moroccans aren’t careful). 

I’m probably exaggerating quite a lot and much of what I'm saying probably isn't true, but the Islam Morocco has now appears to me, the outsider, to be a living religion, which Christian churches in the US would give anything to achieve.  I’m not claiming that everything is perfect in Morocco, but the poor on the street are almost always fed, either a few dirhams or a bag of food from people passing by (I saw one man buy a bag of prickly fruit from a fruit cart and turn right around and hand it to an old woman and her grandchild).  There are still many unsolved social problems, but at least people are treated like people, and not like they don't exist.  In general, the main difference between religion the US and Morocco is that Moroccans know they have problems and try to fix them despite their limited resources, whereas the Church in America has the resources to solve its social problems but doesn't have the drive to try.

Living in a Muslim country for the four weeks has been interesting as a Christian.  I haven’t been able to find a Protestant church in Rabat, so I’ve been going to the Cathedrale Saint-Pierre.  Even though it’s mass and it’s in French, I still feel like I’m being transported by home from the moment I step into the cathedral to the moment I leave.  The congregation is probably 90% African with the other 10% Europeans and always seems to be on the verge of dancing during all the hymns, which are lead by an angelic choir of African women.  I can follow most of the service, and even if I can’t follow exactly what’s going on, I use the time for reflection and meditation and my own prayers.  The hardest part is not being able to partake in Communion, which I haven’t had in over five weeks.  I just have to keep reminding myself that I wanted to come to Morocco and be part of a minority of 25,000 Christians.       

An Imperial Sunset

            

            If Rabat is a sleepy little administrative city, then Fez is a demanding and exhausting tour de force that pries its way inside of you and tries to force you into submission.  But then at the same time, Fez is a city trapped in its past, unable to adapt to its lost status as Morocco’s political center, which has steadily been shifting to Rabat since the start of the French protectorate.  Now the city relies almost exclusively on tourism for its livelihood, which has the benefit of preserving one of the most incredible medieval cities in the world, but at the cost of restricting the ability of Fessis to adapt to a changing world.  Don’t get me wrong, Fez is still beautiful and stimulating city, both up close and personal when walking through the narrow streets of the old medina and a distance when watching the sun set over the city from a rampart on one of the hills overlooking the city.  To clarify what I mean, here is a brief summary of my encounter with Fez.

            After getting off the bus with the rest of my study abroad group and walking to the gate of the old medina, I quickly found myself about to enter a very different time, where the widest streets are just wide enough for two fully loaded camels to pass by and donkeys are still the most common mode of transportation within the medina’s maze of narrow streets and alleyways.  After just a few steps into the medina, merchants seemed to flock around us and began to call out in French, English, and Spanish (i.e. the languages of foreigners and tourists), trying to entice us to come into their shops to buy their products.  There is some harassment in Rabat, but it is nothing compared to Fez, where merchants will do anything and everything to get a response from tourists passing by to lure them into their shops to buy something.  While waiting for some friends to barter over a leather bag, I was trying to get some idea about the starting price for a leather briefcase from a leather merchant.  After asking him the price of a bag, the merchant quickly pressured me to make an offer of how much I would pay for the bag.  I had no intention of buying the bag, so I didn’t name a price (one should only name a price when serious about buying something) and tried to tell him no thank you and walk away, but he kept harassing me to name a price.  I would still be in that shop right now if it weren’t one of my friends who literally had to pull me out of the shop to get me away from the merchant.  As we were walking away, another Moroccan standing nearby called out, “If you don’t have any money, don’t come here.”  This one sentence encapsulates Fez’s grim future, which is dependent on Western tourists coming to the old medina and spending money – without the income flowing in from tourists, Fez would slowly crumble into ruin after surviving more than 1000 years as one of Morocco’s Imperial cities.  

            But at the same time, Fez is a city full of life, which I experienced firsthand when five friends and I took a taxi to Borj Nord, which was a fortress on the northern hill surrounding Fez and is now an arms museum, to watch the sun set over the city trapped in time from a crumbling rampart.  While walking back into the old medina we somehow got lost (Maybe I shouldn’t have relied so much on my hand-drawn map of Fez for directions), but eventually found our way to Café Clock in the old medina.  It happened to be someone’s birthday, so our waiter led us in singing “Happy Birthday” in four languages (English, French, Arabic, and Spanish) and at the end of our meal surprised us by bringing out a chocolate cake and leading us in singing “Happy Birthday” another few times.  The great food (the best I’ve had in a restaurant since coming to Morocco), the great service, and the great outdoor terrace, all combined to create the most enjoyable and relaxing evening I’ve had in the past 3 weeks.  And for the first time, I actually felt comfortable in Morocco. 

