Roughin' It

I’ve had a few days to reflect on my experiences from village stay and I hope that I will be to convey at least a third of what I experienced last week. Nothing that the other students in the program and I had been briefed on before we left could have prepared us for the new life we were encouraged to adopt once arriving in the village; that one week taught me so much about myself that I’m sure I would have never discovered otherwise. This adventure was one that took me way past the usual and launched me headfirst into foreign territory.
Saturday morning, we loaded our duffel bags into the bus and started along our route that took us south to Casablanca then directly east to the “city” of Bejaad. We drove along a small one-lane road until our bus could go no further; it was at this point that we loaded our bags into a van that looked like it had barely survived World War II, and we began walking the rest of the few miles to the village. Our attempts to absorb the beauty of the scenery surrounding us were futile…waves of plush green hills dotted with bursts of red, orange, yellow, blue, and purple flowers. I have never seen so many wildflowers in my life, and this was easily one of the most gorgeous places I have ever been. I quickly snapped out of this little reverie when we came in to sight of the village and the huge group of men (our “fathers”) gathered at the mosque waiting to greet us. I was introduced to my village dad, Mohammed, and we walked down the dirt road to what I would later be calling “home”.
Describing my house will be difficult as it was unlike anything I had ever stepped foot in before—seeing the pictures will give you a better idea, but I will do my best to find the right words to give you a general idea. All of the houses are arranged in “compounds” and scattered throughout the country-side, with families usually living in the same compound, in connecting compounds, or within a very short walking distance from one another. Relying on others is a way of life in rural Morocco and no matter how independent someone appears, there’s no such thing as “independent living” in a village. Keep in mind, when I say tea, I really mean sugar with a little bit of water to aid consumption and a few tea leaves sprinkled in for color. But I digress.
Back to the description of my house: it was built with mud and straw (pisé) and at one time, concrete was generously slathered on the ground to make the floor but that has now started to give way to the dirt; when you walked into the compound, the donkey and cow were on your right, behind them was the sheep pen, to your left was a storage hut, and in front of you was the living area, which entailed a “kitchen” (fire pit, ice box with no ice, and small metal table), a multipurpose room, and a salon/bedroom/nursery/dining room. While there was a roof over all of these rooms, it was a very open air place as you had to step outside to go from room to room. Animals were commonplace throughout the living areas, and many times I’d look up from my book or journal writing to find a chicken attacking bread crumbs by my foot or a kitten escaping the dog and curling up near my foot.
Besides my father Mohammed, the other people living in my house were: Fatna, my grandmother; Fatima, my mother; Abdulatif, my 9 year old brother; Sumiya, my 4 year old sister; Hessna, my 2 year old sister; and a 4 week old baby whose name I could never understand. The family dynamics were unlike any I’d ever experienced before, and this society was still operating under the former Family Code, which stated that upon marriage, the wife became the property (read: slave) of her in-laws. This might sound kind of funny until you’re face-to-face with a woman who isn’t allowed to eat at the table with her husband and children, who sits by herself on the dirt floor in the corner and eats the scraps of those at the table, who is ordered around by everyone, including her 9 year old son, and who is treated about the same as the family’s livestock.
The paternalistic society was very frustrating to me, and besides what I just mentioned, one of the more aggravating things was that Mohammed adamantly believes that his son’s education is more important than his daughters’. He loves his daughters, this much is evident, but he doesn’t see them as “valuable”, dare I say, as Abdulatif. When he asked about my family, he was concerned to hear that I only had two sisters and no brothers. He looked up to the sky and said a few things, which I understood to be “God bless your father, the poor man with no sons.”
While meals with my Moroccan rural family were obviously very different from meals with my family back home, certain moments reminded me just how similar we all are. After dinner, the family sat around and talked together (minus Fatima who was cleaning up), and while I’m not sure what they were talking about (a couple times I think I heard “crazy American girl”) the scene looked a lot like dinners at my house when we all just sit around and talk. The actual meals were quite varied during my stay; breakfast was always tea and flatbread (made fresh that morning), and lunch and dinner depended on what was available. The day I arrived, they had just killed a chicken, so that was used for three days for lunch and dinner…I even got chicken liver and heart as a snack one day. Yum. When there was no more chicken left, we ate bread and olive oil, and sometimes fresh butter. You can tell the family appreciated every little bit of food they had, and nothing was ever wasted.
As for the language barrier…it was immense. Not only did these families not speak French, but they also didn’t speak fus’ha (Modern Standard Arabic), and the darija they spoke was very accented and different from the darija I’m used to hearing in Rabat. Nonverbal communication was the way to go, but even that got confusing at times (their motion for “come here” looked like they were petting a dog). No matter what I did or said, they seemed to think that repeating complex sentences to me would magically grant me the ability to respond in flawless darija (they seemed disappointed that I was not fluent after day one…).
The first night I slept there, the grandmother woke up every hour, shined the flashlight in my eyes to see if I was sleeping, and would pile more blankets on me to show her concern to the fact that I was awake (which I most certainly was, after she temporarily blinded me with the flashlight). I woke up the next morning with ten blankets piled on me.
During the week, we were put to work by planting olive trees, helping to build their community center, participating in a talk with the village men, and learning to weave. The rest of the time was spent with our families, doing chores (I’m now a pro at shelling peas), playing with little kids, and catching up on reading (currently I’m reading Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad…you can bet you’ll be getting quotes). We even got a game of Frisbee going…though they wouldn’t let me play after I accidently threw it into the mosque.
This post is a lot longer than I thought it would be, so I think I’ll wrap this up before you stop reading. This was both a relaxing trip and a stressful trip…on one hand we had no obligations, no email, no cell phones, and no outside communication; however, on the other hand it was stressful because I was trying to communicate with my family, process the social situation, and absorb all that I could. Overall it was an amazing experience and it has definitely given me a lot to think about…