More Weddings and Sitting Around

I went to my second wedding within a week- in Qenitra by Rabat. I felt as though I was crashing it as I knew nobody aside from the groom (and the groom usually shows up briefly a few hours into the festivities). Embarrassingly, I was also the most underdressed person in the room, as I was on my way back from a meeting about improving volunteer services for special needs youth in the capital. Most of the weddings I've been to have been outside, in tents, with all the men in jeans and tshirts coming and going as they liked. This one was in a venue by the river with chandeliers, a full band, a dozen servers, and a 3-man professional camera team, all of which run to a few thousand bucks for the night. I ducked out super early (midnight) in order to catch an all-night train across the country and get back to Krista, but I had time to see a little dancing before my departure. It turns out our local dance, the Reggada, in which you shake your shoulders back and forth, stamp your feet, and sometimes hold ornamental rifles, isn't done in Qenitra. The women there all danced with elbows at shoulder height and hands up and outspread. They would step with one foot, leaning forward, head and arms, shaking their hands, and then step back onto the other foot, leaning backward, head and arms, shaking their hands. The mens' dance appeared to simply be a sort of running-in-place with high knees. Good exercise but I didn't hit the dancefloor this time, as I didn't want to be sitting in sweat for the 10 hour ride home.

Following this trip, I've been doing more sitting in my site- hanging out with the directors, drawing tentative schedules for the beginning of Oct. start of classes, fiddling with grad school applications, and working on stuff for the special needs group. Not much to speak of, overall, except for Krista's continuing unbelievable cooking.

Yesterday, though, I did see something I hadn't before- a funeral. I was sitting at the cafe with the director of my youth center, talking about nothing, as per usual, and an ambulance drove by with a few extra people sitting in it. Everybody at the cafe stood up as the procession went past. A few pickup trucks followed the ambulance with lots of people crowded inside, and then a few cars as well. I had heard crazy stories about people paying professional wailers to mourn at funerals. Either these reports are false, or the procession is different.

Long periods of boredom interrupted by brief periods of extreme integration

It has been a while since I last wrote something on this page. There are a few reasons for that, but the biggest one is that nothing is happening. In August I did nothing, except for 10 days straight of full-time camp. Responsibilities included teaching English in the morning, making sure kids didn't drown, and keeping an eye on thieves at the beach. Krista and I did camp in El Jadida, which is just south of Casablanca. It was nice to be somewhere with a breeze off the ocean, and it was nice to work in a camp that had some sort of organization.

And there was only one kid who got hit hard by the camp director- Bonus! If there were any kids he should have been hitting it was his own. This guy's four year old sun decided to pee on the ground right in front of the door to our bungalow. But other than that, it was a good camp. Beforehand, the Ministry of Youth and Sports attempted to steal scholarship money for sending a couple of our town's girls to the camp, but they failed and the girls had a great time.

Most of the last week has been consumed by boredom/filling out graduate school applications. In a little preview of future tuition, I'm shelling out cash left and right just to email the places my papers.

And then my friend/former student/former Arabic tutor told us she's getting married. We went to the wedding last night. They cooked 70+ chickens, and blasted local music all night. We were literally the first to leave, at 5 in the morning, just as the first call to prayer of the day sounded.

Here are some wedding pictures- keep in mind that no alcohol was involved.

the bride

the woman on the right was featured in a previous post- "an old berber Henna" - sweet lady

1:30, time to start the party

krista and the mother of the bride dancing

white batmen

lets have the bride sit in this little bowl and then carry her around

...and shine bright lights in her face so the video turns out well

3:00 am

photos of the couple

outfits #2

hey

4:00- things are really getting started. fairly consistent gender separation

traditional music matched with lazerlightshow

outfit #3

enough already - 4:45 am. I left, it probably went until 7. then moved to another town to continue

Bored

It's cooled down to 102 degrees, alhumdullilah. I am bored.

This past week it seems as though I've been defining my life by what isn't happening, rather than what's in front of me. Perhaps this is because there is literally nothing in front of me. I'm spending all my mental energy thinking about what's 10+ months in front of me. And watching tv.

I've been bored. Luckily, however, Ramadan is coming to an end. The day after tomorrow, thousands of people from town will congregate on the highest hill (which is a huge, empty lot), to pray together as the sun comes up. Maybe just men, I'm not sure. Then they will drink tea and eat cookies for about 24 hours in celebration of the end of fasting. A day or two later, I'll be peeling out of town on my way west until I hit the Atlantic. In el Jadida, which is a little south of Casablanca, I'll do 10 days of summer camp and then come back for the end of August.

500 days

500 days ago, I was in America. It's been a while.

So what's my day-to-day like now?

Wake up
Read
Study Arabic
Make lunch
Prepare grad school applications/play on the internet
Exercise
Either make dinner or go to someone's house to break fast (I am not fasting)
Watch the West Wing

It's Ramadan. It's 102 with 30% humidity. And there's no running water. Nor have I done anything remotely close to 'work' in about 6 weeks. But I'm doing okay. I have another week of mercilessly killing time before an English-language summer camp on the Atlantic coast and I think I'm going to survive.

Maybe two weeks ago I returned from vacation with Krista. It's always hard coming back from Europe- the other two times I've done it, I had a distinct case of the blues for a long time. This time we pre-empted the doldrums by hanging at a nearby beach for a couple days with some other volunteers. Cost of the hotel on the beach: six dollars a night.