            Fez was a great city to visit, but after spending just 3 days in the former Imperial city, I have to say that I’m glad I’m living in sleepy little Rabat, which is quickly feeling like a home away from home.

Adventure in the Ordinary

I’ve been in Morocco a little over two weeks now, and I’ve noticed that everything’s not as different as you might expect.  Of course there some differences in everyday living, like what food is eaten, when it’s eaten, how it’s eaten, who it’s eaten with, but then there are also common themes of life that seem to cut across cultural differences.  Here are just a few that I noticed this last Saturday when my host sister Omnia, her two kids (1 and 6), and her husband came over for a lunch (which started promptly at 2:30) of kefta tajine and several different salads.

1)       Kids can be handfuls and act mischievously anywhere around the world.  Take subject 1, Yassine (age 1).  While we were sitting in the salon before lunch watching a show like Amazing Race called Fez-Dakar Express, Yassine was grabbing everything he could get his hands on while one of the adults would shout out “la” (no) about every other minute.  Then there is Subject 2, Hussein (age 6).  After lunch a big group of the family piled into a tiny car (myself included) to go shopping for some new clothes Omnia, who is a French teacher at an elementary school nearby, could wear to school (I didn’t realize that we were going shopping for women’s cloths when I agreed to go into the city with them, but as you will see, it all turned out for the better in the end).  While we were waiting for Omnia to try on her new clothes, Hussein was busy collecting as many tags from the blouses and dresses on the racks as he could.  Latter, when Hussein, his dad, and I proceeded to have coffee at a café, he dumped his booty into a flower pot on the café’s terrace and then poured someone’s leftover coffee all over the tags.  I thought that this would cause a huge uproar with Hussein’s dad and the café staff, but it seemed like no one except me even noticed what Hussein was doing.

2)      In general, women take forever to shop and get ready no matter where they are from, even in a more conservative Muslim society like Morocco.  Before arriving I thought that because Moroccan society tends to be more modest than in the US (e.g. most men wear pants, most women never wear anything above their knees, and both men and women rarely wear clothes that reveal their shoulders) that women wouldn’t care so much about their how they look.  How wrong I was.  Even thought my host mom, mama Nezha, always wears a hijab when she leaves the house, she usually takes 5-10 minutes to pick out what she’s going to wear, decide which hijab she’s going to put on, and apply lotion and other beauty products to her face. 

3)      The cars of newlyweds also get decorated in Morocco.  I discovered this insight into Moroccan culture by watching a florist stand and an army of male employees decorate cars with ribbons and bouquets of flowers to the cars of newlyweds.  Normally, I probably wouldn’t have noticed what the florists were doing, but because I had nothing else to do while waiting for Omnia to buy here clothes, watching the florists at work across the street from the clothing store was the best way I could think of to pass the time (besides trying to make sure that Hussein didn’t get into too much trouble).

4)      Finally, the day ended by learning that just like in the US, there are people in Morocco who think that President Obama is a Muslim.  When I returned home from the café with Hussein and his dad, I was surprised to see (although by now I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, because it happens all the time) a random Moroccan man with a huge mustache sitting in the salon drinking coffee and eating these incredible mini chicken and almond pastilla (I hope to learn the recipe so that I can make them when I get back to the states).  When I sat down, the news was just starting and there was a story talking about Obama, which sparked a very intense political monologue by the mysterious – and very loud – Moroccan man, which was occasionally punctuated by comments from mama Nezha and Omnia.  I couldn’t really follow what he was saying because it was in rapid Darija, but from the few words I did pick up, he mentioned how good Obama is, something about the political economy of oil, and what was going on in Libya.  Towards the end of the discussion, mama Nezha asked me to make sure that Obama is a Muslim, because his first name is Barak, which I think means “blessed” in Arabic.  I then proceeded to explain that President Obama is not a Muslim, but his grandfather was, which ended in a disbelieving look from mama Nezha.  I’m not sure how widespread this misconception is, but it could be one of the reasons that President Obama is so popular in the Middle East and North Africa – there is a perception that he is a fellow Muslim brother.

I hope this blog entry was at least a little bit interesting; sometimes the most exciting adventures can happen in the most ordinary situations, if you just pay attention to them and appreciate what’s going on.  At least that’s how things feel in Morocco right now.  Just coming home and finding strange people having tea in the salon or going to the grocery store to buy some cheese and be a real adventure.  Maybe after the trip to Fez this weekend this will change, but I don’t think so.  No matter where I am, I’ve always found that everyday life can hold as much wonder as the most epic adventure.