10 March 2012

The bus ride to the village was very blurry. We stopped at the NGO to meet our families- I have a mom, dad, 2 sisters and my village dad has a second wife. This should be interesting… When Fadoua was telling us about our families, after she said the details about mine she told us not to laugh. Children were leaving the school by the NGO to go home for lunch and they were all looking at us and happily waving. I LOVE CHILDREN. We got there and had to walk a lot- realistically only a little, but my bag was heavier than I wanted/thought. Our house is nice. It’s square shaped and open in the middle. My roommates are Erica and Tia- Tia was my first roommate here (with Sara). This is a picture of the view from our bedroom of the house. This is looking out to the front of it. We sat for a little and our “moms” spoke at us. We have very limited Darija vocabulary so we could only say things like “shukran”- thank you “mezyen”- good, and yes/no. We were brought into a different room and lunch was amazing- Erica said that it was one of the best tajines that she has ever had. I am always reluctant to jump to extremes, but it was preeeeeeeetty good. A lot of saffron, and it really stained my hands.

After lunch we were supposed to “map the village” but there was no specific time or instructions so we were a little confused. We went to the front of our house and Hillary and Ari were playing soccer with our young cousins. I joined in- I remembered soccer camp/soccer in general (con-ed) fondly- even though I am not sure if I enjoyed it as much at the time. We asked if we could walk around and then said in a half hour, so we played some more. A half hour passed, and we started to walk- not far- into another relative’s home. We sat in the “salon” and chatted. By chatted, I mean the women spoke in Darija and we reacted to what they said according to their emotions. Ari is very exotic looking, Mohammed’s (our brother/cousin? I’m not quite sure…) mom tried to set him up with her to no avail. Tia explained that she was not married and only wore fake wedding rings to get the men to stop bothering her (….??? Ok.) After hearing that, Mohammed’s mom tried to set him up with Tia… in the middle of all of this they brought out a huge tajine of couscous. If you remember, I had finished lunch not even an hour ago. We gave eachother looks- what should we do?!? Being the good guests that we are- we sucked it up and ate veeeeeeeryyyyyyyyy slowly. It was easy to not eat a lot because it was similar to my homestay’s couscous, but kind of cold.

After lunch number two we walked around with the kids- almost got ambushed my the village goats, and then we found some friends by a patch of trees. Megan’s host brothers were SO cute. I was paying them a lot of attention. I love the interaction between us and the kids- so happy/curious/playful. Somehow Sara got set up to ride a donkey, so I followed her (with Megan’s brothers) as the picture taker. We went across the street to the fields. Sara was told to hold onto the donkey’s hair- really funny. We got to the field and were greeted with hugs and kisses from the parents. The dad was wearing the cutest wellies and straw hat. I WISH that we could make hats here- Fadoua says that SIT says it is too dangerous and complicated… rude. There were piles of a plant/sprout that we helped the mom (apparently the women do most of the strenuous labor in the village) load the donkey with the crops. The boys helped also, but they were totally crazy running around and PICKING FLOWERS instead of crops. They told me to “kulie! Kulie!” (Eat! Eat!) but the mom was shocked and said “LALALA!!!”- “NONONO”. The boys laughed- it was funny. There is a chance that the crops were tabacco, but only a small chance- I have no idea.

It was my turn to ride the donkey on the way home. I thought it would be impossible because of all the crops piled on its back, but they insisted. I stepped up on this mound of dirt/clay and hopped on. When I looked up- I realized that I was looking at the ass’s ass! (punny… ha ha) I somehow got on the donkey the wrong way- everyone was laughing a lot, but I was only laughing a little. HOW was I supposed to turn around on this thing? It was nearly imposible, but I did it- miraculously. Sara documented the entire thing on my camera- here’s the BEFORE, MIDDLE, and AFTER. The mom told me to hold on the same way that she told Sara, so I did. Donkey riding is much easier than camel riding and I had a very leisurely ride back. I jumped off the donkey where our friends were and we sat in the shade for a little.

It became time to go home, so our sister lead us back to the house. We played some more SOCCER As we were waiting for dinner, we watched TV. I was so tired that I definitely “rested my eyes” (aka fell asleep) for a minute. Another cousin walked in and introduced himself- he spoke slowly so we could understand him. He also spoke French, so we could REALLY understand. He said that Tia would like his cousin, who was coming tomorrow. Proposal number two. Finally dinner was served and a lot of the family showed up to eat. We had tajine with French Fries on top- VERY similar to a signature Claire Brennan Top Chef Harris meal. Dinner was great and I didn’t overeat, which made it even better. No dessert, but that was good too. After dinner we sat and talked more. Mohammed asked if we wanted to go to his house (we didn’t, but said we did).

Ari and Hillary were sitting in their room with the rest of the family, looking as exhausted as we felt. We sat and talked more- a lot of sitting and talking in the village if you couldn’t tell… Somehow it came up that Tia could dance. Long story short we were all summoned to dance. I stuck with the children, who were more of my speed. It wasn’t very long before we sat down. We faught over who was going to make the first move to bed, and I don’t even remember who did it, but we finally got out. It is much darker at night here than Rabat (duh). The only “app” on our Nokia phones- the flashlight- really came in handy. We went back into our room and one of the grandmas/wives was sleeping on the floor. Our three beds were already made. We have been doing a lot of speculation about the two “moms”. We have come to the conclusion that they take turns with the husband. I peeked into one of the rooms and my sister was preparing a king size bed, which I assumed was for the dad and one of his wives. Erica also said that often times in polygamous relationships, the wives are related- sister wives if you will… (Colbyy)

I decided to check out the bathroom for the first time. It wasn’t terrible. It smelt like a porter (porta?) potty, but was well lit and clean enough. I have not yet mastered the Turkish toilet, but I was trying. There was no running water, so I got rid of the brushing teeth/washing face idea. When I came back to the room, Erica and Tia were leaving with their toothbruses and paste, so I followed. We went to the middle courtyard where our sister had a teapot with water. We brushed our teeth outside. I looked up and there were a billion brilliantly bright & shiny stars in the sky. How often are you able to say that you brushed your teeth under the stars??? That’s ONE thing that my dentist will be proud of. We went back, put on our PJS (and I put on some new socks- thanks Mom!!!) and I got into my cocoon (which I was very thankful for). I fell asleep right away. I couldn’t even participate in pillow talk because I was so tired. The last thing I heard was Erica speculating that one of our cousins (SELMA) was kidnapped from a German family who did a similar exchange as us- she has light hair and freckles. I had an OKAY night’s sleep. The blankets fell off of me, and my homestay mom didn’t put them back on me like my real mom would. Someone that I shared the room with also snored a lot- not sure who it was, but it was loud...