Of course, some things about coming back in summer are tough. The enormous, disgusting flying cockroaches that crawl out of our hole-in-the-ground toilet being one of them. Another is the lack of distraction. But the biggest problem is that it's Ramadan. People are hangry. It's hard to leave the house because everybody's wandering around like zombies, and few businesses are open. And some people crack.

I was standing on the corner for about an hour and a half waiting for a bus that might go to the beach. It was about 8 in the morning and I saw a group of guys laughing and doing what looked like gambling, on a bench across this sort of open plaza in the middle of downtown. Somebody must of drawn a lucky (or unlucky) hand and everything changed. Two of the guys started this silly dance that could be called public fighting. The way it works is, you maybe make one swing at another man and then all your buddies hold you back, and all his buddies hold him back, but they still let them yell in each other's faces, and then one is pulled away, but then his buddies let him rush back, but then hold him again and they yell in each other's faces again. This was all normal, so I wasn't particularly worried. But then the swords came out.

Yup, sword fight. Maybe they were technically knives, but they were probably 18 inches long and these guys were trying to hack each other apart. It was like Aladdin, but without music. Somehow their friends still managed to drag them away and they both looked ok (other than being certifiable psycho-whackjobs). I saw no police, nor did any show up.

So that made me miss Ireland and Italy a little bit. Didn't see many sword fights at the gelatterias. Before jetting off to Europe, my parents and grandmother came to Morocco and we toured around. It was wonderful, but as this blog is primarily for them, I won't go into details. But here are some pictures.

last event of the year

Yesterday we celebrated the first birthday of the Dar Chebab with a couple presentations (including one on the importance of English), a song, and honored the local winners of a national creative writing competition which occurred months ago. It was a classic Moroccan event- plenty of tea and sweets, lots of certificates, and endless photos. I'm hoping to help expand the creative writing competition next year to include a few creative writing workshops in English, Arabic, and French, rather than limit it to English like this past year.

After the event somebody came up to me while I was helping a student with an English poem and, without introducing himself, started to complain about the US actions regarding the Sahara. What a jerk.

One of my counterparts, an English teacher named Nora, who helped me with the spelling bee and creative writing competition told me she'd be happy to help with anything I ever want to do. So that was a feel good moment. Purpose of the first year: Accomplished.

not my idea

close-talking bros

only a page

"the world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page" - st. Augustine

This past week I rode the train for 28 hours. I hung out in Qenitra and Rabat on the way to Marrakesh. The train can be traumatizing for several reasons. Firstly, it is horrendously boring. I will never understand how old people can stare into space for 10 hours at a time. Secondly, it's about 110 degrees in the summer, so it stinks like hell. I pass 5 hours of desert before hitting Fes. Lastly, it feels as though you've stepped into a painfully slow time portal. Qenitra, Rabat, and Marrakesh are all about 50 years ahead of my town, 100 years ahead of the neighborhoods on the edge of my town, and 200-500 years ahead of the tiny villages in Morocco. It's mind blowing.

All these hours give me a lot of time to read. This trip I covered The Unwinding, a new book about how the social structures, which enabled the middle class in America to exist, have disintegrated over the last 40 years. I also read Colorblind, a book by my friend. The book is, at least in part, about elitism, apathy, and the ivy league-finance funnel. Then I made it through half of Franzen's Freedom. I really need an ipod.

On the way back, I watched the police beat up some smelly dudes near Rabat who didn't pay for tickets (I'd like to note here that they were smelly because they were wearing fancy sweaters and leather jackets in the hot, packed-solid train, not smelly because they live on the street). Why do people make such sacrifices in the name of fashion?

I'd almost made it back home- for the final hour I take a 'grand taxi' over the mountains. As per usual, the driver was blasting Koranic readings the entire time. Then we passed a car that had crashed into a tree. The others in the cab argued for a bit but eventually agreed that the person must have died. Then our 'chauffeur' started driving like a maniac. Passing huge trucks on total blind mountain turns and going absurd speeds up and down the crappy roads. I guess he was in a hurry to get into Heaven. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Anyway, why the hell did I go all the way to Marrakesh? I went to recruit some people from the newest group of volunteers to help out with a group that will focus on how to better integrate youth with special needs into our work in youth centers. The group will also do work in community health. Found some great people, so I think it was worth it.

The Jungle

Usually I walk through my city without paying much attention to my surroundings. You could call that equanimity or assimilation or just self absorption. Whatever it is though, it's my normal now. But sometimes, I have a few seconds where I snap out of it.

Yesterday I was walking my usual route and saw a crew of girls with a crew of boys stalking them 20 meters back. Then I saw an old truck from the 60s with 17 day-laborers dressed in filth standing in the bed, immediately followed by a BMW. And I thought, this place is a goddamn jungle.

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Speaking of damning god- the other day I was at the beach and asked somebody where I could go get some water.

Guy on the beach: You speak arabic, you must be Muslim.
Me: not yet, some day, godwilling
Guy: Oh so you're Christian
Me: Sure
Guy: Haha, you think Jesus is God's son. But that's not true, we're all God's children (laughing in my face)
Me: Yeah sure, thanks for the directions. goodbye.

Now I don't really give a damn, due to my own close-to-nonexistent religious beliefs. But if that guy went to America, and somebody told him Mohamed was not the prophet of god, he was wrong, and laughed in his face, how would he have reacted?

Homogeneity sucks.

Then again, if he went to America, plenty of people would probably think he was a terrorist. I haven't had that problem thus far.